YellowTimes.org) – Often times, while reading the headlines or watching the news, one has to ask, "What could the Israelis be thinking?" What could possibly be the point of the seemingly indiscriminate carnage and destruction? Rooting out the terrorists or revenge is often the official explanation. But tiny babies are not terrorists yet they are killed by the dozens. Olive trees are not terrorists yet they are uprooted by the hundreds. Homes are not terrorists but they are destroyed by the thousands. Buildings and factories are labeled bomb factories and are shelled into oblivion. One need only examine these actions to discern the overall strategy of the country that is behind them.
The Israelis have always lusted for land acquisition. For evidence of this you may note that as far back as 1973, Ariel Sharon himself enunciated the settlement policy for the West Bank. He said his aim was to create facts on the ground, facts that would not be able to be undone 25 years hence, and 200,000 odd settlers later this is exactly what has happened.
The initial invasion of U.N. mandated Palestinian areas in 1948, the Sinai invasion in 1956, the 1967 war and the 1983 Lebanese incursion manifest a strategy that is expressly meant to expand Israeli borders and acquire resources. The only time Israelis were forced to give up territory was after the original Sinai invasion in 1956, subsequently reoccupied in 1967, and the 22 yearlong occupation of South Lebanon. It is not in their plans to give up either the Golan Heights or the West Bank, or to settle for just those territories. Their foot-dragging approach to the farcical peace negotiations bears witness to their real objectives.
The current onslaught in the West Bank is meant to do one thing: make life so miserable for the indigenous inhabitants that they will have no choice but to leave. Palestinians are made homeless by the thousands. Curfews restrict movement for even the most basic necessities: work, food and health care. How long can people exist under such conditions, especially given the seeming indifference of the rest of the world?
The controlling Likud Party has announced plans to immigrate one million more Jews, and the consequent need for water resources to support these immigrants has as its sub-mandate the conquest and annexation of additional land. Hence, no matter how many negotiations are started or abandoned, there will be no Palestinian State.
What of the United States' role in all this? An examination of its moves since the infamous September 11th attack shows that George W. and Company are surely making it up as they go along. In the aftermath of the World Trade Center destruction, and after Bush and Cheney emerged from hiding, the president announced that he supported a Palestinian State. This statement was prompted by the initial belief that the lack of progress in Middle East peace talks was the root cause for the attack.
The Israeli lobby saw the WTC incident as an opportunity to justify its strategic designs, and sprang into action launching a frenetic public relations' action. Arafat was labeled Israel's bin Laden, and Palestinian resistance organizations were accused of being in cahoots with al Qaeda and a threat to the U.S. It didn't take long before the administration backpedaled from its initial statements while Israel opted into "the war on terrorism."
The U.S. began smoking out bin Laden and his terrorist band, a notion that appealed to the resurgent patriotic fervor that gripped the nation. The Taliban provided an opportunity for tangible results, something the folks back home could appreciate on the nightly news: you know, precision bombing and all that. The elusive bin Laden was not good sound bite material. Now that the Taliban have been dispatched, a perpetual "war on terrorism" has expanded into the next best thing: Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah. Many experts believe that a dramatic military action will take place before the November elections to keep the war momentum going and the poll numbers high.
A cursory look at the product of Israeli lobbying effort reveals a foreign policy strategy that is designed to isolate the U.S. from all countries in the Middle East. Banging the drum for an Iraqi invasion, resolutions condemning Syria and Iran, labeling Hezbollah as one of the foremost terrorist organizations in the world, the vilification of Arafat and the P.L.O. and the public relations campaign against Saudi Arabia are all examples of furtherance of this long-term strategy.
Controlling oil supplies is of course the linchpin in any U.S. strategy it cobbles together. So, it is not far fetched to see that the long-term contingency plan for Israel, along with the American presence already there, is to invade the Saudi oil fields when the time is ripe. The Saudis control half of the spare production capacity of O.P.E.C., and they've gone on record to say that shutting off oil is not in the cards this time around. The destabilization of their regime would be a prima facie cause for military intervention.
Without the projected oil pipeline through Afghanistan and the continued oil supply from the Arab States, America would have a hard time justifying its adventures in the Middle East. For the Israelis, however, their long-term expansion is driving their strategy and it has co-opted U.S. policy to insure success. As this strategy goes forward, one has to wonder what the economic and political reverberations throughout the rest of the world will be.
[Raff Ellis lives in the U.S. and is a retired former strategic planner and computer industry executive. He has had an abiding and active interest in the Middle East since early adulthood and has traveled to the region many times over the last 30 years.]
Monday, August 05, 2002
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has become the most outspoken opponent the Bush Administration has to its seemingly imminent invasion of Iraq. Ritter, who spent seven years in and out of Iraq, says everything we are being told about Saddam's weapons program is a lie. Others disagree (see an overview of analyses here). On a recent episode of the new PBS series Wide Angle, several men who purport to be Iraqi defectors claim Saddam is not only developing weapons of mass destruction, but is actively involved in international terrorism against the U.S. Is Ritter just a disgruntled bureaucrat pushing his own agenda? Or is a massive disinformation campaign leading us down the road to a conflagration that could threaten the stability of the entire region, and leave tens of thousands of innocents dead? Tell us what you think here.
Room 295 of the Suffolk Law School building in downtown Boston was filled to capacity on July 23rd with peace activists, aging Cambridge hippies and assorted freaks. One of the organizers for the gathering, United For Justice With Peace Coalition, handed out green pieces of paper that read, "We will not support war, no matter what reason or rhetoric is offered by politicians or the media. War in our time and in this context is indiscriminate, a war against innocents and against children." Judging from the crowd, and from the buzz in the room, that pretty much summed things up.
The contrast presented when Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, entered the room, could not have been more disparate. There at the lectern stood this tall lantern-jawed man, every inch the twelve-year Marine Corps veteran he was, who looked and spoke just exactly like a bulldogging high school football coach. A whistle on a string around his neck would have perfected the image.
"I need to say right out front," he said minutes into his speech, "I'm a card-carrying Republican in the conservative-moderate range who voted for George W. Bush for President. I'm not here with a political agenda. I'm not here to slam Republicans. I am one."
As prominent senators consider the wisdom of making war on Iraq, truly independent thinking seems to stop at the water's edge. But I keep recalling a very different scene: On Feb. 27, 1968, I sat in a small room on Capitol Hill. Around a long table, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was in session, taking testimony from an administration official. I remember a man with a push-broom mustache and a voice like sandpaper, raspy and urgent.
Wayne Morse, the senior senator from Oregon, did not resort to euphemism. He spoke of the "tyranny that American boys are being killed in South Vietnam to maintain in power." Moments before the hearing adjourned, Morse said he did not "intend to put the blood of this war on my hands."
It's hard to imagine the late senator going along with claims today that the U.S. government has a right to attack Iraq because of the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense."
A fierce advocate of international law, Morse had no patience for double standards. In 1964 he told a national TV audience: "I don't know why we think, just because we're mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for right. And that's the American policy in Southeast Asia--just as unsound when we do it as when Russia does it."
Nor was Morse at all tolerant of pronouncements about the necessity of saving face. He bristled at the kind of logic advanced the other day by a top Pentagon advisor, James R. Schlesinger, who asserted that "given all we have said as a leading world power about the necessity of regime change in Iraq ... our credibility would be badly damaged if that regime change did not take place."
Members of Congress are apt to focus on the efficacy of taking military action, the hazards of getting bogged down, the need for a clear exit strategy. But such discussions did not preoccupy Morse. He directly challenged the morality--not just the "winnability"--of the war in Vietnam. And from the outset he insisted that democracy requires substantial public knowledge and real congressional oversight rather than acquiescence to presidential manipulation.
This is the summer of the phoney war against Iraq; expect much smoke but very little fire. But come the autumn, expect it to get real.
During the past few weeks newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic have revealed in breathless terms the latest plan to invade Iraq. They have described massive thrusts by armour from all sides; airborne attacks to take out Baghdad; vast seaborne raids. Saddam Hussein, according to one version, will be removed by dissidents inserted into Iraq backed by US Special Forces. Alternatively, Saddam will be taken out in a precision strike.
Civilian officials in the Bush administration have huffed and puffed about the 'leaks', to the amusement of the intelligence and military professionals. 'One thing you can say with an awful lot of certainty,' one told The Observer last week, 'is that there is going to be an awful lot of deception going on over the next few months.'
Deception is one of the oldest of the military's black arts. In the Second World War, the British persuaded the Germans that the Allied invasion plan for the Continent would be through Italy by dumping the body of a bogus officer in the sea carrying false plans for the Germans to find. With the modern media, there is no need for The Man Who Never Was: 'leaks' and 'secrets' are compulsive to journalists.
But the fact of the existence of deception operations is important in itself. It is, in the terminology of these things, a 'combat indicator' - one of the clues that suggest things are fast on the road to getting bloody.
And not all of it is necessarily deception. The military - like all complex organisations - is prone to the same rivalries and disagreements over tactics. Leaking can be lobbying by other means.
There have been other signs and indicators suggestive of the timing of a campaign against Iraq. Manufacturers of cruise missiles and precision-guided munitions in the US have been working overtime to replace the weapons expended in Afghanistan. The American military transport fleet of trucks has been ordered in for rapid servicing. In Chicago last week a freight train loaded with military trucks, painted for desert service, passed through the city. Most tellingly, discreet inquiries have already been made about the availability of tankers to transport the fuel required for war.
The threat of military action against Iraq is now beginning to dominate Western politics. So what light does the long history of Christian thinking on the morality of warfare shed on this?
Some dismiss the 'Just War' tradition as outmoded. But although the context has dramatically changed, with nuclear weapons and terrorism, the principles remain unchanged.
Others, understandably but wrongly, see this tradition only as a spurious device for justifying military action which would be undertaken anyway.
What it provides, however, is a set of criteria by which a potential military action might be judged morally licit or illicit. If a potential military incursion into Iraq is judged morally unjustified, it will in fact be on the basis of criteria which have long been part of Just War thinking.
The first criterion is that there must be lawful authority: and this, in fact, means authority at the highest possible level. The logic of this is that in disputes between lower authorities appeal can always be made to a higher one for a resolution without recourse to war.
Where there is no higher authority, as in a world composed only of nation states, the state has to be judge and jury in its own cause. In our world, however, there is the United Nations. However imperfect the UN may be, it is a crucial sign that we are groping our way towards a truly international authority.
There were clear UN resolutions to use force to expel Iraq from Kuwait; to preserve the no-fly zones in Bosnia; for the United States to act under Article 51, the right of self defence, in Afghanistan; to intervene in Sierra Leone and, more ambiguously, in Kosovo. But what of an invasion of Iraq now? President Bush and our own Prime Minister will no doubt appeal to the UN resolutions already in force about the terms of the original ceasefire and argue that a build-up of weapons of mass destruction is a breach of the ceasefire which justifies military action being taken.
I do not believe this is authorisation enough to justify an invasion aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein. For such military intervention to meet the criterion of lawful authority, a new mandate needs to be sought and agreed by the United Nations.
Second, there must be just cause. When the UN inspectors were expelled from Iraq in 1998, it appeared that Resolution 687 relating to weapons dismantlement had been partly implemented. There was no indication of any weapons-usable nuclear materials remaining in Iraq. There was no evidence that Iraq was manufacturing or testing indigenous ballistic missiles. Most of the prime chemical weapons development and production complex had been dismantled.
Much less progress had been made in relation to biological weapons. International experts reporting in 1998 said that Iraq disclosures on biological weapons were 'incomplete, inadequate and technical flawed'.
Inevitably, it is very difficult to discover what has happened since 1998. Defectors earlier reported a network of bunkers where chemical and biological weapons have allegedly been made and where attempts were underway to create a nuclear bomb.
More recently the US Congress was told that Saddam Hussein has enough weapons-grade uranium for three nuclear bombs by 2005. Tony Blair has said that a full report will be published of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction but so far nothing has been forthcoming, allegedly because it would not be seen to justify military action.
But is the presence of weapons by themselves, however destructive, even in the hands of someone who certainly cannot be trusted, sufficient cause? A policy of containment and deterrence has worked up until now. There is no evidence that has yet been produced which would justify a change in policy.
Third, every effort must have been made to resolve the dispute first by peaceful means. This suggests a clear moral obligation to go on pressing for the re-admittance of UN Weapons Inspectors into Iraq. We should not yet give up on this. Even if Saddam Hussein's present initiative to discuss the issue further does not bear fruit, we should persevere.
Fourth, a judgment has to be made that the war will not unleash more evils than are already being endured. Here it is possible to paint an apocalyptic scenario, with the whole Middle East in flames, as King Adbullah of Jordan has recently stressed, despotic regimes in Islamic countries being toppled and Iraq dismembered and in a state of civil war.
Some predicted such dire consequences over an attack on Afghanistan - and were proved wrong, as the doyen of military commentators, Sir Michael Howard, had the grace to acknowledge. But most of the factors which made success possible in Afghanistan are missing in relation to Iraq.
Fifth, and arising out of the fourth criterion, there must be a reasonable chance of success. But if we are to evaluate success then the war aims must be crystal clear. This is far from being the case, with endless possible scenarios being played out in Washington.
Although the Just War criteria were formulated by Christian thinkers in a Christian culture, they do in fact appeal to basic moral considerations shared by all human beings. It is this that accounts for the fact that they provided the basis for international law and the military law of most countries.
It is also clear that moral principles and political judgments are inextricably intertwined. Political and military judgments are also moral judgments and moral judgments cannot be separated from an assessment of the consequences of any proposed course of action.
The main task of the Churches at a time like this is to put forward and press these criteria, probing and testing whether or not they might be met. In the end political and military judgments have to be made and those who hold power have the awesome task of making them. Churchmen do not hold power and do not have to make those decisions. But on the basis of what we have and know at the moment those criteria are not being met.
His wife recently diagnosed with cancer, and his former employer, Enron, on the ropes, Steve Pearlman decided days before Thanksgiving to cash in $280,000 worth of deferred-compensation claims to pay mounting health bills.
He filed a request, but the check never came.
Yet in the days before Enron went bankrupt, a few dozen company executives used a little-known clause in the deferred-compensation plan to retrieve at least $32 million.
"This was just another egregious thing these guys did to enrich themselves at other people's expense," Pearlman, who retired in August 2001, said of the Enron executives.
The company filed for bankruptcy Dec. 2.
Now, eight months later, those denied compensation have set their sights on Lawrence "Greg" Whalley, then the chief operating officer of the company, who they say approved the deferred-compensation payments for some but not others.
They are considering legal action against him, and also want Enron's creditors to recover the $32 million -- and possibly tens of millions more not yet publicly reported.
"We believe, given the imminent bankruptcy, all of these requests for early withdrawal were done with insider information as to the true state of affairs inside the company," said Dan Ryser, a former Enron executive heading a group of retirees and others trying to recover deferred compensation in excess of $50 million.
"To grant these early withdrawals at all was bad faith," he said. "The fact that it was done in a discriminatory fashion is worse."
A lawyer for Whalley, now managing director of UBS Warburg Energy, Enron's former commodity-trading business acquired by the Swiss bank, said the decisions to approve and deny applications were not arbitrary.
DEARBORN, Mich.-To the outside world, the Arab Americans in this community are adjusting well to the heightened scrutiny they receive from law enforcement, cooperating with interviews and proudly displaying their American flags.
But inside, said Don Unis, a U.S. citizen of Lebanese descent, people are upset, anxious and increasingly angry at what they perceive as a war -- domestically and abroad -- on Arabs and Muslims.
Their relatives have been called in for random interviews. Their brethren are being held in U.S. jails on suspicion of terrorism, some without a hint from the government about their alleged crimes. And there is a widespread perception that few Americans understand -- or care -- what they're going through.
Particularly chilling for them were the comments July 19 from a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights -- since rejected by the full panel -- that raised the specter of internment camps for Arab Americans if there is another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
"They're scared to death," said Unis, 63, who was born in the United States and whose father fought for this country in World War I after emigrating from Lebanon in 1917. "They're singing the song that authorities want to hear, but they're eating their guts out. . . . We still don't have very much of a voice in America."
The Detroit region is home to the largest concentration of people of Arab descent in the United States, with Dearborn the center of that community. Restaurants, schools and mosques cater to families such as the Unises, who have four generations of roots in this country.
But since last September, this place has felt less like a haven for Arab Americans. There has been periodic harassment, the constant fear of bodily harm and the frightening possibility of being incarcerated in connection with the war on terror -- fears that Arabs and Muslims around the country have echoed.
NASHVILLE -- There has always been a debate over the destiny of this nation between those who believed they were entitled to govern because of their station in life, and those who believed that the people were sovereign. That distinction remains as strong as ever today. In every race this November, the question voters must answer is, How do we make sure that political power is used for the benefit of the many, rather than the few?
For well over a year, the Bush administration has used its power in the wrong way. In 2000, I argued that the Bush-Cheney ticket was being bankrolled by "a new generation of special interests, power brokers who would want nothing better than a pliant president who would bend public policy to suit their purposes and profits." Some considered this warning anti-business. It was nothing of the sort. I believe now, as I said then, that "when powerful interests try to take advantage of the American people, it's often other businesses that are hurt in the process" — most of all, smaller companies that play by the rules.
This view was not partisan. It was based on a plain reading of the history of Republican governance under Presidents Reagan and Bush. And every passing day demonstrates that it was merely the truth.
I believe Bill Clinton and I were right to maintain, during our 1992 campaign, that we should fight for "the forgotten middle class" against the "forces of greed." Standing up for "the people, not the powerful" was the right choice in 2000. And, in fact, it is the Democratic Party's meaning and mission. The suggestion from some in our party that we should no longer speak that truth, especially at a time like this, strikes me as bad politics and, worse, wrong in principle.
This struggle between the people and the powerful was at the heart of every major domestic issue of the 2000 campaign and is still the central dynamic of politics in 2002. The choice, not just in rhetoric but in reality, was and still is between a genuine prescription drug benefit for all seniors under Medicare — or a token plan designed to trick the voters and satisfy pharmaceutical companies. The White House and its allies in Congress have just defeated legislation that would have fulfilled the promises both parties made in 2000.
In the fearful aftermath of Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to use the full might of the federal government and "every available statute" to hunt down and punish "the terrorists among us."
The roundup that followed the attacks, conducted with wartime urgency and uncommon secrecy, led to the detentions of more than 1,200 people suspected of violating immigration laws, being material witnesses to terrorism or fighting for the enemy.
The government's effort has produced few if any law enforcement coups. Most of the detainees have since been released or deported, with fewer than 200 still being held.
But it has provoked a sprawling legal battle, now being waged in federal courthouses around the country, that experts say has begun to redefine the delicate balance between individual liberties and national security.
The main combatants are the attorney general and federal prosecutors on one side and a network of public defenders, immigration and criminal defense lawyers, civil libertarians and some constitutional scholars on the other, with federal judges in between.
The government's record has so far been decidedly mixed. As it has pushed civil liberties protections to their limits, the courts, particularly at the trial level, have pushed back, stopping well short of endorsing Mr. Ashcroft's tactics or the rationales he has offered to justify them. Federal judges have, however, allowed the government to hold two American citizens without charges in military brigs, indefinitely, incommunicado and without a road map for how they might even challenge their detentions.
In the nation's history, the greatest battles over the reach of government power have occurred against the backdrop of wartime. Some scholars say the current restrictions on civil liberties are relatively minor by historical standards and in light of the risks the nation faces.
The current struggle centers on three sets of issues. People held simply for immigration violations have objected to new rules requiring that their cases be heard in secret, and they have leveraged those challenges into an attack on what they call unconstitutional preventive detentions.
Before Tony Blair joins the new crusaders trying to impose a "regime change", a Western "settlement" on Iraq, he should at least look at the historical facts that explain the rise of nationalist leaders such as Saddam Hussein. And while he is at it, since he is good at empathy, he might try looking at Britain through Iraqi eyes. Seen from Baghdad, the British have bombed and invaded their country, lied to them, manipulated their borders, imposed on them leaders they did not want, kidnapped ones they did, fixed their elections, used collective terror tactics on their civilians, promised them freedom and then planned to turn their country into a province of India populated by immigrant Punjabi farmers. Small wonder that the author Said Aburish said to me recently: "If you think Saddam Hussein is a hard man to deal with, just wait for the next generation of Iraqi leaders."
In view of Saddam's ruthlessness in dealing with the Kurds in Iraq, his war with Iran and his invasion of Kuwait, it is hard to conceive that there are younger Iraqi leaders who believe Saddam has not been tough enough, and that, although the United States has the most powerful armed forces in the world, Americans do not have the stomach for the sacrifices an all-out war in the Middle East would entail.
These young Iraqis take the Islamic long view of history, which suggests that the Middle East never favours the foreigner and always takes its revenge on those who, like the British and Americans, insist on seeing the region through their own eyes.
We need to go back to the First World War, when Lawrence of Arabia and Winston Churchill were imposing the first regime changes on the Middle East, to see how we have reached the situation we face today. In 1919, the recently concluded war had made everyone realise the strategic importance of oil, and in any future major skirmish a secure supply of oil would be an essential weapon. Britain already had one source: British Petroleum, owned in part by the British government, had been pumping oil at Masjid-i-Salamn, in Iran's Zagros Mountains, since 1908. But it was not enough.
So even before the peace conference began in Paris in 1919 some underhand oil trading took place. France, for example, gave Britain the oil-rich area around Mosul in Iraq, in exchange for a share of the oil and "a free hand" in Syria. Unfortunately, Britain had already promised Syria to the Syrians. It was obvious to the smarter Arab leaders that guarantees of freedom and independence made during the war by Britain and France in return for their support against Germany's ally, Turkey, would now mean nothing.
This was confirmed at the peace conference when the oil companies pressed their governments to renounce all wartime promises to the Arabs. The oil companies saw only too well that oil concessions and royalties would be easier to negotiate with a series of rival Arab states, lacking any sense of unity, than with a powerful independent Arab state in the Middle East. Ironically – in that President George W Bush now leads the new crusaders – the only country to protest at the betrayal of the Arabs was the United States.
A commission set up by President Wilson warned that independence for states such as Palestine, Syria and Iraq, should be granted as soon as possible. And the idea of making Palestine into a Jewish commonwealth should be dropped. The report was ignored, even in Washington, and it took a further two years for the Allies to finalise their carve-up of the Middle East. The Arabs were stunned to learn that the whole Arab rectangle lying between the Mediterranean and the Persian frontier, including Palestine, was to be placed under mandates to suit the foreign policies of Britain and France. The Arabs had simply exchanged one imperial ruler, Turkey, for another, the West.
Revolution began almost immediately. The Iraqis tried to kick us out by raiding British establishments and killing British troops. The British army retaliated with collective punishment, burning to the ground every village from which any such attack was mounted. Lawrence of Arabia wrote to The Times suggesting, with heavy irony, that burning villages was not very efficient. "By gas attacks, the whole population of offending districts could be wiped out neatly, and as a method of government, it would be no more immoral than the present system."
The grim truth was that something along these lines was being considered. Churchill, then Secretary of State for Air and War, suggested that the RAF should take on the job of subduing Iraq: "It would ... entail the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death ... for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes." In the end the RAF stuck to conventional high-explosive bombs, a method we are still using today.
When Churchill appointed Lawrence to clear up the mess the Middle East had become, Lawrence began by offering to make Feisal, the man he had chosen as military leader of the Arab revolt, King of Iraq. The problem was that there were several other candidates.
Summary
As the debate over a potential U.S. attack on Iraq continues in Washington and abroad, a subtle increase in the mobilization of Army combat troops is underway. This development offers a hint to the Pentagon's evolving Iraq strategy, with the specific units involved indicating that a conventional attack on Iraq could be slated for January or February, with a major thrust possibly coming from Turkey.
Analysis
According to a July 31 news release by the U.S. Department of Defense, the total number of National Guard and Reserve personnel on active duty in support of the war on Al Qaeda declined over the previous week by 834 people to 79,780 troops. This represents the fifth consecutive week of declines in mobilized guard and reserve troops, with the total mobilized now down to levels not seen since mid-March.
However, while reductions continue in the number of mobilized Air National Guard and Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard Reserve forces, call-ups of Army National Guard and Reserve troops continue to rise. Total mobilized Army forces surpassed those of the Air Force in the week preceding July 24, the first time this has happened since call-ups began Sept. 20, 2001.
WITH the United States intent on deposing him, Saddam Hussein has sent one of his sons to try to win support from his old enemy, Iran.
The Iraqi President was said to have dispatched his younger son and heir- apparent, Qusay, to seek the return of Iraqi aircraft that were sent to Iran for safekeeping during the 1991 Gulf War.
Qusay and his team, who travelled to the Iranian border ten days ago, also asked to buy weapons, including long-range Shahab-3 missiles, reformist Iranian websites reported. In return, Baghdad offered to hand over all the members of an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq.
While the Iraqi requests were apparently rejected, Iran again made clear at the weekend its opposition to US military action against Iraq. It was joined in calling for a political solution to the Iraqi affair by Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, whose Foreign Minister, Saud al-Faisal, held talks in Tehran with Iran’s moderate President Khatami.
“If aggression against one country becomes a habit, no government or country will be spared,” Mr Khatami said.
But he placed part of the responsibility for the regional tension on Iraq and called for “regional co-operation between Iraq’s neighbouring countries to encourage it to adhere to UN resolutions and international agreements”.
Qusay was said to have sought Iranian assistance during a secret meeting with General Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The talks took place at Ghasre Shirin, an Iranian town on the southern border with Iraq, one reformist source told The Times.
After consultations with the political authorities in Tehran, General Zolghadr rejected all Qusay’s requests for military assistance, the reports said. Baghdad was told that its aircraft would be of no use to Iraq because they were inoperable.
WASHINGTON — Twelve years after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait triggered the Gulf War, the U.S. military is moving equipment, troops and communications gear into the region in an indication that President Bush may order an attack to drive Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.
Pentagon officials decline to discuss troop movements, but there is little doubt among defense experts and a former commander with combat experience in Iraq that military leaders are laying the groundwork for an assault sometime next year should Bush order it.
Bush has said he wants "a regime change" in Baghdad because of Saddam's efforts to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Among the indications of attack preparations, according to experts:
• Army Gen. Tommy Franks has moved the headquarters of the Third Army to Kuwait from Fort McPherson, Ga. The Third Army would form the backbone of any invasion force.
• Army units in Kuwait include so-called quartering parties — soldiers who plan the logistics required for the arrival of large numbers of other troops.
• The Army's crack 101st Airborne Division is being withdrawn from Afghanistan and sent back to Fort Campbell, Ky. The 101st is an air assault division that can deploy anywhere within 36 hours.
"This is a logical thing to do in the context of a coming campaign," said retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, former chief Middle East intelligence analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency. "To go to Kuwait, then to Baghdad and beyond, you need high-mobility and the air mobile division should be brought together in its entirely to participate in that."
• The U.S. military has moved communications gear, including a sophisticated air operations center, to Qatar.
• The U.S. Maritime Administration, which monitors the fleet of cargo ships that would be needed to ship heavy Army weaponry overseas, is closely examining the condition of that fleet to ensure it is ready for duty.
• The United States also has built up forces and hangars at Qatar's al-Udeid air base. The base has a 15,000-foot runway, the longest in the region, that can accommodate the Air Force's largest transport planes that can haul everything from bullets to tanks to personnel.
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
First Enron, now WorldCom: two huge iconic companies brought low by accounting fiddles.
The consequent pressure on auditors and accountants - the guardians of a company's numbers - is intense.
But if it's bad for the beancounters, imagine what it must be like if your job is to keep an eye on them.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has that dubious honour in the US, and it's no surprise that it is squirming under the spotlight.
Oversight
Its chairman, Harvey Pitt, has accelerated proposals shaped post-Enron last year to institute a new oversight of the accountancy business.
On the table is a nine-person "Public Accountability Board", only three of whose members will be accountants, with the power to fine and censure transgressors.
The agency is in line for a 77%, $337m boost to its budget, rapidly approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
He has also announced plans to make company bosses sign off personally on accounts, in an attempt to bar the "No-one told me" defence employed by executives at both Enron and WorldCom.
And the SEC has hurried to sue WorldCom for fraud, making sure, Mr Pitt said, that it is prohibited from indulging in an Enron-style paper shredding party.
Demanding a sworn report of how it came to announce that it had hidden $3.8bn in expenses, Mr Pitt told reporters that what had happened at WorldCom - "and we do not yet know all that has happened" - was an "outrage".
"What we also know we're looking at isn't a mistake, it's a fraud," he said.
NEW YORK The real cause of spreading corporate malfeasance in America is a lack of faith in democratic institutions. Business malfeasance is the consequence neither of systemic capitalist contradictions nor of private sin, which are endemic to capitalism and indeed to humanity. It arises from a failure of the instruments of democracy, which have been weakened by three decades of market fundamentalism, privatization ideology and resentment of government.
Capitalism is not too strong; democracy is too weak. Americans have not grown too hubristic as producers and consumers; we have grown too timid as citizens, acquiescing in deregulation and privatization (airlines, accounting firms, banks, media conglomerates, you name it) and a growing tyranny of money over politics.
The corrosive effects of this trend are visible not only on Wall Street. The Bush administration, which favors energy production over energy conservation, has engineered a reversal of a generation of progress on environmentalism.
These policies can be traced directly to that proud disdain for the public realm that is common to all market fundamentalists. Such attitudes represent a penchant for a go-it-alone economics that undermines the social contract and turns corporate sins into virtues of the bottom line.
Even in foreign policy, where unilateralism and the repudiation of partnerships might suggest a muscular governmental policy, there is a tendency to treat the international sector as a Hobbesian "state of nature," anarchic and disorderly, where "force and fraud are cardinal virtues." The United States fails to see that the international treaties it will not sign, the criminal court it will not acknowledge and the United Nations system it does not adequately support are efforts, however compromised, at developing a new global contract to contain the chaos. The American belittlement of these efforts betrays a strategy that enhances global anarchy in the name of preserving national sovereignty. Thus the new global disorder is as incapable of constraining global crime as the deregulated domestic market is incapable of containing corporate crime.
Market fundamentalism, which defined the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, encourages a myth of omnipotent markets. But this is as foolish and wrongheaded as the myth of omnipotent states, which reigned from the New Deal to the Great Society. It tricks people into believing that their own common power represents some bureaucrat's hegemony over them, and that buying power is the same as voting power. But consumers are not citizens, and markets cannot exercise democratic sovereignty. The ascendant market ideology claims to free us, but it actually robs us of the civic freedom by which we control the social consequences of private choices.
The truth is that runaway capitalists, environmental know-nothings, irresponsible accountants, amoral drug runners and anti-modern terrorists all flourish because we have diminished the power of the public sphere. By privatizing government functions and refusing to help create democratic institutions of global governance, America has relinquished its authority to control these forces.
Within the United States, we foolishly think we possess a private liberty that allows us to work and prosper individually, not together or in conformity with a social contract. In the international realm, we seem to believe that our claim to national sovereignty allows us to operate unilaterally, not together or in conformity with a global contract.
On Sept. 11 no one looked to Bill Gates or Michael Eisner for national leadership. On that day Americans remembered the true meaning of words like citizen and public servant and relied upon firefighters, mayors, Congress and the president. Why then today do we expect corporate executives or "market professionals" to cure the disorders of anarchic market capitalism - which, as Theodore Roosevelt understood, responds only to democratic oversight? And how do we expect a go-it-alone superpower to depose terrorists who exploit the global interdependence that America is reluctant to recognize? These ends are public. To secure them is the common task of every citizen.
Monday, July 29, 2002
WITH SPIRO ("TED") Agnew, it was so simple. He was charged with pocketing more than $100,000 in graft from Maryland engineering firms, one of which took the trouble to have someone personally deliver an envelope with $10,000 in small bills to the newly elected U.S. vice-president at his suite in the Executive Office Building in Washington. Bribery is plainly illegal, so Ted pleaded "no contest" to the charges against him and quit public life in 1973.
But you look at Dick Cheney's brief stint in business from 1995 to 2000, prior to joining the Bush ticket, and you don't see anything illegal. Not yet, anyway.
There's nothing illegal about a former U.S. defence secretary and Gulf War hero accepting a plum post as CEO of a tainted firm, Halliburton Co., that was harshly criticized in the early 1990s for selling oil-drilling equipment to, of all places, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In 1995, the same year Cheney decided to try his hand at business with Halliburton after a lifelong career in politics, the company pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. ban on exports to Libya, having peddled to strongman Moammar Gadhafi six pulse nuclear generators that could be used to detonate nuclear weapons.
Nor was there anything illegal about Cheney's inability, as CEO, to stop the stain of questionable conduct at the Texas-based oil-services and construction company from spreading. Under Cheney, Halliburton continued to do business with countries the U.S. has described as "rogue nations," including Libya, Iran and Iraq.
And it overbilled the Pentagon on contracts over a four-year period ending in 1998 — charging $750,000 (U.S.) for electrical repairs at Fort Ord in California that actually cost about $125,000, for example — and ultimately reached a settlement with the Army in which it paid a $2 million fine.
Also in 1998, Halliburton, with the assistance of its auditor, Arthur Andersen, altered the company's accounting methods in a way that postponed losses from deadbeat clients, a device that artificially inflated Halliburton's profits by about $100 million and is now the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
While visiting friends in Aspen last week, I had a close encounter of the disgraced CEO kind: I spotted Kenny Lay, garbed in a spiffy jogging suit, getting in a little morning cardio not far from one of the two multimillion dollar vacation homes he keeps there. I guess that second-hand shop his wife opened to sell off some of their booty has been doing brisk business.
Truth be told, such scoundrel sightings are not as unusual as they should be. Despite the well-deserved roasting they’re currently getting over the media spit, many of the most notorious boardroom bad guys are continuing to live the high-life to which they became accustomed while plundering their companies' coffers.
Even Adelphia's John Rigas, who was forced to do the newly-trendy EPW (Executive Perp Walk) following his arrest, had enough spare change on hand to cover his $10 million bail -- and was back home in plenty of time for a nice family dinner with his indicted sons. You know what they say: the family that eats together, cheats together.
The victims of corporate pillage, meanwhile, are not having it so easy. Faced with scrambled nest eggs, sinking pension plans, shaky health coverage and a gloomy job market, record numbers of average Americans are taking it on the chin -- and in the wallet.
A key indicator of just how bad things have gotten for the little guy is the record number of Americans -- 1.5 million -- who filed for personal bankruptcy in the year ending March 31st. That's one out of every 69 U.S. households.
And since bankruptcies invariably lag behind current economic conditions -- they are the fiscal equivalent of those guys in the circus who follow after the elephants with a shovel, trying to deal with the mess the parade has left behind -- the odds are high that 2002 will be an even better year for bankruptcy attorneys. The first quarter of this year has already seen a record 369,237 filings.
And it's important to note that only 3% of these filings are by people who abuse the system by living extravagant lifestyles and then leaving their creditors holding the bag. The majority are actually low to middle class people who can't pay their bills because they've lost their jobs or been hit with crippling medical bills or been enticed into running up unmanageable credit card balances by easy-credit come-ons and here-today-gone-tomorrow "teaser" interest rates.
Nevertheless, Congress is on the verge of passing legislation that will make it harder for people to start afresh after they declare bankruptcy while, not coincidentally, adding billions of dollars to the bottom line of banks and credit card companies.
And why are our elected representatives so eager to add to the burden of consumers struggling to rebuild their lives amidst tough economic times? Perhaps it has something to do with the $27.5 million the finance and credit industries have contributed to political campaigns since 1990 -- including $3,518,966 so far in the 2002 election cycle.
Long before George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election, his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, was predicting to reporters that a Bush victory would produce a historic political realignment. This new Republican majority would resemble the one William McKinley built roughly one century ago. "I look at this time as 1896, the time where we saw the rise of William McKinley and his vice president, Teddy Roosevelt," Rove declared. "That was the last time we had a shift in political paradigm." Just as McKinley exploited America's shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy to build his majority, Bush would exploit America's "transformational" shift from an industrial to a postindustrial economy to build his. Bush would be the candidate and the president of the "new economy."
In Rove's mind, September 11 has reinforced the parallel: Bush's war on terrorism is the political equivalent of McKinley's Spanish-American War. As U.S. News & World Report columnist Michael Barone wrote in February, Rove "looks back to William McKinley, who was elected with 51 percent of the vote in 1896 but whose successful war and domestic policies built that up to a solid majority for years ahead." And the current financial scandals are merely a bump along that inevitable road. The scandals, Rove told NBC's Tim Russert on July 13, are a "business problem ... not a political scandal" and will not affect the underlying movement toward a new Republican majority.
Rove is half right. He's correct that we are in a transformational political era that displays marked similarities to 1896. And he is correct that this era will produce a majority party that dominates American politics for years to come. It just won't be the GOP. To the contrary, ever since the collapse of the Reagan conservative majority, which enjoyed its final triumph in November 1994, American politics has been turning slowly, but inexorably, toward a new Democratic majority. It was evident in Al Gore's popular-vote victory in 2000 (made more significant by the overhang of the Bill Clinton scandals and Gore's ineptitude as a campaigner) and in Bush's and the Republicans' sinking fortunes in the first two-thirds of 2001. It was obscured by the patriotic rush of support for Bush after September 11, which to some extent carried over to the Republican Party as a whole. But it has resurfaced in recent months as Americans have turned their attention back to the economy and domestic policy and away from the war on terrorism. Far from being a temporary distraction from a long-term shift toward the GOP, popular anger at the business scandals and the plummeting Dow heralds the resumption of a long-term shift toward the Democrats.
If this emerging Democratic majority has eluded many observers, perhaps it is because it differs substantially from the New Deal Democratic coalition that dominated American politics from 1932 to 1968. Today the Democrats are increasingly a party of professionals, women, and minorities rather than of blue-collar workers. They are based in postindustrial metropolitan areas rather than in the small-town South and the Rust Belt North. And they are a party of the progressive center rather than the Great Society left or the laissez-faire right. The new Democratic Party's true historical antecedent is, ironically, that same progressive Republican Party of the early twentieth century that Rove identifies with the Bush Republicans. It, and not Bush's GOP, will oversee America's postindustrial transition because it, and not Bush's GOP, embodies the demographic and cultural changes that this new America will bring.
I am like one of those monomaniacs who button-hole you at parties--ranting about bird-watching, say, and jabbing you in the chest. I can't stop writing about corporate malfeasance.
But I can add something new, and controversial: I know who's responsible for the fraudulent accounting that allowed WorldCom, Enron, Global Crossing, and others to deceive investors.
It was Newt Gingrich--Newt, and the ideologically over-heated, maniacally anti-government, anti-regulatory House Republicans who came to office in the fall of 1994.
Here's why. In three specific cases--tort reform, the accounting of options, and the separation of an accounting firm's audit and consulting services--House Republicans successfully sought to block regulation that would have made corporations transparent. Without Newt Gingrich, there would have been no crisis in business and accounting, at least in this form.
Washington, DC—Attorney General John Ashcroft misled Congress and the American public when he repeatedly stated that the Justice Department was legally prohibited from checking gun purchase records in connection with the post-9/11 terrorism investigation to determine if potential terrorists had purchased firearms, a new General Accounting Office (GAO) report reveals. The Justice Department's refusal to review the records received widespread press attention when it was revealed by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) in December 2001.
The report, Gun Control: Potential Effects of Next-Day Destruction of NICS Background Check Records, reveals for the first time the existence of an October 1, 2001 memorandum prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). [The VPC has obtained a full copy of the memo.] The memo concludes that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has the legal authority to check approved gun purchase records to ascertain whether prohibited persons bought guns in connection with the post-9/11 terrorism investigation. The memorandum flatly contradicts Attorney General Ashcroft's insistence that the Justice Department was legally prohibited from checking approved gun purchase records in connection with the terrorism investigation.
"The OLC memorandum is the smoking gun proving that Ashcroft grossly misled Congress and the American people," states Mathew Nosanchuk, VPC litigation director and legislative counsel. "Attorney General Ashcroft described the Department's legal authority with the same accuracy that WorldCom reported its profits."
Despite withering public and congressional criticism of the Justice Department's position, the Department never disclosed the existence of the OLC memorandum. The VPC has identified no less than eight separate statements to the news media and in congressional testimony by Justice Department officials asserting in unequivocal terms that the Department lacked the legal authority to do precisely what the October 2001 OLC memo said was legal.
The report, which examines the potential impact of the Ashcroft Justice Department's proposal to require the destruction of approved gun purchase records within 24 hours, concludes that the destruction of records would have dire consequences for public safety. Another key finding is that retained records were used to initiate firearms retrieval actions, which take place when a felon, fugitive, domestic abuser, or other prohibited person clears a background check and law enforcement subsequently finds out they are prohibited. In an astonishing 97 percent of retrieval cases that the GAO studied over a six-month period, law enforcement would not have been able to retrieve an illegally purchased firearm from a prohibited person under the shortened retention period proposed by the Attorney General.
Adds Nosanchuk, "The GAO report should put the final nail in the coffin of the Ashcroft Justice Department's records-destruction proposal. The report leaves no doubt that when it comes to enforcing the gun laws Attorney General Ashcroft is not guided by facts, law, or public safety, but by blind allegiance to the gun lobby."