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News * Analysis * Research * Action
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- AFIB No. 713, April 16, 2006 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
The excitement with which many American conservatives and neoconservatives greeted the prerogatives and accouterments of empire in the turn-of-the-century United States seemed to grow out of similar inclinations. However, despite a resurrected Anglophone lexicon of Eurasian pivotalism and advanced Great Game theory, the dross reality of Texas-style chicken-fried empire--George W. Bush imperator, sprawling Sun Belt megachurches instead of Gothic Westminster, Bible-thumping Virginia ayatollahs, Pentagon intellectuals-in-residence, doctrines of preemptive war, and Texas Ranger unilateralism--quickly sent serious historians reaching for less flattering analogies. ... One view offered by Pulitzer Prize-winning Japan specialist John W. Dower compared Bush-era America with the right-wing Japanese regime symbolized by Emperor Hirohito and World War II prime minister Hiked Tojo--a regime of triumphant nationalism that first took Manchuria and part of China, then seized Southeast Asia and attacked Pearl Harbor. It too, was terrorist suppressing, military in orientation, given to patriotic cultism, and caught up in the East Asian equivalent of Manifest Destiny. -- Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush [New York: Viking, 2004] pp. 325-326.
Contents: Number 713
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WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Thursday, 13 April 2006 -
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1. U.S. Threats Against Iran -- The Specter of Nuclear Barbarism.
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News & Analysis: Middle East: Iran
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/iran-a13.shtml
Statement of the WSWS Editorial Board
The revelation that the United States government has conducted advanced planning and preparation for a bombing campaign against Iran that includes the possible use of nuclear weapons represents the most serious threat posed in an increasingly unstable international situation.
US imperialism has embarked upon a trajectory that will, if not stopped, lead to a world historic catastrophe that will make World War II pale by comparison.
That such an act could even be contemplated by the Bush White House should stun and horrify all those who are concerned with the fate of the world and the future of humanity. Little more than six decades after US imperialism carried out the first atomic bombings against Hiroshima and Nagasaki--inflicting horrors that generations since have vowed must never be repeated--Washington is actively considering the use of such terrible weapons once again, this time without provocation or even credible proof of a future threat. Such an act would have the effect of criminalizing America as a country and a society.
These plans are not only real, but are already being acted upon, as was confirmed by Seymour Hersh in an article published in this week's New Yorker magazine as well as by the Washington Post. The preparations include the deployment of special operations troops inside Iran to spot targets and the staging of air exercises in the skies over the Arabian Sea, simulating strikes with nuclear tipped missiles against Iranian nuclear facilities.
The threat of war has only intensified since the publication of these articles, with the Iranian government's announcement Tuesday that it has succeeded in enriching uranium for its nuclear power program. Teheran once again insisted that this program is meant solely for peaceful uses, and experts confirmed that the development still left Iran far from being able to produce the weapons-grade enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon.
There is undoubtedly a strong element of recklessness in the actions taken by the government in Teheran, which is pursuing shortsighted political aims of its own in the nuclear confrontation, utilizing the nationalist resentment of a large section of the Iranian people towards US bullying as a means of diverting social and political tensions within Iran. The actions of the bourgeois factions that control the Iranian government have done nothing to defend the Iranian people from the threat of war. Indeed, they have played into the hands of the right-wing militaristic clique that controls the White House.
Domestic political calculations play a prominent role in the new US buildup to war. The collapse of popular support for Bush's policies--itself a manifestation of a deep-rooted social crisis in the US--has encouraged the administration to embark on another campaign of military aggression as a means of stampeding public opinion and suppressing opposition.
Predictably, the Bush administration responded to the latest announcement from Teheran by ratcheting up its bellicose threats. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the United Nations Security Council must take "strong steps" against Iran to "maintain the credibility of the international community." She added, "We can't let this continue."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described Iran as "a country... that supports terrorists." He continued: "It's a country that has indicated an interest in having weapons of mass destruction."
The administration is following a virtually identical script as that used in the run-up to the war on Iraq, with dark and unsubstantiated warnings of a supposedly imminent threat from "weapons of mass destruction" that can be stopped only through US-initiated "regime change." Once again, Washington is dismissing United Nations monitoring of the Iranian nuclear program as useless, and there can be little doubt that, given the almost certain refusal of Russia, China and perhaps other members of the Security Council to back military action, the Bush White House will again declare the UN irrelevant and embark on its own unilateral action.
Speaking before an audience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Bush repeated his bellicose 2002 denunciation of Iran as constituting--along with North Korea and the now US-occupied Iraq-part of an "axis of evil."
Bush declared that his strategy in relation to Iran was based upon a "doctrine of prevention." In the language of international statecraft, a preventive war is a war of aggression launched with the aim of preventing a perceived rival from gaining power or achieving a strategic advantage in the future. Under the precedent established by the Nuremberg trials of the German Nazi leadership, it constitutes a war crime.
The World Socialist Web Site has drawn attention to the stark parallels that exist between the policies pursued by the US administration and the methods employed by the leaders of Germany's Third Reich in the 1930s and 1940s. The utter contempt for international law, the launching of military aggression on the basis of bogus pretexts, the use of overwhelming force against relatively powerless victims are common to both regimes. Some of our readers may have dismissed such comparisons as exaggerated. With the latest revelations concerning US war plans against Iran, such complacency is no longer tenable.
There is a powerful element of recklessness and even insanity in the US threat to use nuclear weapons--for the first time anywhere on the planet since the end of the Second World War--for the supposed purpose of preventing Iran from gaining the technology that could be used to produce nuclear weapons.
Drive for oil and strategic advantage
Underlying this apparent madness, however, is a definite policy being pursued by US imperialism. As in Iraq, the primary motive behind the war threats against Iran is not weapons of mass destruction, but oil. The Iranian nuclear program is not, in reality, seen by Washington as a huge threat. As in Iraq, WMD serves as a casus belli for military action in pursuit of other objectives.
We do not support the Iranian government's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, on the principled grounds that they in no way advance the struggle of workers in Iran or elsewhere in the region. However, even if Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, it would have no major military significance, given the overwhelming force in the hands of the US.
Iran is, after all, surrounded by countries with such weapons--Russia, Israel, Pakistan, India--some of them having obtained these weapons with the open support of Washington. Had the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah not been overthrown, the nuclear program that it began, with the direct support of people like Cheney and Rumsfeld, would have undoubtedly long since produced bombs.
The American administration is merely exploiting popular ignorance of the situation and a compliant media to create a smokescreen behind which it is pursuing definite interests. Iran possesses the world's second-largest natural gas reserves and the fourth largest oil reserves, which are expected to produce for some decades after Saudi Arabia's oil runs dry. Moreover, Washington is confronted with the political fact that Iran stands to emerge as the principal beneficiary of the US intervention in Iraq, threatening to thwart the US attempt to establish unchallenged hegemony over the Persian Gulf and the region's strategic energy resources.
An even greater threat to US interests is seen in Iran's growing ties with Russia, China and Europe. Washington has no intention of allowing its major economic rivals to reap a strategic advantage from its decades-long policy of economic sanctions against Iran. In particular, the ties between Iran and Russia are seen as an impediment to the US drive to control the enormous untapped oil and gas reserves in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
In the final analysis, the threat of a war of aggression against Iran and the use of nuclear weapons express the historic crisis of American and world capitalism, and the accelerating disequilibrium within the entire capitalist nation-state system. This disequilibrium--and its malevolent product, the danger of a new world war--has been exacerbated both by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relative decline of US capitalism's position within the world economy.
Within America's ruling oligarchy, these parallel developments have fostered a consensus strategy of exploiting US imperialism's military superiority for the purpose of reorganizing the world economy in the interests of US-based banks and transnational corporations. This means the seizure of strategic positions and resources--as in the Persian Gulf--and the use of militarism and war to preclude the emergence of any rival, even of a regional character, that would challenge America's bid for global hegemony.
Bush's dismissal of reported plans for the use of nuclear weapons notwithstanding, there is ample evidence that within the US political establishment what was once unthinkable is now seen as a viable option. Published in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, which reflects the views of the US foreign policy establishment, is an article entitled "The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy." This article makes the case for a winnable nuclear war based on technological advances in US weapons systems and the deterioration of the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal.
"Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy," the article states. "It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike."
A nuclear strike against Iran, which borders Russia, would represent a first step in testing out this strategy. It would serve not merely to devastate Iran and inflict massive civilian casualties on that country, but to threaten Russia, China and any other power that might stand in the way of American imperialist aims.
The US is moving in a direction that leads inexorably toward a wider and catastrophic war that would claim the lives of hundreds of millions. As for the next act of US military aggression, the question is not if, but only when.
Iraq has already shown that within the existing US political structure there is no means to stop this threat. On the threat of a war against Iran, the Democratic Party has remained virtually silent.
In his New Yorker article, Hersh quoted one member of the House of Representatives as saying, "There's no pressure from Congress" against launching a new war.
There has been no call by any section of the Democratic Party leadership for public hearings to consider the political, military, legal and moral implications of reported plans for a war that could involve the use of nuclear weapons. There is no reason to believe that Congress and the Democrats will not be just as complicit in this new criminal act as they were in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Symptomatic of the reaction of the erstwhile liberals was the editorial appearing in Tuesday's edition of the New York Times under the complacent headline, "Military fantasies on Iran."
"Congress and the public need to force the kind of serious national debate that never really took place before the American invasion of Iraq," the Times declares, noting that the administration is making threats of "future American military action in language that sometimes recalls statements made before the invasion of Iraq."
The editorial's call for a "serious national debate" on a new war of aggression echoes precisely the language used by the Times in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. At that time it urged the administration to continue pursuing a pseudo-legal justification for the war, and advocated a "debate" to prepare the public for it. When, however, the White House ordered an invasion without UN sanction, the newspaper supported it anyway.
This latest editorial warns about the possible adverse implications of air strikes against Iran for US troops in Iraq, questions whether such strikes could really "destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities," and describes a war with Iran as "reckless folly." But the newspaper does not denounce the prospect of unprovoked air attacks and the possible use of nuclear weapons for what they are--war crimes. Clearly, the editors see such things as real possibilities.
Police state measures at home
The implications for American society itself of such an act of war are staggering. Such attacks would undoubtedly provoke retaliation, which would be seized upon by the administration in Washington to mount a dramatic intensification of the "war on terror," in the form of further military escalation abroad and the elimination of basic democratic rights at home.
The use of nuclear weapons by the US would provoke outrage and horror within the American population, sparking mass opposition. The government would respond with out-and-out repression. The prospect of the American people facing a fascist-military dictatorship as the byproduct of such a military attack is very real.
Posed in the new war threats against Iran is the basic alternative of the present historic epoch: socialism or barbarism. A fight against both this new threat and the ongoing war in Iraq can be waged only through the independent mobilization of American working people, together with workers and oppressed people all over the world. This must assume the form of a political struggle against the American financial oligarchy and both of its political parties.
The danger is that the capitalist crisis and the resulting recourse to militarism and war are developing very rapidly, but the political means to oppose them lag far behind. This danger has to be overcome through a conscious recognition of the contradiction between the enormity of the issues posed and the lack of any political alternative within the capitalist two-party system.
A new mass revolutionary movement must come forward which bases itself on the international unity of the working class in the struggle for socialism against the outmoded nation state system upon which imperialism rests. The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site are fighting to lay the political foundations for the emergence of such a movement.
Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
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2. Retired Colonel Claims U.S. Military Operations Are Already Underway in Iran.
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THE RAW STORY
Top Story
Saturday April 15, 2006
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Retired_colonel_claims_U.S._Military_operations_0415.html
Ron Brynaert
During an interview on CNN Friday night, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations are already 'underway' inside Iran, RAW STORY has found.
"I would say -- and this may shock some -- I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way," Col. Gardiner told CNN International anchor Jim Clancy (as noted by Digby at the blog Hullabaloo).
(Crooks and Liars has a video clip of the interview)
Gardiner, who designed a war game in November of 2004 for Atlantic Magazine ("Will Iran be next?") which simulated "preparations for a U.S. assault on Iran," also claimed that Aliasghar Soltaniyeh, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told him a few weeks ago that units who had attacked the Revolutionary Guard had been captured and confessed to working with Americans.
"The secretary point is, the Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year," Gardiner said. "I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, 'Hey, I hear you're accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units.'"
"He said, quite frankly, 'Yes, we know they are. We've captured some of the units, and they've confessed to working with the Americans,'" said the retired Air Force colonel.
Last Thursday, Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna reported (On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say) that, according to former and current intelligence officials, the Pentagon has been using a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) as an operational asset "to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack."
"[I]nstead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world -- including US civilian and military casualties -- Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike," Larisa reported.
"They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all," an intelligence source told Larisa.
Larisa reported that the MEK soldiers were told to "quit" their organization and were "renamed" in accordance with a plan conceived by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld so that they could be "converted" into a military special ops team.
According to a UN official close to the Security Council whom Larisa interviewed, the "newly renamed MEK soldiers" were being employed in the place of U.S. military advance teams to commit "acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population."
"We are already at war," the UN official told RAW STORY.
Copyright 2006 Raw Story Media Inc. All rights reserved.
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Intelligence experts warn that a proposal to merge
two Pentagon intelligence units could create an ominous new agency.
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NEWSWEEK
Web Exclusive
April 13, 2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12290187/site/newsweek/
By Mark Hosenball
A threatened turf grab by a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit is causing concern among both privacy experts and some of the Defense Department's own personnel.
An informal panel of senior Pentagon officials has been holding a series of unannounced private meetings during the past several weeks about how to proceed with a possible merger between the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a post-9/11 Pentagon creation that has been accused of domestic spying, and the Defense Security Service (DSS), a well-established older agency responsible for inspecting the security arrangements of defense contractors. DSS also maintains millions of confidential files containing the results of background investigations on defense contractors' employees.
The merger was initially suggested by a government commission set up to recommend military base closures last year. The commission said that the Pentagon could achieve some savings by relocating both CIFA, now housed in a building near Washington's Reagan National Airport and DSS, headquartered in nearby Alexandria, Va. The panel suggested moving the two agencies to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., where FBI training and laboratory facilities are also based.
The Base Realignment and Closure Commission also suggested that the Pentagon could "disestablish" CIFA and DSS and "consolidate their components into the Department of Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency."
Pentagon officials began discussions about merging the two after the commission issued its recommendations. An initial round of meetings about the merger, however, failed to come up with a plan. In the meantime, CIFA, a mysterious and secretive unit created in 2002 and charged with making Defense counterintelligence efforts more effective, became the subject of two public controversies.
The first erupted late in 2005 when documents surfaced indicating that CIFA (whose mission, according to its own officials, is supposed to be limited to analysis of counterintelligence data produced by other agencies) was discovered to have put together a database that included reports on anti-administration demonstrators, including peace activists protesting alleged "war profiteering." (NEWSWEEK's Michael Isikoff reported on this in depth earlier this year in this story.) CIFA and Pentagon officials subsequently assured Congress in writing that CIFA's activities would be more carefully focused in the future on genuine potential terror threats to defense facilities and personnel and that data collected on legitimate peaceful protestors would be destroyed.
Another controversy over CIFA took hold during the corruption scandal surrounding former San Diego congressman Randall (Duke) Cunningham, who before he resigned in disgrace earlier this year, had been a member of both the House Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee. Federal prosecutors alleged Cunningham used his congressional influence to direct CIFA to grant defense contracts to a company called MZM. Earlier this year, Cunningham and MZM's former president, Mitchell Wade, both pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. (The CIFA contracting probe has been covered in depth by investigative blogs Warandpiece.com and TPMMuckraker.com, as well as The Washington Post.) Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gregory Hicks said the CIFA contracting issue was the focus of a continuing "review by appropriate organizations within the Department [of Defense] and it would be premature to discuss any possible outcomes of that review."
As stories about the CIFA scandals circulated earlier this year, talk about merging the controversial unit with the less controversial DSS appeared to stall. But in the past few weeks, Pentagon officials said, such discussions have regained momentum, with an informal committee led by Robert Rogalski, a deputy to Stephen Cambone, the under secretary of Defense for intelligence, meeting regularly to discuss the agencies' consolidation.
But both Pentagon insiders and administration critics remain queasy about the merger idea. Some veteran officials recall that DSS itself became the subject of unwelcome public attention during the Clinton administration when political appointees in the Pentagon press office got hold of the DSS security file on Linda Tripp, the disgruntled bureaucrat who blew the whistle on President Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The file contained reports about an embarrassing incident from Tripp's past that were leaked to the media. The Pentagon Inspector General investigated, and security procedures surrounding the security files supposedly were improved.
Both Pentagon insiders and privacy experts fear that if CIFA merges with, or, in effect, takes over DSS, there would be a weakening of the safeguards that are supposed to regulate the release of the estimated 4.5 million security files on defense-contractor employees currently controlled by DSS. Those files are stored in a disused mine in western Pennsylvania.
According to one knowledgeable official, who asked for anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject, since its creation CIFA has on at least a handful of occasions requested access to the secret files stored in the mine without adequate explanation. As a result, the source said, DSS rejected the requests. A merger between CIFA and DSS would weaken those internal controls, the source said.
A CIFA merger with DSS could also alter the job responsibilities of the 280 inspectors employed by DSS to inspect security arrangements and procedures at defense contractorsâ· offices. According to the official source, these inspectors are responsible for making sure that contractors have taken proper measures to protect classified information. But if DSS merges with CIFA, there are fears that CIFA will pressure the DSS inspectors to expand their mandate to include inspecting contractors to see if they are protecting information that could be considered "sensitive but unclassified"--a term the Bush administration has tried to use to expand restrictions on access to government records. Security professionals regard that expansion as too elastic and open to misinterpretation. By acquiring control of the DSS inspector force, a merged CIFA-DSS would also have something that CIFA at the moment claims not to have, which is a force of field investigators. Today CIFA has to rely for raw field reports on other defense and military intelligence agencies, such as branches of Army, Navy and Air Force intelligence.
Defense analyst and washingtonpost.com blogger Bill Arkin, who first brought allegations about CIFA's domestic spying to light, says that in its efforts to trying eliminate waste and better coordinate intelligence activities, "we are creating an American military secret police that is clearly acquiring way too much information and way too much power."
But Cindy McGovern, a spokeswoman for DSS, maintains that even if CIFA does merge with DSS, officials will not be able to get access to secret security files unless they have a "legitimate need and we verify that ... People who have access to these records need to have a verified need, a legitimate bona fide need." Asked how many times CIFA requests for access to DSS files were turned down because of lack of adequate justification, McGovern said she did not have that information at hand. Hicks, the Pentagon spokesman, said there was "no clear answer" to this question, adding: "There are protocols in place to request information that CIFA follows, but there is no quick grasp as to how many times or instances that has been sought."
In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, Hicks added: "The Defense Security Service takes the release of personnel files and the information contained therein very seriously ... For the purposes of disclosure and disclosure accounting, the Department of Defense is considered a single agency. Notwithstanding, disclosures of DSS records within DOD are only authorized when a justifiable official need for the information exists. These same safeguards would apply in the event of a merger with CIFA."
Copyright 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
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4. Cheney Authorized Leak of CIA Report, Libby Says.
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NATIONAL JOURNAL
Online Exclusive
Friday, April 14, 2006
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0414nj3.htm
By Murray Waas, National Journal
Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report.
There is a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed the vice president was deeply involved in the effort to undermine her husband.
The March 2002 intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims, later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation, according to government records.
The debriefing report made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, then a covert CIA officer, or any role she may have played in her husband's selection by the CIA to go to Niger, according to two people who have read the report.
The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby divulged to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.
Both Libby and Cheney have repeatedly insisted that the vice president never encouraged, directed, or authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity. In a court filing on April 12, Libby's attorneys reiterated: "Consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson [Plame] by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone else."
But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA report on Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband.
A spokesman for the vice president declined to comment.
On April 5, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asserted in a court filing that Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in The New York Times criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq policies "was viewed in the office of Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."
Moreover, on July 12, 2003, the same day that Libby spoke to both Cooper and Miller, Libby and Cheney traveled aboard Air Force Two for the dedication of a new aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Va. During the flight either to or from Norfolk, Cheney, Libby, and Cathie Martin, then-assistant to the vice president for public affairs, discussed how they might rebut Wilson's charges and discredit him, according to federal court records, and interviews with people with first-hand knowledge of accounts that all three provided to federal investigators.
It has long been known that Cheney was among the first people in the government to tell Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. The federal indictment of Libby -- who has been charged with five counts of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators in the CIA leak case -- states: "On or about June 12, 2003, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA."
Fitzgerald asserted that just days before Libby divulged Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper on July 12, "Vice President Cheney, [Libby's] immediate superior, expressed concerns to [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was legitimate or whether it was a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife." Although contained in a public court filing, this second conversation between Cheney and Libby had gone unreported.
The new disclosure about the CIA report further raises questions about the vice president's role in directly authorizing the leak of classified information outside the formal declassification process. Last week it was reported that Libby also testified to the grand jury that Cheney told him that as part of the effort to rebut Wilson's criticism, President Bush had authorized the leaking of portions of a then-classified National Intelligence Estimate concerning purported attempts by Iraq to develop nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration has asserted that presidents have the constitutional right to declassify information. Although vice presidents haven't shared such authority, President Bush issued an executive order in March 2003 allowing Cheney to share such authority with him. According to Fitzgerald's April 5 filing, Libby has also testified that in July 2003, then-Counsel to the Vice President David Addington "opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amount to a declassification of the document."
Jeffrey Smith, a former general counsel for the CIA, said in an interview, however, that while there are executive orders that apparently allow the vice president "on his own to determine what to declassify and to whom," that authority should "not exempt him or anyone from exercising prudence or good judgment" in doing so. "You would want the president or the vice president to seek the views of the CIA or any other intelligence agencies... to make sure that there is no potential disclosing an intelligence source" or some other sensitive information.
Criticizing the decision to leak portions of the NIE, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said last week: "Leaking classified information to the press when you want to get your side out or silence your critics is not appropriate. If I had leaked the information, I'd be in jail. Why should the president be above the law? I am stunned."
In his grand jury testimony, according to Fitzgerald's filing, Libby portrayed himself as a reluctant subordinate in July 2003 who took orders from higher ups. Libby "testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with [Judith] Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE," said the special counsel's filing. "[Libby] testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized [Libby] to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE." It was during this time that Libby says he spoke to Addington on the matter.
Steve Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, who tracks government secrecy and classification issues, said that Libby "presents himself in this instance and others as being very scrupulous in adhering to the rules. He is not someone carried on by the rush of events. If you take his account before the grand jury on face value, he is cautious and deliberative in his behavior.
"That is almost the exact opposite as to how he behaves when it comes to disclosing Plame's identity," Aftergood said. "All of a sudden he doesn't play within the rules. He doesn't seek authorization. If you believe his account, he almost acts capriciously. You have to ask yourself why his behavior changes so dramatically, if he is telling the truth that this was not authorized and that he did not talk to higher-ups."
Libby has insisted that the vice president never authorized or told him to discuss Plame's identity. Although Libby discussed Plame with Miller and Cooper on July 12, 2003 -- the same day he says he was authorized by Cheney to leak portions of the NIE and the CIA report -- Libby insists the two actions are unrelated.
The new disclosure also raises the question whether President Bush or his aides knew that Cheney may have been deciding on his own to authorize the leaking of classified information. Senior government officials said that top Bush aides -- including then-deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett -- were not aware that Cheney had authorized the disclosure of the CIA report on Wilson's Niger mission. These officials raised the possibility that Bush himself was unaware at the time of Cheney's action.
Regarding the release of Plame's name and CIA employment, a senior administration official said that even if Cheney did not directly authorize Libby to leak the information to the press, the vice president might have set a climate in which his aides viewed it as routine to release classified information whenever it served their purposes.
The administration was interested in discrediting Wilson because the former ambassador asserted in his op-ed piece that he found no evidence in Niger to substantiate Bush administration claims that Saddam had attempted to purchase uranium from that country. Wilson alleged that the administration had misrepresented intelligence by making that claim in its case to go to war with Iraq. Six days after the Times published Wilson's piece, Libby leaked Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper.
Cheney and other Bush administration officials also believed that the CIA debriefing report might undermine Wilson's claims because it showed that Wilson's Niger probe was inconclusive on the uranium questions. Wilson was restricted on the persons he was able to interview in Niger, and he was denied some intelligence information before undertaking the trip.
In reportedly directing Libby to disclose portions of the March 2002 CIA report on Wilson's mission, Cheney apparently kept in the dark a number of administration officials who were working to declassify that very same document.
According to Fitzgerald's recent filing, Libby "testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice President to speak to the press in the place of Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President) regarding the NIE and Wilson. [Libby] was instructed... to [also] provide information contained in a document [he] understood to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson. During the conversations that followed on July 12 [Libby] discussed Ms. Wilson's [CIA] employment with both Matthew Cooper (for the first time) and Judith Miller (for the third time)."
The purported Wilson cable refers to the classified CIA debriefing of Wilson, according to sources who have read the document. Wilson never himself authored a cable on his Niger mission. Rather, the CIA Directorate of Operations, which sent Wilson to Niger in February 2002, produced a March 8, 2002 report based on Wilson's debriefing by intelligence officers. The report did not name Wilson, or even describe him as a former ambassador, but rather as a "contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record" to protect the-then covert nature of the trip.
The report was then "widely distributed in routine channels," according to a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq. It is unclear whether Cheney or his office received the report at the time it was distributed, or sometime later.
But two government officials with first-hand knowledge of events said during the summer of 2003, Libby and other White House officials sought any reports and other classified information regarding Wilson's Niger trip, and it was provided at that time.
A relatively small amount of information derived from the March 2002 report was revealed on July 11, 2003, when then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement regarding Wilson's trip to Niger in which he disclosed some aspects of the debriefing described in the document. But other portions remained highly classified at the time that Cheney directed Libby to leak portions of the report, two senior government officials said in interviews. These officials say the White House abandoned its attempt to declassify all or part of the March 2002 report when Tenet released his statement.
The federal indictment of Libby states: "On or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of Libby and another person in the Office of the Vice President. The faxed documents, which were marked as classified, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name. After receiving these documents, Libby and one or more persons in the Office of the Vice President handwrote the names 'Wilson' and 'Joe Wilson' on the documents."
It is unclear if one of the documents in question, or the one with Wilson's name handwritten on it by someone in the Vice President's office, was the March 2002 CIA report, but the fact that it did not mention Wilson by name suggests that it possibly was indeed the one with the handwriting.
Cheney, Libby, and others wanted to leak and declassify portions of the report because they believed that it would undercut the perception that Wilson's mission had disproved the allegations definitively that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger, two senior government officials said in interviews.
Among other things, Wilson had agreed only to interview former Nigerien officials, instead of current ones, so as not to step on the toes of the State Department or its then-ambassador to Niger, and he was disadvantaged in his inquiries, the two senior government officials said.
In an interview, Wilson said it was unnecessary to interview current Nigerien officials because the then-U.S. ambassador was conducting her own inquiry, and a decision was made for him to speak to former Nigerien officials while the ambassador made her inquiries of the current government.
"When I arrived in Niger, I spoke to the ambassador who thought that she had already debunked the allegations with current Niger officials," Wilson said. "We agreed then that I would speak to former government officials, who I knew better than she did because I worked with them while I was on the NSC staff at the White House, and thereafter. So that was the division of labor."
Wilson also said that the ambassador told her that a "four-star Marine general had also already talked to current officials, and that he too had concluded and reported that he believed there was nothing to the allegations."
National Journal correspondent Shane Harris also contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 by National Journal Group Inc.
*****
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_________________________________________________________________________
THE NATION
Feature Story
May 1, 2006 issue
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060501/phillips
by KEVIN PHILLIPS
Is theocracy in the United States (1) a legitimate fear, as some liberals argue; (2) a joke, given the nation's rising secular population and moral laxity; (3) a worrisome bias of major GOP constituencies and pressure groups; or (4) all of the above? The last, I would argue.
The characteristics are not inconsistent. No large nation--no leading world power--could ever resemble theocracies like John Calvin's Geneva, Puritan Massachusetts or early Mormon Utah. These were all small polities produced by unusual migrations of true believers.
As a great power, a large heterogeneous nation like the United States goes about as far in a theocratic direction as it can when it meets the unfortunate criteria on display in George W. Bush's Washington: an elected leader who believes himself in some way to be speaking for God; a ruling party that represents religious true believers and seeks to mobilize the nation's churches; the conviction of many rank-and-file Republicans that government should be guided by religion and religious leaders; and White House implementation of domestic and international political agendas that seem to be driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews.
As several chapters in American Theocracy make clear, this kind of religious excess has been a problem--indeed, a repeating Achilles' heel--of leading powers from late-stage Rome (historian Gibbon thus explained Roman decline and fall) to the militant Catholicism of Habsburg Spain and most recently the evangelical and moral imperialist Britain that saw 1914 as something of an Armageddon against the German Kaiser's Antichrist and wound up in 1917-18 crusading in the Middle East to liberate Jerusalem. But although this facet of historical decline constitutes a major caution regarding the future of the United States, this essay will concentrate on the domestic political aspects--the theocratic tendencies in the GOP and the notable "religification" of American politics across a spectrum from life and death to science and medicine to climate change and biblical creationism.
The Growth of Theocratic Sentiment
The essential US conditions for a theocratic trend fell into place in the late 1980s and '90s with the growing mass of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christianity, expressed politically by the religious right; and the rise of the Republican Party as a powerful vehicle for religious policy-making and eventual erosion of the accepted degree of separation between church and state. This transformation was most vivid at the state level, where fifteen to twenty state Republican parties came under the control of the religious right, and party conventions in the South and West endorsed so-called "Christian nation" platforms. As yet nationally uncatalogued--a shortfall that cries out for a serious research project--these platforms set out in varying degrees the radical political theology of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, ranging from the Bible as the basis for domestic law to an emphasis on religious schools and women's subordination to men. The 2004 platform of the Texas Republican Party is a case in point.
So are the political careers of Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft, two presidential aspirants whose careers were milestones in the theocratization of the Republican Party. Robertson's 1988 presidential bid brought huge numbers of Pentecostals into the Republican Party. Missouri Senator Ashcroft, who explored a presidential race in 1997-98, got much of his funding from Robertson and other evangelicals. Picked as Attorney General by Bush after the 2000 election, Ashcroft was the choice of the religious right. Earlier in his career Ashcroft had decried the wall between church and state as "a wall of religious oppression," and his memoir describes each of his many electoral defeats as a crucifixion and every important political victory as a resurrection, and recounts scenes in which he had friends and family anoint him with oil in the manner "of the ancient kings of Israel."
But the national political emergence of Bush was equally relevant. "Born again" during the mid-1980s, he came up during the same period and in the same intense mode. As Newsweek noted in 2003, "As a subaltern in his father's 1988 campaign, George Bush the Younger assembled his career through contacts with ministers of the then emerging evangelical movement in political life. Now they form the core of the Republican Party, which controls all of the capital for the first time in a half century. Bible-believing Christians are Bush's strongest backers."
More telling still, in the years since 1988 dozens of reports have quoted Bush the Younger telling ministers, supporters and foreign officials that God wanted him to run for President and that God speaks through him. In mid-2004 one Pennsylvania newspaper reported his telling a local Amish audience, "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." Reports that he told Middle Eastern leaders that God told him to invade Iraq have been denied by the White House, but this is clearly the sort of language he uses from time to time.
Since Robertson's run for the White House in 1988 and the victory that same year by Bush the Elder, the Republican Party has clearly moved closer to this constituency--and the process was speeded by Bill Clinton, whose politics and personal conduct offended the churchgoing South, in particular, enabling George W. Bush to pose as the standard-bearer of moral restoration in 2000. This metamorphosis gained further momentum after September 11, 2001, when the younger Bush responded to the terrorist attacks by declaring the start of a war between good and evil, speaking in a relentlessly religious idiom that several biblical scholars have described as double-coding--only mildly religious on the surface, but beneath that full of allusions to biblical passages and Christian hymns. They, too, suggested that Bush cast himself as a prophet of sorts--one who spoke for God.
The upshot of this escalating religiosity on the part of the Republican national leadership has been an escalating and parallel religiosity on the part of the Republican rank and file. Those voting Republican for President since 1988 have become increasingly religious in motivation. After 9/11 pro-Bush preachers described Bush as God's chosen man while hinting that Saddam Hussein, whose Iraq was the biblical "New Babylon" of fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye's eerie Left Behind series, was the Antichrist or at least the forerunner of the Evil One. In 2004 a further wave of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal turnout helped to cement the Republican transformation, even as moderate mainline Protestants shuddered and turned in a small Democratic trend between 2000 and 2004.
As early as 1988, Ohio academician John Green, a specialist in religious political behavior, had commented on how the growing correlation between frequent church attendance and Republican presidential voting was starting to raise a US parallel to the religious parties of Europe, most notably the Christian Democrats in Germany and Italy. By 2000-04, this correlation was much stronger, and political journalists began to speak of the "religious gap" that was replacing the "gender gap." The less discussed but even more significant aspect of this upheaval lay in a second set of polls that showed the increasingly theocratic inclinations of the Republican electorate (see chart).
These sentiments did not spring from nowhere. A majority of Americans take the Bible literally in many dimensions, including subjects ranging from the creation and Noah's Ark to the Book of Revelation. Within the ranks of Republican voters, the ratios are lopsided. For example, in 1999 a national poll by Newsweek revealed that 40 percent of American Christians believed in Armageddon and virtually as many thought the Antichrist was already alive. Because such believers were most numerous in the Republican electorate, I would calculate that roughly 55 percent of Bush 2004 voters believed in Armageddon--and it could be higher.
Such voters are especially prone to theocratic views, and foreign policy is by no means immune. In 2004 a survey by the Pew Center found that 55 percent of white evangelical Protestants consider "following religious principles" to be a top priority for foreign policy. Only a quarter of Catholics and mainline Protestants agreed, but given the makeup of the Bush coalition, I would guess that about half its voters would favor that position. This explains both why so many of Bush's core supporters cheered the first-stage US involvement in Iraq--and why Bush bungled things in the Holy Land so badly.
The Bible, Theology and American Politics
This is a bit of a chicken-versus-egg situation. Have the issues that matter most to Americans become more theological because religion has become more of a political force--or has the growth of issues with a religious dimension spurred the increasing religious divisions? Probably some of each, but the list is frighteningly long.
First and foremost are the issues involving birth, life, death, sex, health, medicine, marriage and the role of the family--high-octane subject matter since the 1970s. These are areas where perceived immorality most excites stick-to-Scripture advocates and the religious right. Closely related is the commitment by the Bush White House and the religious right to reduce the current separation between church and state.
Topics such as natural resources, climate, global warming, resource depletion, environmental regulation and petroleum geology mark out a third important arena. Organizations such as the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty have enlisted a fair amount of conservative religious and corporate support for preparing what amounts to a pro-business, pro-development explanation of Christian stewardship. The institute's director, Roman Catholic Father Robert Sirico, contends that left-tilting environmentalism is idolatrous in its substitution of nature for God, giving the Christian environmental movement a "perhaps-unconscious pagan nature."
Then there is the subject matter of business, economics and wealth, in which the tendency of the Christian right is to oppose regulation and justify wealth and relative laissez-faire, tipping its hat to the upper-income and corporate portions of the Republican coalition. Christian Reconstructionists go even further, abandoning most economic regulation in order to prepare the moral framework for God's return.
The last arena of theological influence, almost as important as sex, birth and mortality, involves American foreign policy, bringing us to the connections among the "war on terror," the rapture, the end times, Armageddon and the thinly disguised US crusade against radical Islam. Since Islam and Christianity began fighting in the seventh century, the Holy Land has often brought disillusionment: after the Crusades (all nine of them); after the fall of Constantinople in 1453; and five centuries later for the British, in particular, after World War I. Unmindful Western nations may still be playing out the Crusader hand. In the months before George W. Bush sent US troops into Iraq, his inspirational reading each morning was a book of sermons by a Scottish preacher accompanying troops about to march on Jerusalem in 1917.
Controversies over life and death--often pivoting on precise definitions of each--can only continue to burgeon. The arguable rights of women (or parents) are being displaced by the rights of embryos or by the prerogative of sperm and egg to join, decisions rooted largely in theology, not science. Perhaps the preoccupation involves maximizing the potential soul count for the hereafter, in the manner of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitors who ordered that heretics must die even if they repented, yet pursued repentance to save their souls first.
The theology of death is cloudier and also riskier politically. Although Bush took a bold and ultimately unpopular stand in the Terri Schiavo case, bending over backward to insist on continuing her life support, blocking death is not the theological equivalent of enabling birth. The Bible abounds with the killing of those already born, both by God and by lawful authorities. Bush himself, as governor of Texas, sent hundreds of prisoners to the electric chair.
The next throbbing cluster of issues involves church-state relations. The nonradical theocon wing of the GOP demands a more conservative judiciary and an expanded role for religion in education, social services and the constraining of what they consider to be immoral behavior--abortion, homosexuality, pornography and contraception--but avoids spelling out any grand revolutionary mandate. The Christian Reconstructionist movement, by contrast, proclaims ambitions that range from replacing public schools with religious education to imposing biblical law and limiting the franchise to male Christians.
The federal judiciary is the arena in which the battles most critical to incipient theocrats will be fought out judge by judge, court by court. Signs of their anxiety to control the federal judiciary burst into view in an early 2005 meeting at which conservative evangelical leaders were addressed by Tom DeLay and Senate majority leader Bill Frist. The focus of the strategy session was how to strip funding or jurisdiction from federal courts, or even eliminate them. James Dobson of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family named one target: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. "Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court," Dobson commented. "All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone." A spokesman for Frist said he did not agree with the idea of defunding courts or shutting them down, but DeLay, who had once said, "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts," declined to comment.
Beyond the judiciary, pressure for theological correctness became overt in federal government relationships with the varieties of science--from climatology to geology, and even entomology--that can conflict with the Book of Genesis. For the growing number of elected officials who uphold Genesis, the Almighty, not carbon dioxide, brings about climate change. The consequences here go far beyond the evolution-doubting books being sold by the National Park Service or inconvenient information about climate change or caribou habitats in oil lands being deleted from government websites. In Texas, where the cotton industry is plagued by a moth in which an immunity to pesticides has evolved, a frustrated entomologist commented, "It's amazing that cotton growers are having to deal with these pests in the very states whose legislatures are so hostile to the theory of evolution. Because it is evolution they are struggling against in their fields every season." Meanwhile, the bigger message--depressingly reminiscent of our imperial predecessors--is that science in the United States is already in trouble. Irving Weissman, a stem-cell researcher, told the Boston Globe, "You are going to start picking up Nature and Science and all the great [research] journals, and you are going to read about how South Koreans and Chinese and Singaporeans are making advances that the rest of us can't even study."
Part of the explanation involves the religious right's larger view of economic matters and dismantling of government. In the radical Texas Republican platform adopted in 2004, the Lone Star GOP was not content to call for abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department; it also demanded abolition of the Internal Revenue Service and elimination of the income tax, the inheritance tax, the gift tax, the capital-gains levy, the corporate income tax, the payroll tax and state and local property taxes.
Evangelicals, Southern Baptist Convention adherents and others oppose government social and economic programs because they interfere with a person's individual responsibility for his or her salvation. Others were diverted by rapture and end-times possibilities. "Overall, this kind of teaching has certainly stifled social consciousness among evangelicals," said Tim Weber, professor of church history at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. "If Jesus may come at any minute, then long-term social reform or renewal are beside the point. It has a bad effect there."
These are divisive issues, and they divide both parties, but survey data suggest that they divide the Republicans somewhat more than the Democrats. True, liberals were front and center in trying to shrink the role of religion in the public square, and they have paid the price. However, the more important confrontation is now within the GOP, as the essential tensions shift from the unpopular derogation of religion so prevalent decades ago to the theologization and theocratic excesses of the conservative countertide.
Three prominent Republicans have staked out the boundaries. Former Republican Senator John Danforth of Missouri complained in 2005 that "the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in a womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law." Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee suggested that George W. Bush's "I carry the word of God" posture ought to be a 2004 election issue. And Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut regretted that "the Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy."
Unhappily, that's the direction in which it's been trending.
Kevin Phillips has been an author and commentator for four decades.
Copyright 2006 The Nation
*****
THE MOSCOW TIMES
Global Eye
April 14, 2006
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/167359/
By Chris Floyd
Of all the war crimes that have flowed from the originating crime of President George W. Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant was the destruction of Fallujah in November 2004. Now, as ignominious defeat looms for Bush's Babylonian folly, some of the key players in fomenting the war are urging that the "Fallujah Option" be applied to an even bigger target: Baghdad.
What these influential warmongers openly call for is the "pacification" of Baghdad: a brutal firestorm by U.S. forces, ravaging both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in a "horrific" operation that will inevitably lead to "skyrocketing body counts," as warhawk Reuel Marc Gerecht cheerfully wrote last week in the ever-bloodthirsty editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal. Gerecht's war whoop quickly ricocheted around the right-wing media echo chamber and gave public voice to the private counsels emanating from a group whose members now comprise the leadership of the U.S. government: The Project for the New American Century.
As oft noted here, PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Zalmay Khalilzad and the now-indicted Lewis Libby, among others. In September 2000, they publicly called for sending U.S. forces into Iraq -- even if Saddam Hussein was already gone -- as well as planting new bases in Central Asia, putting weapons in space, building new nukes and funding a vast militarization of American society. Being such savvy inside players and all, they recognized that this lunatic program would not be accepted by the American people -- unless, of course, the nation was struck by a "catalyzing event" like "a new Pearl Harbor." Who says dreams don't come true?
Gerecht, an ex-CIA man, is a senior fellow at PNAC. He was one of the many munchkins who laid the groundwork for the mass deception that led to the war by constantly undermining any CIA report that failed to conform to the warmongers' highly profitable fantasies of America's imminent destruction by the broken, toothless regime of Saddam Hussein. The intelligence services' many caveats about this bogus threat were placed directly on Bush's desk, as the National Journal reports, but the P-Nackers in the White House tossed them aside. They dreamed of war, and they got it.
But the natives failed to play their part in the imperial masque macabre. As noted here last week, they have churlishly failed to show proper appreciation for being slaughtered, looted, tortured and controlled. Even the Shiites, hailed by the Bushists just a few weeks ago as salt-of-the-earth lovers of moderate democracy, are now denounced as hate-filled sectarians, even worse than the Sunni insurgents -- who are suddenly being courted by Bush's man in Baghdad, the P-Nacker Khalilzad, the BBC reports.
Not that the Shiite death squads -- backed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government -- have been all bad, mind you. Sure, they've been kidnapping Sunni civilians, drilling holes in their skulls, beheading them and then dumping the corpses on city streets or burying them in schoolyards. But all of this been "healthy," says Gerecht, because it has made the Sunnis and Kurds fear "Shiite power." Or something. To be honest, Gerecht's column is filled with so many canards, delusions and logical inconsistencies that it often leaves the plane of rational discourse altogether. But its import is clear: By daring to defy Washington's edicts, the Shiites have gotten too big for their britches and must be brought to heel, along with the rest of the scum who are making the Dear Leader look bad back home.
You think that's a joke, but it's not. One of Gerecht's main reasons for "pacifying" Baghdad in a hydra-headed war on every ethnic faction is because "the U.S. media will never write many optimistic stories about Iraq if journalists fear going outside" the city's fortified Green Zone. There you have the Bushist vision in a nutshell. The war is not actually happening in the real world, where real people are dying by the tens of thousands; no, it's really being fought on the monitors of Fox News, CNN and NBC, in the flimsy pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, and on the overheated airwaves of talk radio. Baghdad must be pacified -- like Grozny, like Guernica -- so that Americans can see a few more peppy stories on the tube on their way to the ballgame or the mall.
The fate of Fallujah provides a template of the grim fate awaiting Baghdad if Gerecht and the government P-Nackers have their way. Fallujah was encircled in a ring of iron; water, electricity and food supplies were cut off, a flagrant war crime. The city was bombed for eight weeks, then hit by an all-out ground attack with both conventional and chemical weapons -- white phosphorous and napalm -- that killed thousands of civilians and left more than 200,000 homeless. Among the first targets were Fallujah's hospitals and clinics, another flagrant war crime. Some were destroyed, killing doctors and patients alike, others seized and closed, all in order to prevent any stories about civilian casualties from reaching the Western media, the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told The New York Times. Once again, manufactured image trumped bloodstained reality.
Perhaps this cup will pass from Baghdad. Perhaps Bush and his P-Nackers will instead move forward with their frenzied plans for a nuclear strike on Iran, as The New Yorker reported last week. But Gerecht's article is a perfect snapshot of the depraved minds that now rule America. Somewhere, somehow -- and soon -- another city is going to die.
Copyright 2006 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
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The preemptive "defensive war" doctrine and the "war on terrorism" against Al Qaeda constitute essential building blocks of the Pentagon's propaganda campaign. ... To justify military actions, the National Security Strategy (NSS) requires the fabrication of a terrorist threat,--i.e., "an Outside Enemy." It also needs to link these terrorist threats to "State sponsorship" by so-called "rogue states." ... The objective is to present "preemptive military action"--meaning war as an act of "self-defense" against two categories of enemies, "rogue States" and "Islamic terrorists," both of which are said to possess weapons of mass destruction. ... This "anticipatory action" under the NSS includes the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are now classified as "in theater weapons" to be used in conventional war theaters alongside conventional weapons. ... In the wake of September 11, 2001, the nuclear option, namely the preemptive use of nuclear weapons is intimately related to the "war on terrorism." -- Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War On Terrorism" [Pincourt, QC: Global Research, 2005] pp. 267-268.
Contents: Number 712
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The War On Iran.
_________________________________________________________________________
ASIA TIMES ONLINE
Middle East
April 13, 2006
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD13Ak01.html
By Pepe Escobar
"All options, including the military one, are on the table." - US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
"I announce, officially, that dear Iran has joined the nuclear countries of the world." - President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, saying on Tuesday that Iran had successfully enriched uranium for the first time, a landmark step toward its quest to develop nuclear fuel.
The ominous signs are "on the table" for all to see. The Pentagon has its Long War, the rebranded "war on terror" that Vice President Dick Cheney swears will last for decades, a replay of the war between Eastasia and Oceania in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
President George W Bush issued a "wild speculation" non-denial denial that the US was planning strategic nuclear strikes against Iran, but Iran considerably upped the ante on Tuesday with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's announcement that Iran had enriched uranium for the first time. In a nationally televised speech, Ahmadinejad urged the West to stop pressuring Tehran, saying that Iran was seeking to develop nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes.
Iranian nuclear officials say the country has produced 100 tonnes of uranium gas, an essential ingredient for enrichment. The United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activity by April 28. Iran has rejected the demand.
From the point of view of the Pentagon's Long War, a strategic nuclear attack on Iran can be spun to oblivion as the crucial next stage of the war on "radical Islam". From the view of a factionalized European Union, this is (very) bad business; the Europeans prefer to concentrate on the factionalized nature of the Iranian government itself and push for a nuclear deal.
Iranian government officials claim that the Germans and the Italians - big trade partners with extensive economic interests in the country - are pushing for a deal more than the French and much more than the British. As much as the EU cannot possibly agree on a unified foreign policy, Europeans in fact reject both sanctions and/or a possible US military strike.
Hitler meets Iraqification
The demonization of Ahmadinejad in some quarters in the US as the "new Adolf Hitler" is beside the point. As Asia Times Online has shown (The ultimate martyr, April 12), all crucial decisions in Iran remain with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad has been downgraded by the leader to play a "domestic" president's role.
His vocal, nationalist defense of Iran's civilian nuclear program follows the leader's script, and is met with approval because virtually all Iranians regard the issue as a matter of national right and pride.
According to a late-January poll by the Iranian Students Polling Agency, 85.4% of Iranians are in favor of continuing with the nuclear program. More than 80% feel the country needs nuclear energy. And about 70% regard the European negotiation side as "illogical".
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, issued a fatwa in the 1980s declaring that production, possession and use of nuclear weapons was against Islam. Russia, China and India still take him at his word.
For the Iranian government, the nuclear program is a powerful symbol of independence with regard to what is perceived as Anglo-Saxon colonialism. The view is shared by Iranians of all social classes and education backgrounds. Moreover, Iran is pushing for a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, stating that every country has the right to a peaceful nuclear program. What Iran officially wants is a nuclear-free zone in West Asia, and that includes Israel, the sixth nuclear power in the world with more than 200 nuclear warheads.
But the issue itself may be beside the point. What's really at stake is that while the occupation of Iraq might be downgraded, the "invisible" US military bases will consolidate the US presence in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region. Ahmadinejad in this scenario is the perfect Hitler; US troops - and bases - must remain on the ground to prevent Iran from going nuclear and to prevent Iran's influence in Iraq's "Shi'iteistan".
Meanwhile, Washington's avowed initiative of financing groups to provoke "regime change" from within is widely viewed in Tehran as a joke. What Iranians - both in government and in the bazaars and tea shops - take very seriously is the US lending a hand to Israel squeezing Palestine even more - a development also spun in Washington as part of the war on "radical Islam". The Quadrennial Defense Review - the Pentagon's strategic document calling for the Long War against terror - can be easily interpreted as a call for a war on Islam.
The first steps towards war
A war on Iran could involve many military scenarios. Iranian officials are aware that the US may go for an initial "shock and awe". But they play down the possibility of a street revolution toppling the nationalist theocracy, as Washington hopes; the regime controls everything, and in the event of a foreign attack, virtually the whole population would rally behind the government. They also exclude attacking Israel, because they know Israel may respond with a nuclear strike. But they do not rule out the possibility of the US dropping nuclear bombs on Iran.
Iran's current demonology instrumentalizes the UN Security Council, in the name of "peace" and nuclear non-proliferation. But Iranian officials keep complaining that the country's official nuclear proposal was never examined in full by the EU. It included a provision that Iran would continue to negotiate with the EU-3 (Germany, France and Britain) on uranium enrichment for two more years, and would resume enrichment only if negotiations failed. The next step in the Security Council may be the imposition of "intelligent sanctions" - an oxymoron. In practice, that would mean a partial trade embargo on Iran, excluding food and of course oil and gas. Oil and gas are once again the heart of the matter. A recent energy conference in Tehran (In the heart of Pipelineistan, March 17) made it clear that Iran is a crucial node of a proposed Asian energy-security grid, which includes China, Russia and India. This grid would bypass Western - especially US - control of energy supplies and fuel in a real 21st-century industrial revolution all across Asia. It's no wonder that many analysts view the war on Iran in essence as a war of the United States against Asia.
The ultimate prize
As was the case with Iraq, Iran is being sold as a threat to world peace (it may be pursuing nuclear weapons). Bush - at least vocally - hopes diplomacy will prevail. But the decision to attack may have been made already, just as it was taken regarding Iraq way before March 2003.
Iraq had signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but was accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). UN weapons inspectors were expelled on the eve of the 2003 war. Iran has also signed the NPT, but is being accused of pursuing a nuclear-weapons program. UN weapons inspectors still work in the country on and off - but for how long?
In 1995, Iraq told UN inspectors, via Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law Hussein Kamel, about a secret nuclear-weapons program, which had just been scrapped. This did not prevent the regime from being accused of concealing WMD just before the March 2003 invasion. In 2002, Iran told the UN that it had a secret nuclear program - not a weapons program. This did not prevent Iran from being accused four years later by the EU-3 of "concealment and deception".
In November 2002, the US threatened to strike Iraq unless it cooperated with UN inspectors. The US invaded Iraq anyway, without Security Council backing. In January, the EU-3 called for Iran to be referred to the Security Council. Sanctions may be applied. If no diplomatic solution is found, the Pentagon may find the opening it seeks for the next stage of its Long War.
Iran is not to be easily intimidated. Few in Tehran take the threat of oil sanctions seriously. Iranians know that even if the US decided to bomb the country's nuclear sites, they are maintained by Russian advisers and technicians; that would mean in effect a declaration of war against Russia. Russia recently closed a US$700 million deal selling 30 Tor M-1 surface-to-air missiles to Iran - very effective against aircraft, cruise missiles and guided bombs. The missiles will be deployed at the nuclear-research center at Isfahan and the Bushehr reactor, which is being built by Russia.
Iranians know Shi'ites in the south and in Baghdad would turn extreme heat on the occupation forces in Iraq. Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, on an official visit to Iran, according to his spokesman, said that "if any Islamic state, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is attacked, the Mehdi Army would fight inside and outside Iraq".
Iranians also know they can bypass any trade sanctions by trading even more with China. Anyway, Mohammed-Nabi Rudaki, deputy chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, which sits at the majlis (parliament), has already threatened that "if Europe does not act wisely with the Iranian nuclear portfolio and it is referred to the UN Security Council and economic or air travel restrictions are imposed unjustly, we have the power to halt oil supply to the last drop from the shores of the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz".
Up to 30% of the world's oil production passes through the strait. Were Iran to block it, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait would not be able to export their oil. The Pentagon may eventually get its Long War - but not exactly on its terms.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
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- Monday, 10 April 2006 -
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News & Analysis: Middle East: Iran
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/iran-a10.shtml
By Bill Van Auken
The Bush administration is in the advanced stages of the planning and preparation for a full-scale air war against Iran, including the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons against selected targets, according to reports published this week.
"Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups," investigative reporter Seymour Hersh writes in the new edition of the New Yorker magazine, dated April 17.
The New Yorker report was largely corroborated by an article in Sunday's Washington Post, which reported, "Although a land invasion is not contemplated, military officers are weighing alternatives ranging from a limited air strike aimed at key nuclear sites, to a more extensive bombing campaign designed to destroy an array of military and political targets."
The Post added that the administration is considering an "ambitious campaign of bombing and cruise missiles leveling targets well beyond nuclear facilities, such as Iranian intelligence headquarters, the Revolutionary Guard and some in the government." It also said that war planners are "contemplating tactical nuclear devices."
According to Hersh's account, while the ostensible purpose of this military planning is the destruction of Iran's capacity to produce nuclear weapons, "President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change."
Officials told Hersh that the Pentagon's plans call for bombing "many hundreds" of targets inside Iran, the majority of them having no connection with the country's nuclear program.
According to an unnamed former Pentagon official quoted in Hersh's report, the Bush administration's strategy is based on the premise that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." The former official told Hersh, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?'"
That top US officials may have convinced themselves that a US bombing campaign, which would undoubtedly cost thousands of lives and leave a substantial section of Iran's infrastructure in ruins, would trigger a pro-American uprising is indeed mind-boggling.
Even more ominous, however, is the fact that they are drawing up plans for the first use of nuclear weapons in war--this time wholly unprovoked--since the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The Pentagon, Hersh reports, presented the White House this winter with contingency plans calling "for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran."
The article further quotes a former defense official as revealing that US warplanes operating off of aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea have been "flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions--rapid ascending maneuvers known as 'over the shoulder' bombing--since last summer... within range of Iranian coastal radars."
A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that if the US wants to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, which are widely dispersed and, in some cases, housed in fortified underground bunkers, it would almost have to use nuclear weapons. "Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap," the official said. "'Decisive' is the key word of the Air Force's planning. It's a tough decision. But we made it in Japan."
"We're talking about mushroom clouds"
Spelling out the implications of nuclear strikes, the official added, according to Hersh: "'...we're talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don't have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out'--remove the nuclear option--'they're shouted down.'"
Hersh reports that the threatened use of nuclear weapons against Iran is strongly opposed by senior officers in the military's uniformed command, some of whom have threatened to resign over the issue. This was echoed by the Washington Post, which wrote: "Many military officers and specialists, however, view the saber rattling with alarm. A strike at Iran, they warn, would at best just delay its nuclear program by a few years but could inflame international opinion against the United States, particularly in the Muslim world and especially within Iran, while making US troops in Iraq targets for retaliation."
There has been speculation that the appearance of reports such as these is part of the Bush administration's strategy for intimidating the Iranian regime into giving up its nuclear program without a fight. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that senior officers in the US military command may want the discussion of nuclear strikes against Iran made public as a means of heading off such a move before the Bush administration can carry it out.
The Iranian government dismissed the war threats as an intimidation tactic. "We regard that (planning for air strikes) as psychological warfare stemming from America's anger and helplessness," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told the media. At the same time, he charged Washington with seeking to provoke a crisis. "They do not want us to reach an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Europeans," he said.
Washington's principal ally in the war against Iraq, Britain, likewise rejected the idea that there was any real threat of a US war against Iran. "...there is no smoking gun, there is no 'casus belli,'" said British Foreign Minister Jack Straw. "We can't be certain about Iran's intentions and that is therefore not a basis for which anybody would gain authority to go to military action."
However, according to the Washington Post, the Blair government "has launched its own planning for a potential US strike, studying security arrangements for its embassy and consular offices, for British citizens and corporate interests in Iran and for ships in the region and British troops in Iraq."
Many observers point to the irrationality of launching a war against Iran under conditions where the US military is already stretched to the breaking point in neighboring Iraq, and where air strikes across the border would undoubtedly trigger upheavals within the Iraqi Shiite population, the majority of the country, making the US occupation even more untenable.
Such reassurances, however, rely on the unwarranted assumption that rational considerations play the preponderant role in the formulation of the Bush administration's policies. A criminal and reckless military adventure is a very real possibility, arising to no small degree from the growing domestic political crisis of the Bush administration. The Bush White House has seen its popular support slump to historic lows, and it is threatened by a series of ticking political time bombs: the unraveling situation in Iraq, economic instability, criminal investigations into corruption and abuse of power.
A decision to embark on another war as a means of diverting and intimidating public opinion is a very real possibility. An attack on Iran would also likely give the Bush White House a real "war on terror" to facilitate its assault on democratic rights at home and justify even greater US military adventures in the future against such potential targets as China and Russia. Most people familiar with political relations in the region predict that a US strike on Iran would provoke a very real campaign of retaliation by well-organized and well-equipped forces against US targets both outside and within the United States.
There has been virtually no protest from the Democratic Party leadership against the threat of nuclear attacks on Iran. Many party leaders, including Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, have made repeated attacks on Bush from the right on the Iranian question, accusing the administration of failing to prosecute a sufficiently hard-line policy against Teheran.
According to Hersh's account, at least one leading congressional Democrat has been included in the administration's discussions with members of Congress on war plans for Iran. Quoting an unnamed member of the House of Representatives, Hersh reported that questions from those briefed in Congress were limited to the military's technical capacity for carrying out an effective strike. "There's no pressure from Congress" against launching a military attack on Iran, the House member said.
The general consensus for military aggression against Iran within the American ruling establishment is driven by the same interests that provided bipartisan support for the war on Iraq. As a "high ranking diplomat" told Hersh, "The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years."
Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
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INTER PRESS SERVICE
Politics: U.S.
April 11, 2006
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32862
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 11 (IPS) -- One month after the publication by two of the most influential international relations scholars in the United States of a highly controversial essay on the so-called "Israel Lobby", their thesis that the lobby exercises "unmatched power" in Washington is being tested by rapidly rising tensions with Iran.
Far more visibly than any other domestic constituency, the Israel Lobby, defined by Profs. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, as "the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction", has pushed the government -- both Congress and the George W. Bush administration -- toward confrontation with Tehran.
Leading the charge has been a familiar group of neo-conservatives, such as former Defence Policy Board (DPB) chairman Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey, who championed the war in Iraq but who have increasingly focused their energies over the past year on building support for "regime change" and, if necessary, military action against Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear programme.
(On Tuesday, Iran announced that it had successfully enriched uranium, which can be used for both nuclear weapons and nuclear power reactors, in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution ordering an end to all enrichment activities by Apr. 28).
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier Israel lobby group whose annual convention last year featured a giant, multi-media exhibit on how Iran is "pursuing nuclear weapons and how it can be stopped", has also been pushing hard on Capitol Hill for legislation to promote regime change. Despite White House objections, the group has sought tough sanctions against foreign companies with investments in Iran.
"This bill has been pushed almost entirely by AIPAC," noted Trita Parsi, a Middle East expert at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) here. "I don't see any other major groups behind this legislation that have had any impact on it."
Similarly, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), whose leadership is considered slightly less hawkish than AIPAC, has taken out full-page ads in influential U.S. newspapers since last week entitled "A Nuclear Iran Threatens All" depicting radiating circles on an Iran-centred map to show where its missiles could strike.
"Suppose Iran one day gives nuclear devices to terrorists," the ad reads. "Could anyone anywhere feel safe?"
In their 81-page essay, entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" and condensed in a shorter essay published last month in the London Review of Books, Mearsheimer and Walt, pillars of the "realist" school of international relations, argue that Washington's Middle East policy is too closely tied to Israel to serve its own national interests in the region, particularly in the so-called "war on terror".
They believe that the power of the Israel Lobby -- derived, among other things, from its ability to marshal financial support for Democratic as well as Republican politicians, its grassroots organisational prowess, and its ability to stigmatise critics as "anti-Semitic" (a tactic already deployed against the authors) -- is largely responsible.
"No lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially the same," the authors argued, noting that the lobby, while predominantly Jewish, also includes prominent Christian evangelicals and non-Jewish neo-conservatives, such as Woolsey and former Education Secretary William Bennett.
In the administration's decision to invade Iraq, pressure from Israel and the lobby played a "critical" -- although not exclusive -- role, according to the paper, which cited pre-war public prodding by Israeli leaders and by leaders of many major Jewish organisations as evidence, although it notes that most U.S. Jews were sceptical and have since turned strongly against the war.
Neo-conservatives closely associated with the right-wing views of Israel's Likud party - both in and outside the administration -- played a particularly important role in gaining support for "regime change" in Iraq stretching back to the mid-1990s, according to the paper.
But even during the run-up to the Iraq war, Israeli leaders, notably then-Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, depicted Iran as the greater threat, a theme that was picked up by the Lobby, led by the neo-conservatives, immediately after Baghdad's fall.
"The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East... But the next great battle -- not, we hope a military one -- will be for Iran," wrote the Weekly Standard's neo-conservative editor, William Kristol, in early May 2003.
Shortly thereafter, neo-conservatives and other hawks led by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney succeeded in cutting off ongoing U.S.-Iranian talks on Afghanistan and Iran and killing an offer by Tehran to engage in a broader negotiation on all outstanding differences.
What makes the growing confrontation with Iran so remarkable is that the Israel Lobby appears to be the only major organised force here that is actively pushing it toward crisis.
Mainstream analysts, including arms control hawks who favour strong pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme, have spoken out against military action as far too risky and almost certainly counter-productive. Even analysts at the right-wing Heritage Foundation have voiced doubts. "It just doesn't make any sense from a geopolitical standpoint," said Heritage's James Carifano, noting Iran's capacity to retaliate against the U.S. in Iraq.
The Iranian exile community, which has generally favoured more pressure on Tehran, similarly appears divided about the consequences of a military attack, with some leaders fearing that it would strengthen the regime, Walt told IPS. He added that "it's hard for me to believe that (U.S.) oil companies would be in favour of a military option (because they) don't like violence or events that create political risk or uncertainty."
While insisting that military action against Iran's nuclear programme should only be a last resort, the Israel Lobby, on the other hand, appears united in the conviction that an attack will indeed be necessary if diplomatic efforts, economic pressure, and covert action fail.
"(Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) sees the West as wimps and thinks we will eventually cave in," Patrick Clawson, deputy director of research of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank established by AIPAC, told New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "We have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates."
Hersh summarised Clawson's bottom line as "Iran had no choice other than to accede to America's demands or face a military attack."
That was much the same message delivered by Perle himself and rapturously received by the attendees at AIPAC's 2006 convention here last month. The convention, at which the keynoter, none other than the administration's ultimate hawk, Vice Pres. Cheney, vowed "meaningful consequences" if Iran did not freeze its nuclear programme, drew several hundred Democratic and Republican lawmakers in what could only be described as a show of raw political power.
"I don't think there's another group in the country that has two successive conferences in which the centrepiece was beating the drums for war in Iran," noted one senior official with another major pro-Israel organisation, who asked not to be identified. "They are the main force behind this."
Copyright 2006 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.
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COUNTERPUNCH
'Tells the Facts and Names the Names'
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
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- Tuesday, April 11, 2006 -
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4. Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455:
A Glimpse into the Mind of a Terrorist.
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By JOSE PERTIERRA
http://www.counterpunch.org/pertierra04112006.html
Last week in Miami, Luis Posada Carriles's accomplice in the downing of the Cuban passenger plane that was blown out of the sky with 73 innocent people on board on October 6, 1976 was interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao of Channel 41 in Miami. His name is Orlando Bosch.
I quote verbatim excerpts from the television interview
Juan Manuel Cao: Did you down that plane in 1976?
Orlando Bosch: If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself . . . . and if I tell you that did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.
Juan Manuel Cao: In that action 76 persons were killed (the correct figure is 73, including a pregnant passenger)?
Orlando Bosch: No chico, in a war such as us cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant, you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.
Juan Manuel Cao: But don't you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?
Orlando Bosch: . . . Who was on board that plane? Four members of the Communist Party, five north Koreans, five Guyanese, (JP: there were really 11 Guyanese passengers) . . . concho chico, four member of the Communist Party chico!!! Who was there? Our enemies . . .
Juan Manuel Cao: And the fencers? The young people on board?
Orlando Bosch: I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant etc etc. She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that every one who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.
Juan Manuel Cao: If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't you think it difficult . . . ?
Orlando Bosch: No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba.
Bosch's answers to those five questions give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorist that the United States government harbors and protects in Miami: terrorists that for the last forty-seven years have waged a bloody and ruthless war against the Cuban people.
What happened to Cubana de AviaciÃ"n 455 almost thirty years ago is no secret. We need simply examine the CIA's own declassified cables. At the time, this was the worst act of aviation terrorism in history, and the first time that a civilian airliner was blown up by terrorists.
More than three months before CU-455 was blown out of the sky over Barbados on that sunny Wednesday afternoon of October 6, 1976, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informed Washington that a Cuban exile extremist group planned to place a bomb on a Cubana de Aviacion flight.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that a CIA source had overheard Luis Posada Carriles say less than a month prior to the bombing that "we are going hit a Cuban airliner."
Neither Washington nor the CIA alerted Cuban authorities to the terrorist threat against their planes.
The bombing was carried out by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Final preparations for the terrorist act began with the arrival of Orlando Bosch in Caracas on September 8, 1976. Bosch is a Cuban-born terrorist who was the acknowledged leader of an organization called Coordinacion de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas (CORU).
According to the FBI, CORU was an umbrella group of Cuban exile organizations that was formed to "plan, finance and carry out terrorist operations and attacks against Cuba." (FBI cable dated June 29, 1976).
When Bosch arrived in Caracas on the 8th of September of that year, Posada Carriles was there to greet and make available to him his right hand man: trusted confidante Hernan Ricardo, who has admitted under oath to be a CIA operative. In 1976, Ricardo was also an employee of Luis Posada Carriles at a private intelligence firm that the latter founded and ran in Caracas: Investigaciones Comerciales e Industriales (ICI). Ricardo says that Posada Carriles introduced him to Orlando Bosch at the ICI offices in Caracas.
To help him with the special operation that Bosch and Posada planned for him, Ricardo in turn recruited Freddy Lugo. A Venezuelan citizen, Lugo has also admitted under oath to be a CIA operative.
We know that the foursome of Posada, Bosch, Ricardo and Lugo met together at least four times to plan the downing of the plan.
At the meetings, the terrorists agreed upon the coded words they would use to describe the success of the operation. The plane would be known as the "bus", and the passengers would be called the "dogs." "The rest is up to you," Posada told Lugo and Ricardo.
The C-4 explosives were carried on board the aircraft by Ricardo and Lugo in a tube of toothpaste and in a camera.
Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo boarded the CU-455 flight in Trinidad at 12:15 PM bound for Barbados. Ricardo traveled under a forged passport using a false name. They sat in the middle of the plane. During the flight, they placed the C-4 explosives in two separate places in the plane: the rear bathroom and underneath the seat belonging to Freddy Lugo. Lugo and Ricardo got off the plane during its brief stopover at Seawell Airport in Barbados. They later admitted under oath that they had each received special training in explosives from the CIA.
Aboard CU-455 were 73 persons. 57 of the passengers were Cubans. 11 of them were Guyanese medical students in Cuba. The remaining five passengers were Koreans. Those on board averaged only 30 years of age.
Traveling with the group were 24 members of the Cuban fencing team, many of them teen-agers, fresh from gold medal victories at the Youth Fencing Championship in Caracas. They proudly wore their gold medals on board the aircraft. One of the young fencers, Nancy Uranga, was only twenty-three years old and pregnant. She wasn't supposed to be on board. That spot on the fencing team belonged to a pretty little twelve-year old fencer, unusually tall for her age, named Maria Gonzalez. Maria had planned to participate in the Caribbean Games, and was on the tarmac at Havana's Jose Marti Airport ready to board the plane that would take the team to the Games, when one of her coaches gave her the bad news that international amateur rules prevented twelve year olds from competing. Maria reportedly was devastated, and she went to her home in Havana's neighborhood called La Vibora, and cried for three days, refusing to watch the games on Cuban television because it hurt her so much not to be there. Nancy Uranga was summoned to the Airport and took Maria's place on the ill fated trip to the Caribbean Games.
The fencing team was a roaring success at the Games. They won gold, silver and bronze medals. They were to return home on October 6, 1976. The athletes proudly wore their medals dangling over their clothes, as they boarded the aircraft. Cubana de AviaciÃ"n 455 stopped first in Trinidad at 11:03 AM, and then touched down again in Barbados at 12:25 PM.
Nine minutes after take-off from Barbados, the bombs exploded and the plane caught fire. The passengers on board then lived the most horrifying ten minutes of their lives, as the plane turned into a scorching coffin.
The cockpit voice-recorder captured the last terrifying moments of the flight at 1:24 PM: "Seawell! Seawell! CU-455 Seawell. . . ! We have an explosion on board. . . . . We have a fire on board."
The pilot, Wilfredo Perez (affectionately known as "Felo"), asked Seawell Airport for permission to return and land, but the plane and its passengers were already doomed.
As the plane approached the shore, it was rapidly losing altitude and control. "Hit the water, Felo, Hit the Water," said the co-pilot.
Rather than crashing into the white sands of the beach called Paradise and killing the beachgoers, Felo courageously banked the plane toward the water where it crashed in a ball of fire one mile north of Deep Water Bay.
Pieces of bodies were slowly recovered from the sea. Most of them too grotesquely disfigured to be identified by their family members. There were no survivors.
After deplaning, Lugo and Ricardo hurriedly left Seawell Airport in Barbados and checked into a local hotel under assumed names.
From the hotel, Hernan Ricardo called his bosses in Venezuela: Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Unable to find Posada at his desk, he left a message with Posada's secretary. He then called Caracas again and asked a mutual friend, Marinés Vega, to deliver the following message to Posada:
"We are in a desperate situation, the bus was fully loaded with dogs . . . they should send someone I can recognize . . . I will be waiting in a soda fountain near the embassy just in case something happens and I need to ask for asylum there."
Ricardo was able to communicate with Bosch who allegedly said to him: "my friend we have a problem here in Caracas. An aircraft is never blown up in midair . . .", implying that the plan had been for the bomb to explode while the plane was on the ground before take-off.
Sensing how hot things were getting for them in Barbados, Lugo and Ricardo boarded a return flight to Trinidad on British West Indies Airlines that very evening. On the flight, Ricardo said to his buddy: "Damn it, Lugo, I'm desperate and feel like crying. I had never killed anyone before."
In Port of Spain, the terrorists checked into the Holiday Inn with false identities and made more desperate calls to Caracas, trying to reach Posada Carriles.
Their nervous demeanor at the airport and at the hotel, as well as their conversations in the taxis they took in Barbados and later in Trinidad, led the police to zero in on them as the primary suspects in the bombing. They were arrested and interrogated by detectives from the Trinidad police department.
Both confessed to Commissioner Dannis Ramdwar who took their written depositions. Lugo and Ricardo each admitted to being CIA operatives. Ricardo described in detail how he could detonate C-4 explosives and pointed to a pencil on Ramdwar´s desk that was similar to the timer he used to detonate the explosive on board the plane. Ricardo also told the police in Trinidad that he worked for Luis Posada Carriles. He told Ramdwar that the head of CORU was Orlando Bosch and drew for the police an organizational chart of CORU and said that the terrorist organization was also known as Condor.
Upon hearing of the confessions of Lugo and Ricardo, the police in Caracas moved in and arrested Posada and Bosch. They also obtained a warrant and searched the offices of Posada Carriles where they confiscated weapons and sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment. The police also found a schedule of Cubana flights in Posada's Caracas office.
In one of the very first reports on the October 6, 1976, downing of Cubana Flight 455, the FBI Venezuelan bureau cables that a confidential source has identified Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch as responsible for the bombing. "The source all but admitted that Posada and Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airline," according to the report.
During the television interview three days ago in Miami, Bosch talked about an agreement reached between terrorists in Santo Domingo in June of 1976.
The FBI itself tells us about that secret agreement. According to an FBI report, Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and other terrorists formed an umbrella terrorist organization called CORU at a meeting in the Dominican Republic. The FBI report details how at that meeting in the Dominican Republic, CORU planned a series of bombing attacks against Cuban entities, as well as the murder of Communists in the Western Hemisphere. On page 6, the report relates in great detail how Orlando Bosch was met in Caracas on September 8, 1976, by Luis Posada and other anti-Castro exiles and a deal was struck as to what kind of activities he could organize on Venezuelan soil.
After the arrests of Lugo, Ricardo, Bosch and Posada, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana and Cuba ceded jurisdiction over the downing of the passenger plane to Venezuela, and all four were prosecuted in Caracas for murder.
Prosecuting terrorists has a price. The Judge who issued the initial arrest warrants for the four terrorists, Delia Estava Moreno, received several death threats and attempts at blackmail as reprisals for her conduct. As a result, she was forced to recuse herself. The presiding judge of the military court, Retired General Elio Garcia Barrios, also received death threats and in 1983, his son and chauffeur were murdered during a Mafia-style hit intended to even the score and intimidate those who dared legally prosecute the murderers.
Eventually, Lugo and Ricardo were convicted, but before the Court could reach a verdict regarding his case, Luis Posada Carriles escaped from the prison at San Juan de los Moros in the State of Guarico where he had been confined after two unsuccessful escape attempts.
Posada escaped with the help of at least $50,000 from a right wing extremist group in Miami.
Fifteen days after his escape from jail, Posada was smuggled out of Venezuela bound for Aruba on a shrimp boat. He spent a week in Aruba and was then flown by private plane to Costa Rica and then San Salvador. He immediately started working alongside Felix Rodriguez, a high ranking CIA member, at the Ilopango Airbase. Posada's job in San Salvador was to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with arms and supplies obtained through the sale of narcotics. This Operation became a scandal known as Iran-Contra. Felix Rodriguez was the CIA's point man in Central America for the Iran-Contra scandal, hired for the job by an old friend from the CIA Donald Gregg who was Vice-President Bush's National Security Advisor. According to Anna Louise Bardach who interviewed Posada while she was a reporter for the New York Times, "Posada noted with a certain pride that George Bush had headed the CIA from November 1975 to January 1977"--a period that covered some of the most violent crimes committed by Cuban exiles and Operation Condor: including the Letelier assassination and the downing of the passenger plane.
Posada spent the next several years in Central America working for the security services of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But in the early 90s he turned his attention once again to Cuba which was struggle to jump start a tourist industry in order to offset a dramatic economic downturn after the demise of the Soviet Bloc. From his lair in Central America he recruited Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries to smuggle explosives to Cuba, and in 1997 bombs began to blow in the finest hotels and restaurants of Havana-killing an Italian tourist named Fabio DiCelmo and wounding several others.
Cuba learned that the campaign of terror against its tourist industry was being financed by Miami exile organizations and orchestrated by Luis Posada Carriles in Central America. Faced with the FBI's refusal to reign in the terrorists in Miami, Cuba sent some very brave men to penetrate these terrorist organizations and gather information with the purpose of asking President Clinton to intervene and order the Feds to arrest the terrorists.
After gathering enough evidence to determine the source of the terror campaign, on May 1, 1998 Fidel Castro sent a personal emissary to Washington with a handwritten message to President Clinton: the emissary was none other than Nobel Prize for Literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez. President Clinton was out of town for several days in California, and after waiting him out at the Hotel Washington for several days, Garcia Marquez finally met with White House Chief of Staff Mac McLarty and gave him the letter. Garcia Marquez recounts McLarty's reaction to the letter and quotes McLarty as saying to him: "We have enemies in common: terrorists".
In the wake of the Garcia Marquez visit, the U.S. sent an FBI team to Cuba a month later to discuss collaboration with Cuba on a "War On Terror". Cuba handed over to the FBI tapes of 14 telephone conversations of Luis Posada Carriles with details on the series of bombs that had exploded in Cuba in the 90s. Cuba also gave the FBI Luis Posada Carriles' addresses in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama. Also tapes of conversations with Central American detainees in Cuba who admitted Posada is their boss. All together, Cuba turned over 60 sets of documents with information about 40 terrorists based in Miami, including their addresses, and evidence of their ties to terror.
Cuba then waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Cuba waited for the FBI to start arresting terrorists. But instead the FBI arrested on September 12, 1998, the men now known as the Cuban Five: the men who had come to Miami to penetrate the Miami exile terrorist organizations.
According to El Nuevo Herald, the first persons that were notified of the arrests of the Cuban Five were Cong. Lincoln Diaz Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami.
The Five were charged with 62 counts of violating federal laws. Their arrests illustrates Washington's double standard when it comes to its so-called war on terror: a war that the U.S. government chooses to fight a la carte, distinguishing between terrorists it likes and those it doesn't.
The Five were placed in solitary confinement for the next 17 months, until the start of their trial. They were convicted of several charges and received the maximum sentences possible. Gerardo Hernandez received a double life sentence and Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labanino on life sentence each. Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, got 19 and 15 years respectively.
They were sent to maximum security prisons across this country, and two of them have been denied visits from their wives for the past seven years in violation of U.S. laws and international law.
On August 9, 2005, a 3 judge panel of the Court of Appeals published a 93 page decision that reversed the convictions and sentences, ruling that the Five did not receive a fair trial in Miami and acknowledging evidence produced by the defense at trial that revealed terrorist actions by Miami exile groups against Cuba. The Court of Appeals even cited in a footnote the role of Luis Posada Carriles and correctly referred to him as a terrorist. The tree-judge panel found that "a perfect storm" of prejudice prevented the Cuban Five from having a fair trial in Miami.
The Bush Administration, through its Solicitor General, made a formal appeal to all 12 judges of the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, and out of apparent deference to the unusual request from the Department of Justice the Court of Appeals nullified the three-judge panel decision and agreed to hear the case en banc.
Attorney Leonard Weinglass who represents Antonio Guerrero said recently: "The Five were not prosecuted because they violated American law, but because their work exposed those who were. By infiltrating the terror network that is allowed to exist in Florida they demonstrated the hypocrisy of America's claimed opposition to terrorism."
As the Five were being prosecuted in Miami, the campaign of terror against Cuba continued. In November 2000, Posada Carriles was arrested in Panama along with three accomplices before they could carry out the plan to blow up an auditorium filled with students at the University of Panama where Cuban President Fidel Castro was to speak. The four were convicted by a Panamanian Court, but on August 26, 2004, in one of her last acts as President, Mireya Moscoso pardons them in violation of Panamanian law. The three accomplices, all Cuban-Americans, go to Miami to be welcomed home. Posada Carriles who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident, goes underground in Honduras and begins to scheme a plan to go to the home of terrorism: Miami.
In March of 2005 he shows up in Miami and applies for asylum. For weeks he lives openly in that city, even going shopping at the mall. Before he is detained by anyone, Venezuela requests his preventive detention for the purpose of extraditing him to Venezuela to stand trial for 73 counts of first degree murder relating to the downing of the passenger plane in 1976.
Rather than exercising an extradition detainer on him, the Department of Homeland Security instead did nothing. It wasn't until Posada called a bizarre press conference in Miami on May 16, 2005 where he openly boasted that the DHS wasn't even looking for him, that government officials felt they had no choice but to detain him. He was detained immediately after the press conference and gingerly escorted in a golf cart with no handcuffs to a waiting helicopter.
Posada was charged with illegal entry into the United States and thus began the legal charade designed to divert attention from the extradition request that remains unattended by the Department of Justice.
As relief from deportation, Posada first claimed he was still a permanent resident of the U.S. In the alternative, he asked for asylum and protection from removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Although it is true that he had been a permanent resident in the 60s, Posada long ago abandoned that status. After all, he has spent the last almost forty years living and killing abroad. Because of his long curriculum of terror, as a matter of law he does not qualify for asylum. That left him only with the possibility CAT relief.
It was then that we witnessed one of the sorriest episodes of legal maneuvering ever by Department of Homeland Security attorneys. Those handling the immigration matter of Posada Carriles at the Immigration Court in El Paso, Texas set the table for Posada to win CAT relief.
Posada called only one witness in his immigration case. A so-called expert on Venezuela who testified that in his expert opinion, Posada would be tortured if returned to Caracas. The witness testified that Venezuela tortures prisoners and that Posada would be surely tortured if sent back. That witness was none other than JoaquÃn Chaffardet, friend, business partner and lawyer of Luis Posada Carriles in Venezuela. Chaffardet had also been Posada´s boss at the DISIP in the early 1970s, a man that Posada has been close to for the past forty years. The DHS never even cross-examined this guy! Its attorney never even raised the possibility that Chaffardet was not an objective, disinterested witness-but instead was biased in favor of his friend, partner and client. Other than Chaffardet's questionable testimony, no other evidence in support of the theory that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela was presented.
DHS's tactic worked. Immigration Judge William Abbott credited Chaffardet's testimony as credible and found a "clear probability" that Posada would be tortured if returned to Venezuela. Judge Abbott ordered his removal from the United States, but not to Venezuela or Cuba because he would be tortured there. DHS declined to appeal the decision, and began a quest to find a third country that would take him. A few months earlier the DHS had appealed an Immigration Judge´s decision to grant CAT relief to two Venezuelan officers. In that appeal, the same DHS attorney who litigated the Posada case argued that there is no evidence that Venezuela tortures prisoners. Now in the Posada case, DHS took a decidedly different position. Why? You figure it out.
More than six months have passed since the immigration decision. Since it has thus far refused to slap an extradition detainer on him (as Venezuela has requested numerous times), the U.S. government has to either release Posada or declare him a threat to the community. In a letter to Posada dated March 22, 2006, DHS decided to continue to detain him on immigration charges. The letter told Posada that he has a "long history of criminal activity and violence in which innocent civilians were killed." His release from detention concludes ICE in its letter to Posada, "would pose a danger to both the community and the national security of the United States."
In support of its interim decision to continue to detain him, ICE cites Venezuela's pending extradition case against Posada and the fact that Posada fled from a Venezuelan prison while his trial for the downing of a passenger plane in 1976 was pending. "Your past also includes your escape from a Venezuelan prison which was accomplished after several attempts utilizing threats of force, explosives and subterfuge," says ICE in its Decision.
ICE goes on to cite Posada's own statements to link him to the "planning and coordination of a series of hotel and restaurant bombings that occurred in Cuba . . . in 1997." These bombings resulted in the murder of an Italian tourist and the wounding of several others. ICE also cites Posada's conviction in Panama for "crimes against national security," in reference to his attempt to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2000 with C- 4 explosives as President Castro was to speak to an auditorium with full of students.
So finally the US government recognizes that Posada is a bad guy! Without actually saying the dreaded word, the letter from ICE virtually calls him a terrorist. The law forced the United States to make this admission. Although it's clear that Washington doesn't want to extradite him to Venezuela, it is not prudent to release him. The only way that he can continue to be detained without an extradition detainer is with a government finding that he is a danger to the community.
But the extradition case is not going to go away. It's there, very much alive. Unless Posada has a heart attack and dies in prison, the law is eventually going to force the US government to proceed with the extradition case. A lot of people think that Judge Abbott's finding that Posada may not be deported to Venezuela is a ruling on Venezuela's extradition request. That is not the case. Extradition rulings trump immigration decisions.
Moreover, even if Secretary of State Rice decides in her discretion not to extradite Posada, the treaties and conventions signed by the US government in the past obligate this country to prosecute him for downing of the plane in the United States-where noooooooooooo prisoners are ever tortured: right?
Listen to the language of the Montreal Convention on Civil Aviation.
Article 7
The Contracting State in the territory of which the alleged offender is found shall, if it does not extradite him, be obliged, without exception whatsoever and whether or not the offence was committed in its territory, to submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution. Those authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State.
The Montreal Convention's Article 7 gives the US no discretion. It must either extradite or prosecute Posada Carriles for 73 counts of first degree murder in relation to the downing of the airliner. Deporting him to a third country is not an option and neither is releasing him to the community.
The story of CU-455 cries out to be told to the American people. If the American people hear the true story of how those 73 people were murdered in cold blood by terrorists whom the United States prefers to shelter rather than prosecute, they'll not stand for it.
Few people in this country know that Orlando Bosch was released from immigration custody by President George Bush Sr. in 1990, and that he now sits on the dais whenever President Bush Jr. delivers speeches in Miami. Bosch's lawyer, who happens to be Fulgencio Batista's grandson, was appointed four years ago by Jeb Bush to Florida's Supreme Court.
The fate of the Cuban Five is in the hands of 12 judges, but the judges must be put under the microscope of public opinion. Despite your best efforts, Americans still don´t know who the Five are or why they went to Miami. It's important that you continue to make sure that their story is told: that the U.S. prosecutes and condemns anti-terrorists, yet shelters and protects terrorists.
It's up to the American people to put a stop to impunity, and it's up to you to make sure the American people learn the truth about these cases and this government.
It's up to you to bring the truth to the American people about Cuba and about Venezuela.
The US government conducts a hypocritical war on terror, while it shelters and rewards the terrorists it prefers. Washington lectures other governments about human rights, while it blockades Cuba, using hunger as a foreign policy tool, in order to try and starve 11 million people into submission.
We cannot sit idly by while the U.S. government blockades and invades countries that have never attacked it, tortures prisoners and takes their pictures as if the victims were curiosity pieces rather than human beings, as it spies on Americans without a warrant, and tramples the civil rights of its citizens with a law whose authors dared title "Patriotic."
In 2002, Washington helped organize a failed coup against a democratically elected government in Venezuela in order to prop up a typical puppet government in Caracas. Thanks to the Venezuelan people, the coup failed and President Chavez was restored to office.
The blockade against Cuba didn't work and neither did the coup in Venezuela. Cuba and Venezuela are now stronger than ever.
The Bush Administration's policies at home and abroad have woken a sleeping and silent giant throughout this continent. And, yes: America is one continent and not two as some U.S. textbooks would have us believe.
We are in the midst of a new social movement that is shaking this continent to its core. On the 30th anniversary of Operation Condor's bloodiest year, we are witness that the people Latin America have taken back their countries from the grip of terror. Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia have governments that respond to the needs of their own people, rather than to the interests of US corporations. Other countries in will soon join them. This is an election year in America. The people of Latin America are taking back their governments.
It's high time that the people of the United States did the same.
Jose Pertierra is an attorney, practicing in Washington, D.C. He represents the Venezuelan government in the case of Luis Posada Carriles.
Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. CounterPunch is a project of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity.
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RIGOROUS INTUITION
"What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Them"
April 10, 2006
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/
By Jeff Wells
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died - Leonard Cohen
A quick review of the teaser of the nuking of Iran before they roll out the feature presentation.
First of all, the target isn't Iran, though of course it will be Iranians who may die by the hundreds of thousands should nuclear weapons be greenlighted for Washington's latest McGuffin. But Iran is no more the target than Japan was for Fat Man and Little Boy.
The principal target demographic for the atrocity still on storyboards is Russia and China. The nuking of Iran will be a blockbuster remaking of the demonstration events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which announced to the Soviet Union and all comers that the American Aeon had arrived. At least that's how it will appear, and how it's being sold in the boardroom of America Inc. But the large stakeholders who are short-selling their shares in the Homeland, who supply sewage to its army for drinking water and whose loyalties are neither to that nor any other nation-state, may intend, rather, a windfall gotterdammerung that's more Springtime for Hitler.
The Council on Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs primes the pump with triumphalist glitz in its March/April issue, confidently anticipating the coming end of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction with the proclamation, "It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike."
Ring them bells: some would have it that the new balance of terror has been wargamed, and the balance has so tipped that the United States can terrorize the world at will. On the irradiated soil of the simulated East, everything's coming up roses:
To determine how much the nuclear balance has changed since the Cold War, we ran a computer model of a hypothetical U.S. attack on Russia's nuclear arsenal using the standard unclassified formulas that defense analysts have used for decades. We assigned U.S. nuclear warheads to Russian targets on the basis of two criteria: the most accurate weapons were aimed at the hardest targets, and the fastest-arriving weapons at the Russian forces that can react most quickly. Because Russia is essentially blind to a submarine attack from the Pacific and would have great difficulty detecting the approach of low-flying stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles, we targeted each Russian weapon system with at least one submarine-based warhead or cruise missile. An attack organized in this manner would give Russian leaders virtually no warning.
This simple plan is presumably less effective than Washington's actual strategy, which the U.S. government has spent decades perfecting. The real U.S. war plan may call for first targeting Russia's command and control, sabotaging Russia's radar stations, or taking other preemptive measures - all of which would make the actual U.S. force far more lethal than our model assumes.
According to our model, such a simplified surprise attack would have a good chance of destroying every Russian bomber base, submarine, and ICBM. This finding is not based on best-case assumptions or an unrealistic scenario in which U.S. missiles perform perfectly and the warheads hit their targets without fail. Rather, we used standard assumptions to estimate the likely inaccuracy and unreliability of U.S. weapons systems. Moreover, our model indicates that all of Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal would still be destroyed even if U.S. weapons were 20 percent less accurate than we assumed, or if U.S. weapons were only 70 percent reliable, or if Russian ICBM silos were 50 percent "harder" (more reinforced, and hence more resistant to attack) than we expected. (Of course, the unclassified estimates we used may understate the capabilities of U.S. forces, making an attack even more likely to succeed.)
There's a secondary audience for this, and it's us. Going nuclear has long been unthinkable, and the Dark Powers consider the problem to be the prohibition of our ethical tripwire, not the weapons themselves. So leaks are leaked and denied and the media assets go to work. It's how the unthinkable enters thought.
And one more thought. If Iran is nuked, it doesn't mean we're suddenly in an End Game scenario. We're already in it. Except for the shadows beneath the mushroom cloud apocalypse doesn't come in an instant. The breaking of souls is incremental. We are meant to acclimatize ourselves to Hell, to raise our children in it, and teach them to expect worse to come.
J Robert Oppenheimer became Death, the destroyer of worlds. Since George W Bush's religious alter is Christian rather than Hindu, perhaps what he's becoming is contained in this packet of Revelation 9:11 Truth: "They had as king over them the Angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon." And in English, Destroyer.
We're ready for your close-up, Dr Oppenheimer.
Jeff Wells is a cautiously pessimistic Canadian author and satirist. His first novel, Anxious Gravity, is published by Dundurn Press.
Copyright 2006 Jeff Wells
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ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
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- AFIB No. 711, April 9, 2006 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
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ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
Today's world is far more sophisticated. CIA torture manuals developed under successive US Administrations are more advanced. The anti-terrorist legislation (PATRIOT Acts I and II) and law enforcement apparatus, although built on the same logic, are better equipped to deal with large population groups. ... In contrast to the Spanish Inquisition, the contemporary inquisitorial system has almost unlimited capabilities of spying on and categorizing individuals. ... People are tagged and labeled, their emails, telephones and faxes are monitored. Detailed personal data is entered into giant Big Brother data banks. Once this cataloging has been completed, people are locked into watertight compartments. Their profiles are established and entered into a computerized system. Law enforcement is systematic. The witch-hunt is not only directed against presumed "terrorists" through ethnic profiling, etc. The various human rights, affirmative action, antiwar cohorts are themselves the object of the anti-terrorist legislation and so on. Converting or recanting by antiwar heretics is not permitted. ... Meanwhile, war criminals occupy positions of authority. -- Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War On Terrorism" [Pincourt, QC: Global Research, 2005] pp. 217-218.
Contents: Number 711
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WIRED NEWS
Technology
April 07, 2006
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70619-0.html
By Ryan Singel
AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.
Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.
On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.
According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.
"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."
Klein's job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.
"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.
The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400, "known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets," according to Klein's statement.
Narus, whose website touts AT&T as a client, sells software to help internet service providers and telecoms monitor and manage their networks, look for intrusions, and wiretap phone calls as mandated by federal law.
Klein said he came forward because he does not believe that the Bush administration is being truthful about the extent of its extrajudicial monitoring of Americans' communications.
"Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA," Klein's wrote. "And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals' phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens."
After asking for a preview copy of the documents last week, the government did not object to the EFF filing the paper under seal, although the EFF asked the court Wednesday to make the documents public.
One of the documents is titled "Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco," and is dated 2002. The others are allegedly a design document instructing technicians how to wire up the taps, and a document that describes the equipment installed in the secret room.
In a letter to the EFF, AT&T objected to the filing of the documents in any manner, saying that they contain sensitive trade secrets and could be "could be used to 'hack' into the AT&T network, compromising its integrity."
According to court rules, AT&T has until Thursday to file a motion to keep the documents sealed. The government could also step in to the case and request that the documents not be made public, or even that the entire lawsuit be barred under the seldom-used State Secrets Privilege.
AT&T spokesman Walt Sharp declined to comment on the allegations, citing a company policy of not commenting on litigation or matters of national security, but did say that "AT&T follows all laws following requests for assistance from government authorities."
Copyright 2006, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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2. Moussaoui Trial Testimony Confirms FBI Cover-Up in Venice.
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THE MAD COW MORNING NEWS
Feature Story
April 7, 2006
By Daniel Hopsicker
Venice, FL -- Confounding those who thought it impossible, the FBI's already-tattered credibility was shredded still further last week with revelations of deliberately concealed evidence in the 9.11 investigation, as well as malfeasance in the probe of the execution-style slaying in Florida of SunCruz Casino Czar Gus Boulis, increasingly the focus of the investigation into disgraced Republican lobbyist-cum-bagman Jack Abramoff.
In a major development in the 9.11 investigation which passed almost-unnoticed, jurors in the death penalty trial of Zacharias Moussaoui heard testimony from aviation officials about a previously-undisclosed incident...
In February of 2001, almost two months after the FBI says Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi left Huffman Aviation in Venice Florida for the bright lights of Miami, the two men were still flying a single-engine plane registered to Venice Florida flight school Huffman Aviation.
Surprise surprise.
The story offers further confirmation of allegations in "Welcome to TERRORLAND" that the FBI systematically covered up evidence showing Atta using Huffman Aviation in Venice as his base of operations for the entire year before the 9.11 attack.
If the FBI's chronology of events is a tissue of half-truths, distortions and outright lies, it is a very serious matter; the Bureau's investigation was exclusively relied on by both the Congressional Intelligence Committee 9.11 probe and the 9.11 Commission, neither of which fielded independent investigators.
Moreover, the incident also contradicts sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee by Huffman Aviation's Rudi Dekkers, who stated emphatically that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi left Huffman for the last time just after Christmas in 2000.
The cover-up lasts until we say different
The Clearwater incident began, jurors were told, after a police aide and night watchman noticed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi practicing takeoffs and landings at night, which is highly unusual, as the the tiny Clearwater airstrip is closed after dark.
A Clearwater aviation official testified the airport prohibited take-offs and landings after sunset. Planes landing after 9 p.m. were even supposed to be grounded until the next morning.
The disdain with which the two terrorist pilots treated American aviation regulations is already well-known, because of the now-famous incident in which Atta and Marwan walked away from a stalled plane and abandoned it in the middle of an active runway at Miami International Airport.
Dan Pursell, a former chief flight instructor at Huffman Aviation, testified that a Clearwater police aide at the tiny Clearwater Airpark called Huffman Aviation and left a voice message complaining that Atta and Marwan were breaking airport rules by taking off and landing after dark.
Pursell told the St. Petersburg Times, which first broke the story, that when they returned to Venice the next morning, he and another flight instructor at Huffman spoke with Atta and al-Shehhi about the Clearwater incident.
How really brief "really brief" can be
"Hey, we got a phone call, you've been identified in Clearwater," Pursell remembers telling Atta and al-Shehhi. "This is like, the last straw. If that happens again, we're going to have to look at this a little harder."
He called the exchange "really brief."
When we phoned Pursell to question him about why he hadn't brought to light sooner an incident he must have known had significance to the FBI's timeline, we found him to be a man of few words.
"I told the FBI all about it at the time," he told us. "They knew."
We asked the obvious question. "So why did they continue to lie about how much time Atta spent in Venice?"
Pursell said nothing. So "really brief" described our exchange as well.
Could government attorney Carla J. Martin's improper tampering with witnesses, which briefly derailed the Moussaoui trial, have been designed to prevent just such disturbing new disclosures?
The answer, of course, as with so much else, is: "We may never know."
A sordid feat breaks a record in a state with a sordid past
In sworn testimony Rudi Dekkers insisted his relationship with the terrorist ringleader ended in December, nine months before the attack.
"On July 1st, 2000," Dekkers told a Congressional Committee, "Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi arrived at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida to inquire about taking flying lessons. On July 3rd, 2000, Atta and Al-Shehhi came back to Huffman Aviation to sign up for lessons."
"On December 24th, 2000, Atta and Al-Shehhi rented a Warrior from Huffman Aviation for a flight... one to two days later Atta and Al-Shehhi returned to Huffman Aviation to make final payments on their outstanding bills. Because they were not taking any more flying lessons, they were asked to leave the facility due to their bad attitudes and not being liked by staff and clients alike. Huffman never heard about or from them again until September 11th, 2001."
Dekkers' testimony, which has clearly now been rendered "inoperative," also appears to open him to accusations of perjury. Or at least should...
One of the three alleged Mob hit men on trial for the murder of Florida Casino Czar Gus Boulis, which has increasingly become the focus of the probe into disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, was an FBI informant at the time he is alleged to have been masterminding the murder plot.
The international heroin trafficking aspect of the 9.11 investigation has also gone unreported, except by the MadCowMorningNews, which has extensively covered the inconvenient discovery of 43 pounds of heroin aboard the Lear jet of the owner of Huffman Aviation during the same month Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al Shehhi arrived to attend his flight school.
As Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi began flying lessons at Huffman Aviation, in July of 2000, the school's owner suffered a major embarrassment when his Lear jet was seized by DEA agents who found 43 pounds of heroin aboard.
Authorities called it the biggest seizure of heroin ever in central Florida, which, given the state's sordid past, is no mean feat.
One stop shopping for all your last-minute criminal needs
One of the alleged hit men going on trial in Florida for the murder of gambling czar Gus Boulis, killed gangland-style after getting muscled out of SunCruz Casinos by Republican bagman Jack Abramoff, has been an informant for the FBI for more than a decade, including at the time when Boulis was killed.
The Miami Herald, which broke the story, said that at the same time New York mobster Anthony Moscatiello was allegedly plotting the slaying of gambling tycoon Boulis, he was spying on fellow gangsters and snitching to the FBI.
"Big Tony" Moscatiello, whose duties included "cooking" the books for Mafia don John Gotti's Howard Beach crew, was caught up in a major heroin prosecution which included then-acting Mob Boss Gene Gotti, John Gotti's brother, as well as assorted other members of the Gambino Family.
He became a confidential informant for the Bureau after federal trafficking charges against him were mysteriously dropped in 1989.
The day after police announced arrests in SunCruz Casino founder Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis' murder, Adam Kidan, Jack Abramoff's titular "President" of SunCruz, paid Big Tony a jailhouse visit at Rikers Island in New York City.
Um...a catering business at Rikers' Island? A donut shop in Sing Sing?
Adam Kidan is the only person outside "Big Tony" Moscatiello's family and attorneys allowed in to visit the alleged mob associate in his first weeks behind bars. What do you think they found to talk about?
In any other organization, this kind of developing pattern of illegality might prompt calls for a RICO investigation. Not of the Gambinos... of the FBI.
"Big Tony" Moscatiello, former advisor to crime boss John Gotti and star defendant in the gangland-style hit on Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis...was an informant for the FBI at the time the crime was committed.
Assuming he's found guilty, we wonder: did he have to ask his FBI handler for permission to do the hit?
Or... was it an assignment?
Stay tuned.
Now Available! Welcome to Terrorland: Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 Cover-up in Florida, by Daniel Hopsicker, madcow@gmail.com. The two-year long investigation into Mohamed Atta & his contacts and associates in Florida. English and German editions. Order a signed copy now; $29.95: http://MadCowProd.com.
Copyright 2006 Daniel Hopsicker
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WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Saturday, 8 April 2006 -
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News & Analysis: North America
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/leak-a08.shtml
By Patrick Martin
The revelation that President Bush personally approved the release of highly classified information to retaliate against a critic of the Iraq war is a major political event. Once again, the modus operandi of this government is revealed: distortion, falsification, manipulation of the media, secretive methods, dirty tricks, all to defend its ongoing criminal enterprise, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The source of this exposure is a 39-page document filed late Wednesday night by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the Bush administration campaign to punish former ambassador Joseph Wilson for publicly challenging the principal pretext for the invasion of Iraq, the claim that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapons capability that would allow him to slip an atomic bomb to Al Qaeda.
Wilson was sent to Niger in 2002 at the behest of the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in the African country to use in a secret nuclear weapons program. He found no evidence to support the allegation, but the charge nonetheless made its appearance in a CIA National Intelligence Estimate released just before the October 2002 congressional vote to authorize war against Iraq, and repeated in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech. When Wilson went public with his rebuttal, in an op-ed column in a July 6, 2003 New York Times, Bush administration officials retaliated by leaking to the media the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a covert CIA officer involved in counter-proliferation efforts.
Last fall, Fitzgerald obtained a criminal indictment against I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, for committing perjury and obstruction of justice by lying to the grand jury hearing evidence on the Wilson affair. In particular, Libby was charged with denying that he had revealed to the press that Plame was a covert CIA operative, when he had actually given this information to several journalists.
The court filing places the exposure of Valerie Plame in the context of a broader campaign by the White House in response to Wilson's criticism of the decision to go to war in Iraq. It cites admissions by Libby that Cheney "advised him that the President had authorized" the release of classified information about the war to journalists who could be trusted to parrot the administration line.
The first such administration stooge was Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter, and notorious as a conduit for Bush administration propaganda about alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Libby arranged a private meeting with Miller at a Washington hotel where he told her of Plame's identity as a CIA agent.
The purpose was twofold: to discredit Wilson by suggesting that his trip--to one of the world's poorest countries--was some sort of junket engineered by his wife; and to punish the couple by putting an end to Plame's career as a covert agent (as well as potentially threatening her safety). In the event, Miller did not write the desired article, but another administration mouthpiece, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, did the job in a column published July 14, 2003. It was this column which triggered the Fitzgerald investigation.
According to the prosecutor, Libby expressed some concerns about the legality of the leaking, but was reassured by Cheney that "the President had specially authorized defendant to disclose certain information." This included excerpts of a highly classified CIA National Intelligence Estimate, delivered to the White House in October 2002, whose purpose was to make the case for war with Iraq by deliberately exaggerating and even falsifying Iraq's alleged WMD capabilities.
It was this NIE that was the basis of Condoleezza Rice's panic-mongering assertion that the United States faced the danger of "a mushroom cloud" if there was not immediate action to oust Saddam Hussein. It was also cited by numerous Democratic congressmen and senators, including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, as the justification for their vote to give Bush the authority to go to war.
Lewis Libby resigned his government position immediately after the indictment. In the months since then, his attorneys have faced a difficult struggle to construct a defense, since Libby's sworn testimony to the grand jury was so obviously a lie. He had told the panel that he had not conveyed classified information about Plame's CIA role to any journalist, only discussed with several journalists suggestions that were being floated in the press. These denials directly contradicted both the testimony of the journalists and documentary evidence uncovered by Fitzgerald, showing that Libby requested and received classified briefings that included Plame's identity and job description during the month before his meeting with Miller.
The Fitzgerald document exposes a devastating contradiction in Libby's defense. His attorneys have been claiming that he misstated and concealed his role in leaking Plame's name and occupation to the media because he forgot the matter in the rush of far more significant affairs of state. But according to Fitzgerald, Libby told the grand jury that it was highly unusual, even unique, for him to receive an instruction from Bush, relayed by Cheney, to leak classified Iraq intelligence to the New York Times. How then was it possible to forget?
The real purpose of Libby's claim of political amnesia was to justify subpoenaing a huge number of sensitive White House documents--allegedly to "refresh his memory"--which the White House would refuse to release, thus resulting in the case being thrown out on the grounds that Libby was being denied his right to an effective defense. Similar methods were employed during the Iran-Contra investigation, when the Reagan White House conducted an elaborate minuet with attorneys for former top intelligence and national security officials, using this tactic, called "graymail," to insure their effective immunity from prosecution.
In wake of Fitzgerald's revelations, the legal position of both Bush and Cheney is in considerable jeopardy. Both Bush and Cheney gave sworn testimony to the grand jury; if they denied their role in instigating the anti-Wilson campaign--as both did in public statements during the two-year investigation--they could face charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, similar to those facing Libby.
Then there is the matter of the leaking itself. The White House claims that Bush has the legal authority as "commander-in-chief" to declassify any material he pleases. That doesn't constitute leaking, one spokesman said, but rather "sharing with the public."
Coming from an administration which already claims "commander-in-chief" authority to arrest and jail American citizens indefinitely, kidnap and "render" selected individuals of any nationality to CIA-run torture centers, operate a concentration camp at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, and even commit murder, the unauthorized release of documents might perhaps be considered only a secondary offense.
From a political standpoint, however, the offense is major, and perhaps even fatal. Certainly in any halfway democratic country, the exposure of official misconduct and lying on the scale of the Wilson affair would bring down the government, especially one as unpopular and isolated as the Bush administration, whose approval rating in the latest AP-Ipsos poll fell to a low of 36 percent.
But in the United States of 2006, the administration stands virtually unchallenged, because the ruling elite has essentially abandoned democratic methods of rule and the official bourgeois opposition, the Democratic Party, functions as an opposition only in a purely nominal sense.
Press reports of the Fitzgerald document produced the usual howls of pretended outrage and ritualistic fist-shaking from the Democrats. They criticized Bush for hypocritically denouncing leaks while engaging in the practice himself. But for the most part, their comments were focused on the damage to the morale of the intelligence agencies and the loss of credibility the next time a US administration cries "wolf" over WMD, notably, now in Iran.
In other words, the real content of the Democratic Party critique was an attack on Bush from the right. The Democrats cannot say what so obviously is--that the war in Iraq is the product of a criminal conspiracy to deceive the American people and trample on the rights of the Iraqi people. That is because they have long been the accomplices and junior partners of the Bush administration in perpetrating this crime.
Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
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Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?
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THE NEW YORKER
Fact: Annals Of National Security
April 17, 2006 issue
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.
American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it. Iran insists that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that it will not be delayed or deterred.
There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be "wiped off the map." Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. "That's the name they're using. They say, 'Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?'"
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." He added, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?'"
The rationale for regime change was articulated in early March by Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and who has been a supporter of President Bush. "So long as Iran has an Islamic republic, it will have a nuclear-weapons program, at least clandestinely," Clawson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2nd. "The key issue, therefore, is: How long will the present Iranian regime last?"
When I spoke to Clawson, he emphasized that "this Administration is putting a lot of effort into diplomacy." However, he added, Iran had no choice other than to accede to America's demands or face a military attack. Clawson said that he fears that Ahmadinejad "sees the West as wimps and thinks we will eventually cave in. We have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates." Clawson said that he would prefer to rely on sabotage and other clandestine activities, such as "industrial accidents." But, he said, it would be prudent to prepare for a wider war, "given the way the Iranians are acting. This is not like planning to invade Quebec."
One military planner told me that White House criticisms of Iran and the high tempo of planning and clandestine activities amount to a campaign of "coercion" aimed at Iran. "You have to be ready to go, and we'll see how they respond," the officer said. "You have to really show a threat in order to get Ahmadinejad to back down." He added, "People think Bush has been focussed on Saddam Hussein since 9/11," but, "in my view, if you had to name one nation that was his focus all the way along, it was Iran." (In response to detailed requests for comment, the White House said that it would not comment on military planning but added, "As the President has indicated, we are pursuing a diplomatic solution"; the Defense Department also said that Iran was being dealt with through "diplomatic channels" but wouldn't elaborate on that; the C.I.A. said that there were "inaccuracies" in this account but would not specify them.)
"This is much more than a nuclear issue," one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. "That's just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years."
A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. "This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war," he said. The danger, he said, was that "it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability." A military conflict that destabilized the region could also increase the risk of terror: "Hezbollah comes into play," the adviser said, referring to the terror group that is considered one of the world's most successful, and which is now a Lebanese political party with strong ties to Iran. "And here comes Al Qaeda."
In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat. A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, told me that there had been "no formal briefings," because "they're reluctant to brief the minority. They're doing the Senate, somewhat selectively."
The House member said that no one in the meetings "is really objecting" to the talk of war. "The people they're briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?" (Iran is building facilities underground.) "There's no pressure from Congress" not to take military action, the House member added. "The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it." Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, "The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision."
Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions--rapid ascending maneuvers known as "over the shoulder" bombing--since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.
Last month, in a paper given at a conference on Middle East security in Berlin, Colonel Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the National War College before retiring from the Air Force, in 1987, provided an estimate of what would be needed to destroy Iran's nuclear program. Working from satellite photographs of the known facilities, Gardiner estimated that at least four hundred targets would have to be hit. He added:
"I don't think a U.S. military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical-production plants. We would hit those. We would want to hit the medium-range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq. There are fourteen airfields with sheltered aircraft. ... We'd want to get rid of that threat. We would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting the cruise-missile sites and the Iranian diesel submarines. ... Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target even with penetrating weapons. The U.S. will have to use Special Operations units."
One of the military's initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface. That number of centrifuges could provide enough enriched uranium for about twenty nuclear warheads a year. (Iran has acknowledged that it initially kept the existence of its enrichment program hidden from I.A.E.A. inspectors, but claims that none of its current activity is barred by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.) The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.
There is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep underground bunkers with nuclear weapons. In the early nineteen-eighties, the American intelligence community watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that the underground facility was designed for "continuity of government"--for the political and military leadership to survive a nuclear war. (There are similar facilities, in Virginia and Pennsylvania, for the American leadership.) The Soviet facility still exists, and much of what the U.S. knows about it remains classified. "The 'tell'"--the giveaway--"was the ventilator shafts, some of which were disguised," the former senior intelligence official told me. At the time, he said, it was determined that "only nukes" could destroy the bunker. He added that some American intelligence analysts believe that the Russians helped the Iranians design their underground facility. "We see a similarity of design," specifically in the ventilator shafts, he said.
A former high-level Defense Department official told me that, in his view, even limited bombing would allow the U.S. to "go in there and do enough damage to slow down the nuclear infrastructure--it's feasible." The former defense official said, "The Iranians don't have friends, and we can tell them that, if necessary, we'll keep knocking back their infrastructure. The United States should act like weâ·re ready to go." He added, "We don't have to knock down all of their air defenses. Our stealth bombers and standoff missiles really work, and we can blow fixed things up. We can do things on the ground, too, but it's difficult and very dangerous--put bad stuff in ventilator shafts and put them to sleep."
But those who are familiar with the Soviet bunker, according to the former senior intelligence official, "say 'No way.' You've got to know what's underneath--to know which ventilator feeds people, or diesel generators, or which are false. And there's a lot that we don't know." The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. "Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap," the former senior intelligence official said. "'Decisive' is the key word of the Air Force's planning. It's a tough decision. But we made it in Japan."
He went on, "Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout--we-re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don-t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out"--remove the nuclear option--"they're shouted down."
The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran--without success, the former intelligence official said. "The White House said, 'Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.'"
The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it "a juggernaut that has to be stopped." He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. "There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries," the adviser told me. "This goes to high levels." The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. "The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks," the adviser said. "And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen."
The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "They're telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation," he said.
The chairman of the Defense Science Board is William Schneider, Jr., an Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration. In January, 2001, as President Bush prepared to take office, Schneider served on an ad-hoc panel on nuclear forces sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. The panel's report recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential part of the U.S. arsenal and noted their suitability "for those occasions when the certain and prompt destruction of high priority targets is essential and beyond the promise of conventional weapons." Several signers of the report are now prominent members of the Bush Administration, including Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.
The Pentagon adviser questioned the value of air strikes. "The Iranians have distributed their nuclear activity very well, and we have no clue where some of the key stuff is. It could even be out of the country," he said. He warned, as did many others, that bombing Iran could provoke "a chain reaction" of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world: "What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?"
With or without the nuclear option, the list of targets may inevitably expand. One recently retired high-level Bush Administration official, who is also an expert on war planning, told me that he would have vigorously argued against an air attack on Iran, because "Iran is a much tougher target" than Iraq. But, he added, "If you're going to do any bombing to stop the nukes, you might as well improve your lie across the board. Maybe hit some training camps, and clear up a lot of other problems."
The Pentagon adviser said that, in the event of an attack, the Air Force intended to strike many hundreds of targets in Iran but that "ninety-nine per cent of them have nothing to do with proliferation. There are people who believe it's the way to operate"--that the Administration can achieve its policy goals in Iran with a bombing campaign, an idea that has been supported by neoconservatives.
If the order were to be given for an attack, the American combat troops now operating in Iran would be in position to mark the critical targets with laser beams, to insure bombing accuracy and to minimize civilian casualties. As of early winter, I was told by the government consultant with close ties to civilians in the Pentagon, the units were also working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops "are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds," the consultant said. One goal is to get "eyes on the ground"--quoting a line from "Othello," he said, "Give me the ocular proof." The broader aim, the consultant said, is to "encourage ethnic tensions" and undermine the regime.
The new mission for the combat troops is a product of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's long-standing interest in expanding the role of the military in covert operations, which was made official policy in the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, published in February. Such activities, if conducted by C.I.A. operatives, would need a Presidential Finding and would have to be reported to key members of Congress.
"'Force protection' is the new buzzword," the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the Pentagon's position that clandestine activities that can be broadly classified as preparing the battlefield or protecting troops are military, not intelligence, operations, and are therefore not subject to congressional oversight. "The guys in the Joint Chiefs of Staff say there are a lot of uncertainties in Iran," he said. "We need to have more than what we had in Iraq. Now we have the green light to do everything we want."
The President's deep distrust of Ahmadinejad has strengthened his determination to confront Iran. This view has been reinforced by allegations that Ahmadinejad, who joined a special-forces brigade of the Revolutionary Guards in 1986, may have been involved in terrorist activities in the late eighties. (There are gaps in Ahmadinejad's official biography in this period.) Ahmadinejad has reportedly been connected to Imad Mughniyeh, a terrorist who has been implicated in the deadly bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, in 1983. Mughniyeh was then the security chief of Hezbollah; he remains on the F.B.I.'s list of most-wanted terrorists.
Robert Baer, who was a C.I.A. officer in the Middle East and elsewhere for two decades, told me that Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guard colleagues in the Iranian government "are capable of making a bomb, hiding it, and launching it at Israel. They're apocalyptic Shiites. If you're sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they've got nukes and missiles--you've got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there's no reason to back off."
Under Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards have expanded their power base throughout the Iranian bureaucracy; by the end of January, they had replaced thousands of civil servants with their own members. One former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience with Iran, depicted the turnover as "a white coup," with ominous implications for the West. "Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are out; others are waiting to be kicked out," he said. "We may be too late. These guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since the revolution." He said that, particularly in consideration of China's emergence as a superpower, Iran's attitude was "To hell with the West. You can do as much as you like."
Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is considered by many experts to be in a stronger position than Ahmadinejad. "Ahmadinejad is not in control," one European diplomat told me. â·Power is diffuse in Iran. The Revolutionary Guards are among the key backers of the nuclear program, but, ultimately, I don't think they are in charge of it. The Supreme Leader has the casting vote on the nuclear program, and the Guards will not take action without his approval."
The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that "allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. It's just too dangerous." He added, "The whole internal debate is on which way to go"--in terms of stopping the Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran will unilaterally renounce its nuclear plans--and forestall the American action. "God may smile on us, but I don't think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen."
While almost no one disputes Iran's nuclear ambitions, there is intense debate over how soon it could get the bomb, and what to do about that. Robert Gallucci, a former government expert on nonproliferation who is now the dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, told me, "Based on what I know, Iran could be eight to ten years away" from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon. Gallucci added, "If they had a covert nuclear program and we could prove it, and we could not stop it by negotiation, diplomacy, or the threat of sanctions, I'd be in favor of taking it out. But if you do it"--bomb Iran--"without being able to show there's a secret program, you're in trouble."
Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, told the Knesset last December that "Iran is one to two years away, at the latest, from having enriched uranium. From that point, the completion of their nuclear weapon is simply a technical matter." In a conversation with me, a senior Israeli intelligence official talked about what he said was Iran's duplicity: "There are two parallel nuclear programs" inside Iran--the program declared to the I.A.E.A. and a separate operation, run by the military and the Revolutionary Guards. Israeli officials have repeatedly made this argument, but Israel has not produced public evidence to support it. Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term, told me, "I think Iran has a secret nuclear-weapons program--I believe it, but I don't know it."
In recent months, the Pakistani government has given the U.S. new access to A. Q. Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb. Khan, who is now living under house arrest in Islamabad, is accused of setting up a black market in nuclear materials; he made at least one clandestine visit to Tehran in the late nineteen-eighties. In the most recent interrogations, Khan has provided information on Iran's weapons design and its time line for building a bomb. "The picture is of 'unquestionable danger,'" the former senior intelligence official said. (The Pentagon adviser also confirmed that Khan has been "singing like a canary.") The concern, the former senior official said, is that "Khan has credibility problems. He is suggestible, and he's telling the neoconservatives what they want to hear"--or what might be useful to Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, who is under pressure to assist Washington in the war on terror.
"I think Khan's leading us on," the former intelligence official said. "I don't know anybody who says, 'Here's the smoking gun.' But lights are beginning to blink. He's feeding us information on the time line, and targeting information is coming in from our own sources--sensors and the covert teams. The C.I.A., which was so burned by Iraqi W.M.D., is going to the Pentagon and the Vice-President's office saying, 'It's all new stuff.' People in the Administration are saying, 'We've got enough.'"
The Administration's case against Iran is compromised by its history of promoting false intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In a recent essay on the Foreign Policy Web site, entitled "Fool Me Twice," Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote, "The unfolding administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful campaign for the Iraq war." He noted several parallels:
"The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. Secretary of State tells Congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The Secretary of Defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism."
Cirincione called some of the Administration's claims about Iran "questionable" or lacking in evidence. When I spoke to him, he asked, "What do we know? What is the threat? The question is: How urgent is all this?" The answer, he said, â·is in the intelligence community and the I.A.E.A." (In August, the Washington Post reported that the most recent comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate predicted that Iran was a decade away from being a nuclear power.)
Last year, the Bush Administration briefed I.A.E.A. officials on what it said was new and alarming information about Iran's weapons program which had been retrieved from an Iranianâ·s laptop. The new data included more than a thousand pages of technical drawings of weapons systems. The Washington Post reported that there were also designs for a small facility that could be used in the uranium-enrichment process. Leaks about the laptop became the focal point of stories in the Times and elsewhere. The stories were generally careful to note that the materials could have been fabricated, but also quoted senior American officials as saying that they appeared to be legitimate. The headline in the Times' account read, "RELYING ON COMPUTER, U.S. SEEKS TO PROVE IRAN'S NUCLEAR AIMS."
I was told in interviews with American and European intelligence officials, however, that the laptop was more suspect and less revelatory than it had been depicted. The Iranian who owned the laptop had initially been recruited by German and American intelligence operatives, working together. The Americans eventually lost interest in him. The Germans kept on, but the Iranian was seized by the Iranian counter-intelligence force. It is not known where he is today. Some family members managed to leave Iran with his laptop and handed it over at a U.S. embassy, apparently in Europe. It was a classic "walk-in."
A European intelligence official said, "There was some hesitation on our side" about what the materials really proved, "and we are still not convinced." The drawings were not meticulous, as newspaper accounts suggested, "but had the character of sketches," the European official said. "It was not a slam-dunk smoking gun."
The threat of American military action has created dismay at the headquarters of the I.A.E.A., in Vienna. The agency's officials believe that Iran wants to be able to make a nuclear weapon, but "nobody has presented an inch of evidence of a parallel nuclear-weapons program in Iran," the high-ranking diplomat told me. The I.A.E.A.'s best estimate is that the Iranians are five years away from building a nuclear bomb. "But, if the United States does anything militarily, they will make the development of a bomb a matter of Iranian national pride," the diplomat said. "The whole issue is America's risk assessment of Iran's future intentions, and they don't trust the regime. Iran is a menace to American policy."
In Vienna, I was told of an exceedingly testy meeting earlier this year between Mohamed ElBaradei, the I.A.E.A.'s director-general, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control. Joseph's message was blunt, one diplomat recalled: "We cannot have a single centrifuge spinning in Iran. Iran is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and our allies, and we will not tolerate it. We want you to give us an understanding that you will not say anything publicly that will undermine us."
Joseph's heavy-handedness was unnecessary, the diplomat said, since the I.A.E.A. already had been inclined to take a hard stand against Iran. "All of the inspectors are angry at being misled by the Iranians, and some think the Iranian leadership are nutcases--one hundred per cent totally certified nuts," the diplomat said. He added that ElBaradei's overriding concern is that the Iranian leaders "want confrontation, just like the neocons on the other side"--in Washington. "At the end of the day, it will work only if the United States agrees to talk to the Iranians."
The central question--whether Iran will be able to proceed with its plans to enrich uranium--is now before the United Nations, with the Russians and the Chinese reluctant to impose sanctions on Tehran. A discouraged former I.A.E.A. official told me in late March that, at this point, "there's nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it. Even if they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe them. It's a dead end."
Another diplomat in Vienna asked me, "Why would the West take the risk of going to war against that kind of target without giving it to the I.A.E.A. to verify? We're low-cost, and we can create a program that will force Iran to put its cards on the table." A Western Ambassador in Vienna expressed similar distress at the White House's dismissal of the I.A.E.A. He said, "If you don't believe that the I.A.E.A. can establish an inspection system--if you don't trust them--you can only bomb."
There is little sympathy for the I.A.E.A. in the Bush Administration or among its European allies. "We're quite frustrated with the director-general," the European diplomat told me. "His basic approach has been to describe this as a dispute between two sides with equal weight. It's not. We're the good guys! ElBaradei has been pushing the idea of letting Iran have a small nuclear-enrichment program, which is ludicrous. It's not his job to push ideas that pose a serious proliferation risk."
The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing perception that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney believe a bombing campaign will be needed, and that their real goal is regime change. "Everyone is on the same page about the Iranian bomb, but the United States wants regime change," a European diplomatic adviser told me. He added, "The Europeans have a role to play as long as they don't have to choose between going along with the Russians and the Chinese or going along with Washington on something they don't want. Their policy is to keep the Americans engaged in something the Europeans can live with. It may be untenable."
"The Brits think this is a very bad idea," Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staff member who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, told me, "but they're really worried we're going to do it." The European diplomatic adviser acknowledged that the British Foreign Office was aware of war planning in Washington but that, "short of a smoking gun, it's going to be very difficult to line up the Europeans on Iran." He said that the British "are jumpy about the Americans going full bore on the Iranians, with no compromise."
The European diplomat said that he was skeptical that Iran, given its record, had admitted to everything it was doing, but "to the best of our knowledge the Iranian capability is not at the point where they could successfully run centrifuges" to enrich uranium in quantity. One reason for pursuing diplomacy was, he said, Iran's essential pragmatism. "The regime acts in its best interests," he said. Iran's leaders "take a hard-line approach on the nuclear issue and they want to call the American bluff," believing that "the tougher they are the more likely the West will fold." But, he said, "From what we've seen with Iran, they will appear superconfident until the moment they back off."
The diplomat went on, "You never reward bad behavior, and this is not the time to offer concessions. We need to find ways to impose sufficient costs to bring the regime to its senses. It's going to be a close call, but I think if there is unity in opposition and the price imposed"--in sanctions--"is sufficient, they may back down. It's too early to give up on the U.N. route." He added, "If the diplomatic process doesn't work, there is no military 'solution.' There may be a military option, but the impact could be catastrophic."
Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, was George Bush's most dependable ally in the year leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But he and his party have been racked by a series of financial scandals, and his popularity is at a low point. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said last year that military action against Iran was "inconceivable." Blair has been more circumspect, saying publicly that one should never take options off the table.
Other European officials expressed similar skepticism about the value of an American bombing campaign. "The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically," the European intelligence official told me. "He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse." An American attack, he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including those who might be sympathetic to the U.S. "Iran is no longer living in the Stone Age, and the young people there have access to U.S. movies and books, and they love it," he said. "If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run."
Another European official told me that he was aware that many in Washington wanted action. "It's always the same guys," he said, with a resigned shrug. "There is a belief that diplomacy is doomed to fail. The timetable is short."
A key ally with an important voice in the debate is Israel, whose leadership has warned for years that it viewed any attempt by Iran to begin enriching uranium as a point of no return. I was told by several officials that the White House's interest in preventing an Israeli attack on a Muslim country, which would provoke a backlash across the region, was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, President Bush depicted Ahmadinejad's hostility toward Israel as a "serious threat. It's a threat to world peace." He added, "I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel."
Any American bombing attack, Richard Armitage told me, would have to consider the following questions: "What will happen in the other Islamic countries? What ability does Iran have to reach us and touch us globally--that is, terrorism? Will Syria and Lebanon up the pressure on Israel? What does the attack do to our already diminished international standing? And what does this mean for Russia, China, and the U.N. Security Council?"
Iran, which now produces nearly four million barrels of oil a day, would not have to cut off production to disrupt the world's oil markets. It could blockade or mine the Strait of Hormuz, the thirty-four-mile-wide passage through which Middle Eastern oil reaches the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless, the recently retired defense official dismissed the strategic consequences of such actions. He told me that the U.S. Navy could keep shipping open by conducting salvage missions and putting mine- sweepers to work. "It's impossible to block passage," he said. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon also said he believed that the oil problem could be managed, pointing out that the U.S. has enough in its strategic reserves to keep America running for sixty days. However, those in the oil business I spoke to were less optimistic; one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and scope of the conflict.
Michel Samaha, a veteran Lebanese Christian politician and former cabinet minister in Beirut, told me that the Iranian retaliation might be focussed on exposed oil and gas fields in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. "They would be at risk," he said, "and this could begin the real jihad of Iran versus the West. You will have a messy world."
Iran could also initiate a wave of terror attacks in Iraq and elsewhere, with the help of Hezbollah. On April 2nd, the Washington Post reported that the planning to counter such attacks "is consuming a lot of time" at U.S. intelligence agencies. "The best terror network in the world has remained neutral in the terror war for the past several years," the Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said of Hezbollah. "This will mobilize them and put us up against the group that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon. If we move against Iran, Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the Israelis take them out, they will mobilize against us." (When I asked the government consultant about that possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, "Israel and the new Lebanese government will finish them off.")
The adviser went on, "If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle." The American, British, and other coalition forces in Iraq would be at greater risk of attack from Iranian troops or from Shiite militias operating on instructions from Iran. (Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, has close ties to the leading Shiite parties in Iraq.) A retired four-star general told me that, despite the eight thousand British troops in the region, "the Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck."
"If you attack," the high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna, "Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the Arab world, but with more credibility and more power. You must bite the bullet and sit down with the Iranians."
The diplomat went on, "There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a solution. They are still banking on isolation and regime change. This is wishful thinking." He added, "The window of opportunity is now."
Copyright CondeNet 2006. All rights reserved.
*****
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THE MOSCOW TIMES
Global Eye
April 7, 2006
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/167192/
By Chris Floyd
So now we are down to the raw meat at last. One by one, the justifications mouthed by the makers of the Iraq War have been stripped away, revealed as gossamer tissues of lies and obfuscation: weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi involvement in Sept. 11, reducing terrorism and, of course, bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. This last rag has been the one clutched most fiercely of late by the warlords in Washington and London, but now it too has been cast aside. All that's left is the naked, slathering beast of power, imposing its will on a conquered land -- and blaming its victims, even as it chews them to pieces.
This past week saw an astounding display of hypocrisy and bad faith by those twin towers of the U.S. establishment: the government (or rather, the unconstitutional military junta fronted by President George W. Bush) and the corporate media. Together they made it abundantly clear that the elite now regard Iraqis as ungrateful, useless trash, unfit to choose their own leaders -- and unworthy of the "great sacrifice" America has made in looting and savaging their country in an unprovoked war of aggression.
First the junta dispatched hit-gal Condi Rice, with her gormless valet Jack Straw in tow, to expedite the removal of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the man selected as prime minister in the "democratic process" established by the Bush faction. The cover story is that al-Jaafari has not been vigorous enough in suppressing the Shiite militias. But this is an odd criticism indeed, considering that it was the occupation coalition that brought many of these deadly sectarian gangs -- including the notorious "Wolf Brigade" -- into the Iraqi government in the first place, as The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal, among many others, report.
No, the real reason for the frost job is that al-Jaafari is insufficiently enthusiastic about the Bush gang's long-running project to impose their own sectarian dogma on Iraq; that is, their extremist faith in the "free market," by which of course they mean a market controlled by handful of foreign fat-cats operating without any restraints. They much preferred the man al-Jaafari defeated, by one vote, to become premier: current Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi.
In February 2005, Mahdi, then finance minister, endeared himself to the Bush regime by openly declaring -- in front of the National Press Club in Washington, no less -- that Iraq would throw its oil fields wide open to foreign investment. This offer, placing the world's second-largest oil reserves in a few private hands, will be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies," Mahdi announced. What's not to love about this guy?
But then those ungrateful wretches chose al-Jaafari -- an open admirer of Noam Chomsky, for God's sake! -- over the regime's favorite. Such uppityness was not to be borne. From then on, al-Jaafari's every step toward forming a government was hobbled by American sniping and backroom maneuvering, with the petulant Bushists perfectly willing to let the country slide into anarchy and civil war while they schemed to get Mahdi or some other pliant tool into the catbird seat. After all, what are a few more thousand dead Iraqis at this point? Who's counting?
For it's not just oil at stake, of course. Over the past three years, the Bushists have quietly forced a vast program of economic shock therapy on Iraq, policies that have "administered a series of death blows to locally based enterprises" by allowing foreign companies to take full control of Iraqi businesses, then ship the loot out of the country, as professor Michael Schwartz of Stony Brook University reports on TomDispatch.com. This despoliation -- with the resultant poverty and unemployment -- has been one of the primary causes driving Iraqi discontent, Schwartz notes; early peaceful protests by ordinary citizens about the effects of the Bushist rapine were met with such savage repression that thousands joined the nascent insurgency.
But the dogma of the free fat-cat market must be preserved at all costs. So Rice and Straw were sent to Baghdad to slip the shiv into the bumbling al-Jaafari's back and sternly chide Iraqis for their failure to form a government that will permanently enshrine the economic rape program and finalize a new petroleum law that will activate the dozens of exploitation deals already signed with foreign oil companies, as the Houston Chronicle reports. Rice berated the Iraqis for their ingratitude, noting that America has put "a lot treasure, a lot of human treasure" on the line for them, The New York Times reports. No doubt her hosts -- who have seen 100,000 of their civilians killed and at least $9 billion looted from their treasury to pay for the occupation of their own country -- were deeply chastened.
But The New York Times surpassed the stern Condi in haranguing the Arab ingrates. In an astonishing turn from a paper that more than any other helped sway mainstream opinion in favor of Bush's criminal invasion, a Times editorial blasted Iraqis for letting their nation sink into a shameful state of violence, chaos and repression, and declared that if the hapless al-Jaafari were allowed to stay in power, then the whole damn place should be written off as unworthy of U.S. "protection." Dripping with contempt, the editorial clearly signaled the emerging conventional wisdom of the American establishment on the war: We tried to do good, but as always, the darkies let us down.ⷨⷨThen again, isn't that the American establishment's standard reaction to all its bloody misadventures?
Copyright 2006 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
*****
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News * Analysis * Research * Action
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- AFIB No. 710, April 5, 2006 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
April 26, 2002: Alleged al-Qaeda Supporter Regularly Meets with Top Far Right Wing Politicians. According to an article in a German newspaper, Ahmad Huber, one of the directors of the Al Taqwa Bank, regularly meets with important far right wing figures. The Al Taqwa Bank was banned after 9/11 for allegedly financing al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamic militant groups (see November 7, 2001). Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of a far right wing political party in France that has at times received around 10% of the popular vote, frequently attends a very exclusive spa in Switzerland to improve his health. This spa is run by Christian Cambuzat, a supporter of Le Pen and other far right figures. Huber confirms that he has met Le Pen at this spa, and a picture of Huber and Le Pen together accompany the article. Other politicians who meet at the spa include Franz Schoenhuber, founder of an extreme right wing party in Germany and former SS member, and Gianfranco Fini, an Italian neo-fascist known for his admiration of Benito Mussolini. An unnamed extreme right wing politician from the US is also said to attend meetings at this spa. [Blick (Zurich), 5/26/2002]. People and organizations involved: Franz Schoenhuber, Gianfranco Fini, Ahmad Huber, Christian Cambuzat, Jean Marie Le Pen. -- Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research, The Complete 9/11 Timeline, Updated March 27, 2006, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/index.jsp.
Contents: Number 710
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WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Saturday, 18 March 2006 -
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RIGOROUS INTUITION
"What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Them"
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/
By Jeff Wells
Money doesn't talk, it swears - Bob Dylan
You want some 9/11 truth? You won't find it in the accretions of increasingly absurd conjecture and the tail-chasing diversions of no evidentiary value. The hard-ass, 9/11 truth has the colour of money and the sweet stink of opium, and plenty of both.
How's this for a headline, and from Institutional Investor, even:
Mystery N.Y. Bank Allegedly Funnels $3B In Funds To Terrorists
A bank identified only as being one of the largest and most prominent in New York has been caught allegedly funneling an estimated $3 billion in profits from drug deals and other illegal activities to Mideast terrorists, The New York Post reports. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the paper says, plugged the profits pipeline as part of an ongoing investigation of suspected funds flowing through local banks.
In the most recent scheme, according to The Post, the money originating from the so-called "tri-border region" of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, was transferred to an account at the New York bank through a money-transfer company in Uruguay and then on to accounts in the Mideast, where they were distributed over the past two years to the likes of Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. "I can't go out and arrest Osama bin Laden," the 84-year-old Morgenthau told The Post. "But I can try to cut off his money."
"Tri-border region" sound familiar? "Chiggerbit" notes on the RI board that it's a territory in which Sun Myung Moon has recently planted his Unification flag, acquiring the land atop the Guarani aquafer. Moon's 600,000 hectares also happens to be "an enormously strategic point in both the narcotics and arms trades," according to Paraguay's former drug czar, who adds that "the available intelligence clearly shows that the Moon sect is involved in both these enterprises." And "Starroute" adds that Khalil bin Laden, Osama's brother, has business connections in the nearby Brazilian province of Minas Gerais, "an alleged center for training terrorists."
The Post today discloses the identity of the "mystery bank." And guess who:
The Manhattan DA is pursuing a settlement with the Bank of America in a major money-laundering probe of more than $3 billion that flowed from Latin America through one of the bank's accounts to Mideast fanatics, sources said yesterday.
Sources familiar with the case - reported in yesterday's Post - revealed that DA Robert Morgenthau is close to reaching a settlement with the nation's second largest bank. The bank is not being accused of complicity with money-launderers or terrorists, but is facing possible penalties for dealing with an unlicensed money transmitter from Uruguay, sources said.
The bank will be permitted to settle, like Jonathan Bush's Riggs Bank, because to find such institutions complicit would mean the Apocalypse of All Safe Assumptions. It's why September 11th's insider trading scandal, once reported by Bloomberg as "the worst case ever," was made to dry up and blow away, and the data recovery project of "dirty doomsday dealings" made on World Trade Center computers disappeared into the belly of the beast it was intended to investigate.
The money's swearing, and it's swearing at us. Over the fractious din of arguments for missile strikes, demolition and holograms, can you hear it?
Jeff Wells is a cautiously pessimistic Canadian author and satirist. His first novel, Anxious Gravity, is published by Dundurn Press.
Copyright 2006 Jeff Wells
*****
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Tuesday, 4 April 2006 -
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2. World Trade Center Tapes Expose Chaos of September 11 Response.
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News & Analysis: North America
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/w911-a04.shtml
By Bill Van Auken
The release last Friday of tapes recording some 130 calls made September 11, 2001 from the stricken World Trade Center towers to New York City's 911 emergency systems provided fresh and tragic evidence of that the city was woefully unprepared for such a crisis and catastrophically disorganized in its response.
Pried loose from the city through more than four years of litigation in the courts over a freedom of information law request by the New York Times, the tapes include only the voices of the 911 operators and police and fire dispatchers; the voices of those who called from the towers were edited out.
Still, the recordings once again underscore the immensity of the tragedy, as well as the toll that it took on emergency service workers who sought to coordinate a response with inadequate information and equipment.
In some cases, the tapes include the voices of 911 operators staying on the line with callers as they lost consciousness from the dense smoke coming from the fires in the high rise buildings. Others took phone numbers of victims' families and promised to call them.
"It's an awful thing. Awful, awful, awful thing to call somebody and tell them you're going to die," one police operator told another after speaking with a group of office workers group trapped on the 83rd floor of south tower.
In another tape, a clearly exasperated fire dispatcher asks of a police operator, "How can you build big buildings with no way to get out of it? That's ridiculous!"
A group of eight families of September 11 victims and one survivor intervened in the suit to demand that the city release the recordings. They are still pressing in court for the full tapes--including the callers' voices--to be released.
Norman Siegel, the former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who represented the families that joined the suit, pointed to the glaring shortcomings in the emergency response system that are exposed in the recordings.
"The 911 tapes clearly demonstrate the 911 operators were not given a uniform script," he said. "The 911 tapes clearly demonstrate the 911 operators' unfamiliarity with the building. Over and over they told callers to open the windows and--you can't open the windows in the World Trade Center. As we listened and read the 911 operators comments, at times they were inconsistent and contradictory. You had generally the mantra of 911 operators saying, just sit tight."
Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son Christian died in the trade center, was one of those who joined the lawsuit demanding the release of the tapes. The recordings, she said, exposed a total "collapse" of New York City's emergency response system. "It was a disgrace," she said, while adding that the tapes also revealed "the enormous compassion of the operators, who did the best they could to help."
"I'm hoping that the public and the system will learn how unprepared the City of New York and the Port Authority were on that day," she added.
The administration of billionaire Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg has fought every step of the way to block the release of these tapes and other information relating to September 11.
In his weekly radio address last Friday, Bloomberg defended his administration's stonewalling. "You know exactly what's going to happen to the tapes. They'll be blasted all over and made a spectacle," he said. He added, "My personal opinion has always been, we should remember those that we lost and not focus on that particular day."
Who does the mayor think he is kidding? For four and a half years, the US political establishment has done nothing but "focus on that particular day," insisting that it "changed everything" and invoking it as a justification for everything from wars of aggression abroad to unprecedented attacks on democratic rights at home and even tax cuts for the rich.
All the while, however, it has systematically blocked any real probe into what actually happened that day. Meanwhile, in the face of what was ostensibly the most catastrophic failure of intelligence and national security in the country's history, not a single US official has been held accountable.
In Bloomberg's case, the concern is not protecting the families; after all, those who have intervened in the case have done so to demand that the tapes be made public, not suppressed. Rather, he is acting to protect his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, and the myth that has been so assiduously cultivated that the former mayor represented some kind of a hero and a paragon of leadership in the face of the terrorist attacks.
What the tapes demonstrate, once again, is that the disaster of September 11, 2001 was compounded by the city's failure to provide its emergency service personnel with an adequate communications network to cope with such a large-scale incident.
As the tapes painfully make clear, those who called 911 from the towers were routed to police operators, who had to transfer them to fire and ambulance dispatchers, compelling them to give the same information all over again, because the police and fire computer systems had no link.
The police operators and fire and ambulance dispatchers--following the standard protocol for high-rise fires--told those in the towers to "stay put," because they had no way of communicating with police and fire chiefs on the scene, who had already ordered the World Trade Center's evacuation. It will never be known whether more people could have escaped had such information been available.
Even more egregious was the situation facing firefighters who responded to the trade center, who were unable to communicate either with the Police Department, whose helicopter units had warned the buildings were going to fall, or in many cases with their own commanders who had given the order to evacuate.
The reason for this fatal failure was that fire personnel were using the same antiquated "handie-talkie" radios that had already proven unworkable during a previous truck bombing in the World Trade Center in 1993.
Family members of over a dozen firefighters who perished on September 11, 2001 sued the city over the radios, charging that the faulty devices were to blame for firefighters in the North Tower not responding to an evacuation order after the South Tower had collapsed. It is estimated that 121 of them died when the second tower came down. A federal judge, however, dismissed the suit on the grounds that the families had forfeited the right to sue the city because they had filed claims with the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund.
Why didn't the firefighters have equipment that worked? The Giuliani administration had in fact bought new radios less than a year before the September 11 attacks. The $33 million deal was struck with Motorola Corporation under a no-bid contract.
The radios, which were bought sight-unseen and without the field-testing that is required under the Fire Department's regulations, were designed for use by intelligence agencies, with encryption functions that have no use in firefighting.
These radios were issued to firefighters and then recalled within barely one week after widespread failures, including one in which a probationary firefighter nearly lost his life.
While New York's firefighter unions called for a grand jury investigation into the deal, a convincing explanation of why these radios were purchased in this extraordinary manner has never been forthcoming. The transaction is consistent with a number of contracts struck by the Giuliani administration with the apparent aim of rewarding political allies or currying favor within Republican circles as part of the mayor's positioning himself for a run for national office.
The end result was that firefighters--many of whom were resting after climbing up flights of stairs of the North Tower--did not have radios that could pick up the order to get out of the building.
In a despicable attempt to cover up his own responsibility, Giuliani has endlessly extolled the firefighters' undoubted bravery, falsely claiming that they deliberately ignored the evacuation order because they were "standing their ground" against the terrorists. In his book Leadership, he went so far as to compare them to the captain who prefers to "go down with the ship."
Today, some four and a half years after September 11, the Fire Department is utilizing the faulty Motorola radios, which have been reprogrammed but still cause problems. The company has discontinued their production because of design flaws. Police and fire dispatchers in New York City remain on different computer systems, thereby retaining the delays and duplication reflected in the 911 tapes. According to the city, remedying this problem will take at least another three years.
Given this record, Bloomberg's uncompromising opposition to the release of the 911 tapes is readily understandable. They draw attention once again to what is at the very least the city's extreme negligence, and, in the case of the Giuliani administration's FDNY radio contract, suspicion of criminality.
On a more fundamental level, there is a general determination within ruling circles to as much as possible suppress information about the September 11, 2001 events, while utilizing them as a justification for carrying out sweeping changes in government policy.
In the absence of a serious, objective investigation, a myth has been promoted, centered on the claims that no one could have anticipated such attacks and that they were carried out without any forewarning to the US government. Within this myth, Giuliani has been assigned the iconic role of the inspirational leader who led the heroic response of the firefighters and other emergency responders.
None of these claims stand up to detailed examination. While the heroism of the firefighters who went into the burning towers--343 of whom never came out--is unquestionable, Giuliani's legacy is mired in incompetence and possible corruption that contributed to their deaths.
Even less credible is the claim that vast US national security apparatus knew nothing in advance about a major terrorist plot that the Bush administration immediately exploited in order to implement its longstanding plans for a war against Iraq.
Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
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3. DeLay Implicated in Florida Gangland Hit of Casino Boats Owner.
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WAYNE MADSEN REPORT
"From Deep Inside the Washington Beltway"
April 4, 2006
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com
By Wayne Madsen
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Former GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay's surprise announcement that he will resign from Congress in a few weeks and not stand for re-election after winning the GOP primary in his Houston area district came after a bombshell was dropped in the Broward County, Florida trial of former John Gotti hit man Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello for the February 2001 gangland slaying of Sun Cruz casino boat owner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis. Moscatiello is on trial with Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari and James "Pudgy" Fiorillo in the murder of Boulis.
On April 1, the Miami Herald reported that Moscatiello was a long time informant for the FBI at the time of the murder of Boulis. Moscatiello quit his association with the the FBI shortly after the murder of Boulis. Recently convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his colleague Adam Kidan forced Boulis to sell Sun Cruz Casino Cruises to them in a scheme engineered by Gov. Jeb Bus to establish a GOP money launcering contrivance. The state pressured Boulis, a Greek national, to sell Sun Cruz to Abramoff because of an obscure state requirement that shipping companies be owned by U.S. citizens. Jeb Bush, using Florida's regulatory mechanisms behind the scenes, ensured Boulis was pressured to divest his interests in Sun Cruz to Abramoff.
WMR sources report that Broward County prosecutors are livid about the failure of the FBI to inform them that Moscatiello was an FBI informant at the time of the Boulis murder. They are convinced that the George W. and Jeb Bush administrations in Washington and Tallahassee, respectively, deliberately blocked the prosecution from linking Moscatiello to the criminal cases against Abramoff and Kidan. Kidan placed Moscatiello and Ferrari on the Sun Cruz payroll after Abramoff assumed control of the company. Abramoff and Kidan were sentenced to over 5 years in prison last week for lying to financers in their purchase of Sun Cruz from Boulis. The light sentences were the result of plea agreements in which they promised to cooperate with federal prosecutors.
However, the Sun Cruz case goes far beyond Abramoff and involves DeLay, according to informed sources. The Broward County prosecutors believe that the FBI's written summaries (FD-302s) of their interviews with Moscatiello were withheld from the prosecution by the FBI in order to protect senior GOP officials. Had the prosecution known Moscatiello was an FBI informer, he could have been offered a plea bargain in return for his cooperation against Republican politicians in Florida and Washington, DC.
Prosecutors and investigative reporters in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are focusing on the time line involving Sun Cruz, Boulis, Abramoff, and DeLay. In February 2000, Abramoff began negotiations with Boulis for the sale of Sun Cruz, which Boulis eventually sold to Abramoff for a mere $147 million. At the time, Abramoff was a lobbyist for the well-connected Preston Gates law firm. After the November 2000 election of George W. Bush, Boulis protested that he had been defrauded by Abramoff and Kidan in the sale of Sun Cruz. To avoid legal issues, Abramoff and Kidan began to make legal moves to move Sun Cruz's corporate headquarters from Florida to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas.
On December 13, 2000, Abramoff's Sun Cruz paid $145,000 to Moscatiello for "consulting services." On January 19, 2001, one day prior to the inauguration of George W. Bush, Boulis filed court action to block Abramoff's and Kidan's involvement with Sun Cruz. On January 20, 2001, Kidan and former DeLay aide Michael Scanlon met in DeLay's congressional office in Washington to "officially" celebrate the Bush inauguration. Scanlon, former DeLay aide Tony Rudy, Abramoff, and Kidan are all cooperating with federal prosecutors after agreeing to plea agreements.
On January 25, 2001, Abramoff reportedly flew DeLay's senior staffer Tim Berry, named his chief of staff in 2002, to Tampa for the Super Bowl and a meeting on one of the Sun Cruz casino boats. Suspiciously, Berry did not report the trip on disclosure forms, something DeLay's office later called an "honest mistake."
On February 6, 2001, Boulis was shot to death in his car after leaving his Fort Lauderdale office. Florida prosecutors have uncovered preliminary evidence that Sun Cruz was wrested from Boulis to enable hundreds of millions of dollars in cash could be laundered into GOP campaigns, including the DeLay and Bush-Cheney 2004 campaigns, from the casino boats.
Copyright 2006 Wayne Madsen Report. All rights reserved.
*****
THE CONSORTIUM FOR INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
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- Monday, April 3, 2006 -
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4. Condi, War Crimes & the Press.
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By Robert Parry
http://consortiumnews.com/2006/040306.html
During the three years of carnage in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has shifted away from her now-discredited warning about a "mushroom cloud" to assert a strategic rationale for the invasion that puts her squarely in violation of the Nuremberg principle against aggressive war.
On March 31 in remarks to a group of British foreign policy experts, Rice justified the U.S.-led invasion by saying that otherwise Iraqi President Saddam Hussein "wasn't going anywhere" and "you were not going to have a different Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the center of it." [Washington Post, April 1, 2006]
Rice's comments in Blackburn, England, followed similar remarks during a March 26 interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" in which she defended the invasion of Iraq as necessary for the eradication of the "old Middle East" where a supposed culture of hatred indirectly contributed to the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"If you really believe that the only thing that happened on 9/11 was people flew airplanes into buildings, I think you have a very narrow view of what we faced on 9/11," Rice said. "We faced the outcome of an ideology of hatred throughout the Middle East that had to be dealt with. Saddam Hussein was a part of that old Middle East. The new Iraq will be a part of the new Middle East, and we will all be safer."
But this doctrine -- that the Bush administration has the right to invade other nations for reasons as vague as social engineering -- represents a repudiation of the Nuremberg Principles and the United Nations Charter's ban on aggressive war, both formulated largely by American leaders six decades ago.
Outlawing aggressive wars was at the center of the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II, a conflagration that began in 1939 when Germany's Adolf Hitler trumped up an excuse to attack neighboring Poland. Before World War II ended six years later, more than 60 million people were dead.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who represented the United States at Nuremberg, made clear that the role of Hitler's henchmen in launching the aggressive war against Poland was sufficient to justify their executions -- and that the principle would apply to all nations in the future.
"Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions," Jackson said.
"Let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose, it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment," Jackson said.
With the strong support of the United States, this Nuremberg principle was then incorporated into the U.N. Charter, which bars military attacks unless in self-defense or unless authorized by the U.N. Security Council.
Nervous Blair
This fundamental principle of international behavior explains why British Prime Minister Tony Blair was so set on a Security Council vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq or at least indisputable evidence that Iraq remained a serious military threat to other countries. Based on internal British legal opinions, Blair knew the invasion would be illegal.
This concern led the Bush administration to hype evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, which included Rice's famous declaration that she didn't want the "smoking gun" evidence of Hussein's WMD to be "a mushroom cloud."
Bush even considered staging his own casus belli by tricking Iraq into firing on a U-2 reconnaissance plane painted with U.N. colors to win U.N. backing for attacking Iraq, according to minutes of a Jan. 31, 2003, meeting in the Oval Office that involved Bush, Blair and senior aides, including then-national security adviser Rice.
Despite Bush's promise at that meeting to "twist arms and even threaten" other nations, the United States couldn't bully a majority of the U.N. Security Council into supporting an invasion, especially with Iraq giving U.N. weapons inspectors free rein to search suspected WMD sites and with nothing found.
On March 19, 2003, Bush chose to press ahead with the invasion anyway, ousting Hussein's government three weeks later but then stumbling into a bloody insurgency that has now pushed the nation to the brink of civil war. Tens of thousands of Iraqis -- possibly more than 100,000 -- have died, along with more than 2,300 U.S. troops.
U.S. arms inspectors also failed to find any caches of WMD. Other allegations about Hussein's supposed collaboration with al-Qaeda also proved unfounded. Gradually, Rice and other senior Bush aides shifted their rationale from Hussein's WMD to a strategic justification, that is, politically transforming the Middle East.
This new rationale -- essentially an assertion of a special U.S. right to invade and occupy any country that is perceived as an obstacle to U.S. goals in the world -- is a spin-off of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century of the 1990s.
"In neoconservative eyes, the Iraq war was not about terrorism; it was about the pivotal relationship between Saddam Hussein and the assertion of American power," Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke observed in their book, America Alone. "Hussein provided, in effect, the opportunity to clarify American global objectives and moral obligations."
The PNAC architects saw Hussein as a blot on American global dominance because he had survived standoffs with the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration. His removal would demonstrate that overt resistance to America's permanent status as the world's uni-polar power had dire consequences.
Hesitant Nation
But the American public was less eager to support, either in treasure or blood, such an open declaration of imperial designs. So, the invasion of Iraq was repackaged as defensive, to protect the American people from even a more devastating 9/11 attack.
In late 2002 and early 2003, the Bush administration and its media allies also demonstrated their dominance of the domestic political scene, unleashing a war fever inside the United States in support of Bush's Iraq War claims.
The few voices of political dissent, such as former Vice President Al Gore, were drowned out in ridicule or under accusations of treason. When a singer in Dixie Chicks dared criticize Bush, trucks were driven over the group's CDs.
Cautionary advice from longtime allies, such as France and Germany, was greeted with fury, too. "French fries" were renamed "freedom fries," and Bush enthusiasts poured French wine into gutters.
The U.S. national press corps also bent under these waves of jingoism. The New York Times and the Washington Post put stories supporting Bush's Iraq War claims on the front page while burying or killing articles that questioned the case for war. MSNBC's Phil Donahue was fired for allowing too many war critics on his show.
Even when Bush's pre-war WMD claims proved false, the U.S. news media played down disclosures that put Bush in a negative light. In 2005, major news outlets shunned revelations in the so-called Downing Street Memo, which quoted the chief of British intelligence as saying in July 2002 that the pro-war intelligence was being "fixed."
Similarly, in early 2006, the big U.S. newspapers were slow to react to another leaked British memo of the Jan. 31, 2003, Oval Office meeting at which Bush plotted ways to trick and bully the world into supporting the Iraq invasion. The memo, which appeared in the British press in early February 2006, finally reached the New York Times' front page almost two months later, on March 27, 2006.
Rice Infatuation
Now, the U.S. news media is turning a blind eye to Rice's revamped war rationale. There has been virtually no commentary in the mainstream press about the extraordinary assertion by a Secretary of State that the United States has the right to invade other countries as a means to eradicate something as vague as "an ideology of hate."
Far more press attention is paid to Rice's stylish clothing and her future job prospects, from her professed interest in becoming National Football League commissioner to speculation that she will be part of the next Republican presidential ticket.
Indeed, the attitude of the major U.S. news media -- by not objecting to Rice's hazy doctrine -- seems to be that there is nothing morally or legally wrong with invading a country that isn't threatening the United States.
For instance, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, who beat the drum often for the Iraq War, penned an opinion piece criticizing congressional Democrats for not embracing Bush's vision of striking out preemptively as part of "a long struggle" against "a new totalitarian ideology" in the Islamic world.
"The Democrats implicitly reject almost everything the Bush administration says about how Sept. 11 changed the world, or our perception of it," Hiatt wrote in an article entitled "Democrats' Narrow Vision." [Washington Post, April 3, 2006]
Yet implicit in the U.S. news media's non-coverage of Rice's new rationale for war is that there is nothing objectionable or alarming about the Bush administration turning its back on principles of civilized behavior promulgated by U.S. statesmen at the Nuremberg Tribunal six decades ago.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Copyright 2006 The Consortium for Independent Journalism
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INTER PRESS SERVICE
International: Politics: U.S.
April 5, 2006
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32779
Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, California, Apr 5 (IPS) - Charismatic televangelist John Hagee thinks that the Rev. Pat Robertson's suggestion that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was payback from God for withdrawing from Gaza was "insensitive and unnecessary". But he nevertheless appears to share Robertson's concern that Israel may be giving up too much land to the Palestinians.
To prevent the George W. Bush administration from pressuring the Israelis into turning over even more land, Hagee, the pastor of San Antonio's Cornerstone Church and the head of a multi-million-dollar evangelical enterprise, recently brought together 400 Christian evangelical leaders -- representing as many as 30 million Christians -- for an invitation-only "Summit on Israel".
The result was the launch of a new pro-Israel lobbying group called Christians United for Israel (CUFI).
By 2002, a number of veteran Christian conservative evangelical leaders and Republican Party power brokers had joined forces with conservative Jewish leaders to launch several pro-Israel organisations. But the history of Jewish-evangelical involvement goes back several decades.
According to Rabbi James Rudin, writing in his recently published book, "The Baptising of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of U.S.," "the first [modern] evangelical-Jewish meeting" took place in New York in 1975.
A bevy of issues including "the meaning of Messiah in both traditions, Jesus the Jew, biblical theology and the meaning of modern Israel and Jerusalem for Christian conservatives and Jews" were discussed.
Rudin points out that "the evangelical commitment to Israel creates some... ambivalence" in the Jewish community, since that "commitment" is built on the biblical belief that "without an Israel, an ingathering of Jewish exiles, [the] major event in Christian eschatology [the Second coming of Jesus to Jerusalem] cannot take place."
"That is why some evangelicals are dismayed at any Israeli withdrawal or disengagement from any area of the biblical 'Holy Land.' That is also why the strong Christian conservative support of Israel is not linked to Middle East realpolitik or America's growing thirst for Arab oil," Rudin says.
Although not as well known on the national political scene as some of his evangelical brethren, Hagee has built an impressive evangelical empire and developed strong political ties to the Republican Party.
Since his 1978 "conversion" to Zionism, he has emphasised establishing and maintaining good relations with Israeli leaders and conservative sectors of the U.S. Jewish community. Over the years he has met with Israeli heads of state and carved out a special relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party performed dismally in the recent elections in Israel.
"Think of CUFI as a Christian version of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)," the powerful pro-Israel lobby, Hagee told The Jerusalem Post in an interview a few days before his February summit. "We need to be able to respond instantly to Washington with our concerns about Israel. We must join forces to speak as one group and move as one body to [respond to] the crisis Israel will be facing in the near future."
While Hagee wouldn't spell out which particular crisis he was concerned with, he did tell the Israeli newspaper that "'the Bible issue', namely what he considers to be the mistaken policy of trading parts of the biblical Land of Israel for peace", was at the top of CUFI's list.
"Every state in the Union, every congressional district" will be accounted for, Hagee added.
A post-meeting report at the John Hagee Ministries website said that Christians United for Israel had put together a national board consisting of Hagee as national chairman, fundamentalist minister Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, president of American Values, and Pastor George Morrison of Arvada, Colorado.
Christians United for Israel intends to establish a 50-state rapid-response network that aims to reach every senator and congressman in the U.S. The organisation is also concerned with "protecting marriage, family and faith", Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, reported.
Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg of San Antonio's Congregation Rodfei Sholom attended the meeting and called it a historic gathering. Scheinberg told the San Antonio Express-News that "It's the first nationwide effort I know of to unify evangelical leaders in support of Israel. These leaders who participated speak for millions of people. This organisation has phenomenal potential in supporting, defending and advocating for Israel."
Pastor Hagee and Rabbi Scheinberg go way back. In a story entitled "Our Jewish Roots" published in JHMagazine, Hagee tells of a June 1978 visit to Israel where he "went ... as a tourist and came home a Zionist." When he returned home he decided to organise "A Night to Honour Israel." According to Hagee's account, Rabbi Scheinberg "pressed the Jewish Community into taking a chance and extending its hand in mutual friendship."
The rabbi, pictured with Hagee in several photographs in JHMagazine, delivered the benediction at the first "A Night to Honour Israel" event in 1981, and has been a regular participant ever since.
Members of CUFI intend to meet with "legislators in Washington for two days in July to tell them about the organisation and its platform, and express their support for Israel," according to Haaretz. In addition, the "A Night to Honor Israel" event will be expanded and held in several cities simultaneously.
CUFI's website maintains that the group was founded "to provide a national organisation through which every pro-Israel organisation and ministry in America can speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to Biblical issues".
"We see Christians in the United States as true friends and important supporters on the basis of shared values, and we welcome their efforts to strengthen the ties between Israel and the U.S.," said Israeli Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon.
In addition to running San Antonio's well-attended Cornerstone Church, Hagee heads up the multimillion-dollar evangelism enterprise called Global Evangelism Television. Over four decades, members of his ministry have donated millions to carry out his mission.
Global Evangelism Television has become a massive money-making family enterprise which brings in millions of dollars year after year by selling inspirational books, tapes and the promise of prosperity.
Hagee is the author of a number of books including "Attack on America -- New York, Jerusalem, and the role of Terrorism in the Last Days", and "The Beginning of the End -- The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist". His latest non-fiction book is called "Jerusalem Countdown -- A Warning to the World", which landed on best-seller lists.
The new book posits that "biblical prophecy is playing itself out daily in the Middle East," Agape Press, a Christian-based news service, reported. "Hagee says Iran's new president, coupled with... [the] victory by terrorist-backed Hamas in the Palestinian elections, paves the way for an impending war in the region."
In addition to spearheading the launch of Christians United for Israel, and appearing on a panel at the recent National Religious Broadcasters convention, Hagee has aligned himself with a number of Christian right evangelicals that condemned the Evangelical Climate Initiative, signed by 86 evangelical leaders acknowledging the seriousness of global warming and pledging to press for legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.
Copyright 2006 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.
*****
TRUTHOUT
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Los Angeles CA, 90014
Editor, Marc Ash
Tel: 1.213.489.1971
E-mail: ma@truthout.com
- Tuesday, 04 April 2006 -
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6. How Massacres Become the Norm.
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Perspective
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040406Z.shtml
By Dahr Jamail
US soldiers killing innocent civilians in Iraq is not news. Just as it was not news that US soldiers slaughtered countless innocent civilians in Vietnam. However, when some rare reportage of this non news from Iraq does seep through the cracks of the corporate media, albeit briefly, the American public seems shocked. Private and public statements of denial and dismissal immediately start to fill the air. We hear, "American soldiers would never do such a thing," or "Who would make such a ridiculous claim?"
It amazes me that so many people in the US today somehow seriously believe that American soldiers would never kill civilians. Despite the fact that they are in a no-win guerrilla war in Iraq which, like any other guerrilla war, always generates more civilian casualties than combatant casualties on either side.
Robert J. Lifton is a prominent American psychiatrist who lobbied for the inclusion of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders after his work with US veterans from Vietnam. His studies on the behavior of those who have committed war crimes led him to believe it does not require an unusual level of mental illness or of personal evil to carry out such crimes. Rather, these crimes are nearly guaranteed to occur in what Lifton refers to as "atrocity-producing situations."
Several of his books, like The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, examine how abnormal conditions work on normal minds, enabling them to commit the most horrendous crimes imaginable.
Iraq today is most certainly an "atrocity-producing situation," as it has been from the very beginning of the occupation.
The latest reported war crime, a US military raid on the al-Mustafa Shia mosque in Baghdad on March 26th, which killed at least 16 people, is only one instance of the phenomena that Lifton has spoken of.
An AP video of the scene shows male bodies tangled together in a bloody mass on the floor of the Imams' living quarters - all of them with shotgun wounds and other bullet holes. The tape also shows shell casings of the caliber used by the US military scattered about on the floor. An official from the al-Sadr political bloc reported that American forces had surrounded the hospital where the wounded were taken for treatment after the massacre.
The slaughter was followed by an instant and predictable disinformation blitz by the US military. The second ranking US commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, told reporters "someone went in and made the scene look different from what it was."
On March 15th, 11 Iraqis, mostly women and children, were massacred by US troops in Balad. Witnesses told reporters that US helicopters landed near a home, which was then stormed by US troops. Everyone visible was rounded up and taken inside the house where they were killed. The victims' ages ranged from six months to 75 years.
The US military acknowledged the raid, but claimed to have captured a resistance fighter and insisted that only four people had been killed. Their claim would have held good but for the discrepancies that the available evidence presents. For one, the photographs that the AP reporter took of the scene reveal a collapsed roof, three destroyed cars and two dead cows. The other indictment comes from the detailed report of the incident prepared by Iraq Police. It matches witness accounts and accuses the American troops of murdering Iraqi civilians.
"The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men. Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed the animals." The report includes the observation of local medics that all of the bodies had bullet wounds in the head.
Ahmed Khalaf, the nephew of one of the victims said, "The killed family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children. The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death." AP photos of the aftermath showed the bodies of five children, two men and four others covered in blankets being driven to a nearby hospital.
Reminiscent of Vietnam?
Another appalling example of the effect of an "atrocity-producing situation" was experienced last November 19th in Haditha. American troops, in retaliation against a roadside bomb attack, stormed nearby homes and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a three-year-old girl.
US military response? All 15 civilians were killed by the blast of the roadside bomb.
In this case, reality refuted their claim when a student of journalism from Haditha showed up with a video tape of the dead, still in their nightclothes.
Killing Iraqis in their homes and while they are in bed is not news either, for during the aftermath of the November 2004 assault on Fallujah, scores of Iraqis were killed by US soldiers in this manner.
Neither is it news that the US military regularly targets ambulances and medical infrastructure. Khaled Ahmed Rsayef, whose brother and six other relatives were killed by the troops, vividly described the blind frustration of the American soldiers and their impulsive revenge at losing one of their own. "American troops immediately cordoned off the area and raided two nearby houses, shooting at everyone inside. It was a massacre in every sense of the word," said Rasayef. While he was not present at the scene, his 15-year-old niece was and her story was corroborated by other residents of the area who witnessed the carnage.
A quick scan of some Arab media reportage for last month exposes further atrocities carried out by US forces in Iraq which find no mention in the corporate media.
March 20, the Daily Dar Al-Salam reported: "US forces destroyed houses in Hasibah and displaced the inhabitants. Also, a source at Abu Ghurayb Secondary School said that US forces raided the school for the third time and arrested the guard."
In December 2003, I personally witnessed US soldiers raid a secondary school in the al-Amiriyah district of Baghdad and detain 16 children.
March 19, Al-Arabia reported: "In another development, seven people, including a woman, were killed in a raid carried out by joint American-Iraqi forces in Al-Dulu'iyah at dawn today. The US Army has so far not confirmed this information."
March 9, Al Sharqiyah Television reported: "US troops opened fire at a civilian vehicle as it passed by Al-Hadba district in the western part of Mosul, northern Iraq. The three occupants of the vehicle were martyred in the incident."
Throughout the three-year history of the US-led catastrophe that is the occupation of Iraq, we have had one instance after another of brutality meted out to innocent Iraqis, by way of direct executions or bombings from the air, or both.
During an attack on a wedding party in May 2004, US troops killed over 40 people, mostly women and children, in a desert village on the Syrian border of Iraq.
APTN footage showed fragments of musical instruments, blood stains, the headless body of a child, other dead children and clumps of women's hair in a destroyed house that was bombed by US warplanes. Other photographs showed dead women and children, and an AP reporter identified at least 10 of the bodies as those of children. Relatives who gathered at a cemetery outside of Ramadi, where all the bodies were buried, told reporters that each of the 28 fresh graves contained between one and three bodies.
The few survivors of the massacre later recounted how in the middle of the night long after the wedding feast had ended, US jets began raining bombs on their tents and houses.
Mrs. Shihab, a 30-year-old woman who survived the massacre, told the Guardian, "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one." She added that she ran with her two little boys before they were all shot, including herself in the leg. "I left them because they were dead," she said of her two little boys, one of whom was decapitated by a shell. "I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me."
Thereafter, armored military vehicles entered the village, shooting at all the other houses and the people who were starting to assemble in the open. Following these, two Chinook helicopters offloaded several dozen troops, some of who set explosives in one of the homes and a building next to it. Both exploded into rubble as the helicopters lifted off.
Mr. Nawaf, one of the survivors, said, "I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world. There were children's bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces. The Americans call these people foreign fighters. It is a lie. I just want one piece of evidence of what they are saying."
Hamdi Noor al-Alusi, the manager of al-Qa'im general hospital, the nearest medical facility to the scene of the slaughter, said that of the 42 killed, 14 were children and 11 women. "I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village," he said, "These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?"
As usual, the US military ran a disinformation campaign saying the target was a "suspected safe-house" for foreign fighters and denied that any children were killed. The ever pliant US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters that the troops who reported back from the operation "told us they did not shoot women and children."
Topping his ridiculous claim was the statement of Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. "How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilization?"
Perhaps someone should have informed him that these farmers and nomads often "go to the middle of the desert" because they happen to live there.
"These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naÃve," Mattis stated before being asked by a reporter to comment on the footage on Arabic television which showed a child's body being lowered into a grave. His brilliant response was: "I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men."
If the US were a member of the International Criminal Court, Maj. Gen. Mattis may well have been in The Hague right now being tried for aiding and abetting war crimes. How can someone holding an official position like Mattis publicly sanction atrocities?
It is about unnatural responses such as these that Dr. Lifton has written extensively. In a piece he wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine in July 2004, Lifton addressed the issue of US doctors being complicit in torturing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. This article sheds much light on the situation in Iraq. If we substitute "doctors" with "soldiers" it is easy to understand why American soldiers are regularly committing the excesses that we hear of.
Lifton writes, "American doctors at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere have undoubtedly been aware of their medical responsibility to document injuries and raise questions about their possible source in abuse. But those doctors and other medical personnel were part of a command structure that permitted, encouraged, and sometimes orchestrated torture to a degree that it became the norm - with which they were expected to comply - in the immediate prison environment."
He continues, "The doctors thus brought a medical component to what I call an "atrocity-producing situation" - one so structured, psychologically and militarily, that ordinary people can readily engage in atrocities. Even without directly participating in the abuse, doctors may have become socialized to an environment of torture and by virtue of their medical authority helped sustain it. In studying various forms of medical abuse, I have found that the participation of doctors can confer an aura of legitimacy and can even create an illusion of therapy and healing."
I have personally experienced this. Standing with US soldiers at checkpoints and perimeters of operations in Iraq, I have seen them curse and kick Iraqis, heard them threatening to kill even women and children and then look at me as if they had merely said hello to them. My status of journalist did not deter them because they saw no need for checks.
Having stood with soldiers anticipating that each moving car would turn into a bomb and each passerby into a suicide bomber, I have tasted the stress and fear these soldiers live with on a daily basis. When one of their fellow soldiers is killed by a roadside bomb, the need for revenge may be directed at anything. And repeated often enough, the process gets socialized.
It's about this attitude brought on by the normalization of the abnormal under "atrocity-producing situations" that Dr. Lifton speaks. Unless of course we consider Mattis and others like him to be rare sociopaths who are able to participate in atrocities without suffering lasting emotional harm.
And it is this attitude that is responsible for the incessant replication of wanton slaughter and madness in Iraq today.
Back in November of 2004, I wrote about 12-year-old Fatima Harouz. She lay dazed in a crowded room in Yarmouk Hospital in Bahgdad, feebly waving her bruised arm at flies. Her shins had been shattered by bullets from US soldiers when they fired through the front door of her home in Latifiya, a small city just south of Baghdad. Small plastic drainage bags filled with red fluid sat upon her abdomen, where she took shrapnel from another bullet.
Her mother, who was standing with us, said, "They attacked our home and there weren't even any resistance fighters in our area." Her brother had been shot and killed, and his wife was wounded as their home was ransacked by soldiers. "Before they left, they killed all of our chickens," she added, her eyes a mixture of fear, shock and rage.
On hearing the story, a doctor looked at me sternly and asked, "This is the freedom ... in their Disney Land are there kids just like this?"
Another wounded young woman in a nearby hospital bed, Rana Obeidy, had been walking home with her brother. She assumed the soldiers shot her and her brother because he was carrying a bottle of soda. This happened in Baghdad. She had a chest wound where a bullet had grazed her, unlike her little brother, whom the bullets had killed.
There exist many more such cases. Amnesty International has documented scores of human rights violations committed by US troops in Iraq during the first six months of the occupation. To mention but a few:
US troops shot dead and injured scores of Iraqi demonstrators in several incidents. For example, seven people were reportedly shot dead and dozens injured in Mosul on 15 April.
At least 15 people, including children, were shot dead and more than 70 injured in Fallujah on 29 April.
Two demonstrators were shot dead outside the Republican Palace in Baghdad on 18 June.
On 14 May, two US armed vehicles broke through the perimeter wall of the home of Sa'adi Suleiman Ibrahim al-'Ubaydi in Ramadi. Soldiers beat him with rifle butts and then shot him dead as he tried to flee.
US forces shot 12-year-old Mohammad al-Kubaisi as they carried out search operations around his house in the Hay al-Jihad area in Baghdad on 26 June. He was carrying the family bedding to the roof of his house when he was shot. Neighbors tried to rush him to the nearby hospital by car, but US soldiers stopped them and ordered them to go back. By the time they returned to his home, Mohammad al-Kubaisi was dead.
On 17 September, a 14-year-old boy was killed and six people were injured when US troops opened fire at a wedding party in Fallujah.
On 23 September, three farmers, 'Ali Khalaf, Sa'adi Faqri and Salem Khalil, were killed and three others injured when US troops opened a barrage of gunfire reportedly lasting for at least an hour in the village of al-Jisr near Fallujah. A US military official stated that this happened when the troops came under attack but this was vehemently denied by relatives of the dead. Later that day, US military officials reportedly went to the farmhouse, took photographs and apologized to the family.
This last incident ended in a way similar to the one I covered in Ramadi in November, 2003. On the 23rd of that month during Ramadan, US soldiers raided a home where a family was just sitting down together to break their fast.
Three men of the family had their hands tied behind them with plastic ties and were laid on the ground face down while the women and children were made to stand inside a nearby storage closet.
Khalil Ahmed, 30 years old, the brother of two of the victims and cousin with a third, wept when he described to me how after executing the three men the soldiers completely destroyed the home, using Humvees with machine guns, small tanks, and gunfire from the many troops on foot and helicopters.
"We don't know the reason why the soldiers came here. They didn't tell us the reason. We don't know why they killed our family members." Khalil seemed to demand an answer from me. "There are no weapons in this house, there are no resistance fighters. So why did these people have to die? Why?"
Khalil told me that the day after the executions took place, soldiers returned to apologize. They handed him a cake saying they were sorry that they had been given wrong information by someone that told them there were resistance fighters in their house.
This is only a very small sampling. The only way to prevent any of this from being repeated ad infinitum is to remove US soldiers from their "atrocity-producing situation" in Iraq. For it is clearer than ever that the longer the failed, illegal occupation persists, the larger will be the numbers of Iraqis slaughtered by the occupation forces.
Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who spent over 8 months reporting from occupied Iraq. He presented evidence of US war crimes in Iraq at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York City in January 2006. He writes regularly for TruthOut, Inter Press Service, Asia Times and TomDispatch, and maintains his own web site, dahrjamailiraq.com.
Copyright 2006 TruthOut.org
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- Monday, 3 April 2006 -
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7. Five New Titles from Kersplebedeb.
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Spring Greetings!
I figured i should let all of you know -- i have just received five new titles which i am adding to my catalog. I like them all, but i am particularly excited about Dan Berger's new book Outlaws of America, and also the swag of remaindered copies of Hauling Up The Morning which i scored -- i didn't know if i'd ever be able to get more copies of this hard to find classic, but i did!
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Dreams of Freedom; A Ricardo Flores Magon Reader, edited by Chaz Bufe and Mitchell Cowen Verter.
For the first time the writings of this contemporary of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa have been published in English. Includes a lengthy biographical sketch that places Magon's work in historical context, a comprehensive chronology, bibliography, and an introduction by Benjamin Maldonado.
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Outlaws of America; The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity, by Dan Berger.
The best book devoted to the Weather Underground so far. Berger is both sympathetic and critical of Weather, but from a left-wing perspective. Unlike other authors who have tackled this subject, Berger is not interested in whining about Weather's adopting armed struggle against the United States government, but rather examines their successes and failures in living up to their own standards, specifically in regards to anti-racism and anti-sexism. An excellent book.
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The Trouble With Music, by Mat Callahan, with a foreword by Boff Whalley of Chumbawamba.
An anarchist looks at music and what it is becoming under capitalism. An interesting read.
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Hauling Up the Morning/Izando la Manana, edited by Tim Blunk, Ray Luc Levasseur and the editors of Jacobin Books, with an introduction by Assata Shakur.
Writings & art by political prisoners and prisoners of war in the United States. Includes paintings (reproduced in colour!), poetry, essays and prose by dozens of imprisoned revolutionaries in the United States. Published in 1990, this is truly a historic book! For more information about this book, visit http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/hauling.html
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Women, Development and Labor of Reproduction: Struggles and Movements, edited by Mariarosa Dalla Costa & Giovanni F. Dalla Costa.
An international, feminist anti-capitalist look at reproductive politics. Contributors include Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis.
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*****
The Empire of Fear.
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 3/15/06]
Source: Afrikan Frontline Network, nattyreb@comcast.net
- Sunday, 2 April 2006 -
As these words are written, reports are emerging of the FBI surveilling the Pittsburgh-based Thomas Merton Center, a pacifist, and anti-war group, named after the late Trappist monk and writer, Thomas Merton (1915-1968).
The news of surveillance of the center, discovered after the center's lawyer filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, reminded me, once again, that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Reading from the broadcast copies of the newly-released documents, under the heading of 'anti-terrorist' surveillance, one must be reminded of the efforts of the FBI in the late 1960s, where, under the ruse of 'anti-communism', peace groups were subjected to relentless surveillance.
Indeed, according to Frank Donner's exhaustive "The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System" (New York: Vintage Books/Random House,1981), the abilities of a single FBI (and Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police) informer, one Robert Merritt, showed this tactic's dangerous potential. Merritt spied on at least 28 separate political, social, and radical groups. Among the overtly anti-Vietnam War groups were:
Anti-War Union Coalition of National Priorities and Military Policy [and]: People's Coalition for Peace and Justice [from: Donner, p. 153.]
Among the other groups subject to informer surveillance, were: The Academy of Political Science, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, "The Advocate" (a publication of the National Law Center at Washington University), the Black Peoples' Party, the Children's March for Survival, Common Cause, "The Furies" (a radical, feminist publication), Community Bookstore, the D.C. Statehood Party, the Howard University Committee to Free Angela Davis, the Tenant's Rights Workshop, and Rap, Inc., (a local drug rehabilitation program), among other groups.
What this shows us, is that anybody, and everybody was suspect, -- and subject -- to informants, and government surveillance.
Here we go again.
And, again, thanks to the utility of fear, we are seeing how virtually silent people are in this asphyxiation of the alleged that constitutional rights of the People.
When the Thomas Merton Center is under surveillance because of government suspicion of ties to terrorism, then we are seeing the outer limits of the arrogance of power.
Secret prisons, secret prisoners, gulags of torture and death and the Caribbean, Afghanistan and Iraq, black sites in Eastern Europe -- and silence?
Every age is its own. It would be silly to hope for the rebirth of the '60s in this day and time. And yet, the time will surely come, when children will look to their parents and grandparents, and ask 'what did you do, Mommy, when dictatorship came?'
"What did you do, when people were thrown into torture chambers?"
"What did you do when people were sent overseas to be tortured?"
"What did you do when the Congress betrayed the Constitution?"
What did you do?
What are you doing?
Fear immobilizes; that is its intent.
But hope opens up, as spring opens up the earth.
Don't recreate the '60s. Make this moment, this day, this era, one of speaking out against the Empire. Make it a time for joining together with others who share your fears, and your hopes.
Make it an age of marching against the madness that assaults our senses.
Make it a chance for change, or it will be with us, forever.
Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights reserved.
Mr. Jamal's new work, WE WANT FREEDOM: A Life in the Black Panther Party, is now available from South End Press, Cambridge, MA. (http://www.southendpress.org).
Check out Mumia's NEW book: "Faith of Our Fathers: An Examination of the Spiritual Life of African and African-American People": http://www.africanworld.com.
These are VERY SERIOUS TIMES for political activists in this country and around the world. Get full details and keep updated by reading ACTION ALERTS!! at http://www.mumia.org and http://www.movenet.org.
To download Mp3's of Mumia's commentaries visit http://www.prisonradio.org or http://www.fsrn.org
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
CHECK http://www.mumia.org FOR IMPORTANT ACTION ALERTS!
PLEASE CONTACT: International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ; P.O. Box 19709; Philadelphia, PA 19143; Tel: 215-476-8812; Fax: 215-476-6180: E-mail: icffmaj@aol.com AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal/AM 8335/SCI-Greene/175 Progress Drive/Waynesburg, PA 15370
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN NOT REST!!
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News * Analysis * Research * Action
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- AFIB No. 705, March 19, 2006 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
...the Pentagon has unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use of nuclear weapons for the "defense of the American Homeland: against "terrorists" and "rogue enemies." ... Nuclear weapons are now presented as a means to building peace and preventing "collateral damage." The Pentagon has intimated, in this regard, that the "mini-nukes" are harmless to civilians because the explosions "take place under ground." Each of these "mini-nukes," nonetheless, constitutes--in terms of explosive capacity and potential radioactive fallout--a significant fraction of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The mini-nukes have an explosive capacity between one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb. In the case of "small" 5 and 10 kiloton bombs, the explosive capacity is respectively one third and two thirds of a Hiroshima bomb. -- Michel Chossudovsky, America's War On Terrorism [Pincourt, QC, Global Research, 2005] p. 270.
Contents: Number 705
*****
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
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E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Saturday, 18 March 2006 -
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1. Amid Mounting Sectarian Violence,
Political Stalemate Continues in Iraq.
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News & Analysis: Middle East: Iraq
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/ira2-18m.shtml
By Peter Symonds
Three months after the Iraqi national elections, no new government has been formed in Baghdad. The deadlock between two communally-based blocs of parties is just one more symptom of the political and social catastrophe that the Bush administration has created in the three years since its criminal invasion of Iraq.
The Iraqi National Assembly met for the first time on Thursday for a formal swearing in, amid escalating sectarian violence, a deepening social crisis and a major US air and ground assault near the city of Samarra. As part of elaborate security measures surrounding the meeting, US and Iraqi security forces clamped a no-drive curfew throughout the city beginning Wednesday evening.
The session, which was held inside the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Central Baghdad, lasted barely 30 minutes and made no decisions other than to assign the post of assembly speaker, temporarily, to the veteran Sunni politician Adnan Pachachi.
Pachachi summed up the prevailing mood of pessimism. "The country is going through dangerous times, it faces challenges, and the perils come from every direction. Sectarian tensions have increased. We have to prove to the world that there will not be civil war between the people of the country. The danger is still there, and our enemies are watching us," he declared, before being cut off by a rival Shiite leader.
Since the bombing of the Al-Askariya mosque in Samarra on February 22, hundreds, if not thousands, of people have been slaughtered by Shiite and Sunni militia in a wave of attacks and reprisals. As well as indiscriminate bombings, many of the victims have been tortured and killed execution-style.
Baghdad authorities announced on Tuesday that the bodies of 86 men had been found in the previous two days in different parts of the city. Most had been shot or strangled. Last Sunday, an apparently coordinated assault on the working class Shiite suburb of Sadr City, involving rockets, bombs and mortars, killed 52 people and injured nearly 300.
In a bid to stamp its authority on the deteriorating situation, the US military launched a major offensive on Thursday near Samarra. Described by US officials as the largest air assault since the 2003 invasion, the operation, coded-named "Swarmer", involved 1,500 US and Iraqi troops and hundreds of armoured vehicles, as well as attack helicopters and air transport.
None of the Iraqi politicians, who gathered behind protective barricades in the Green Zone, can address the disaster facing the Iraqi people. All of the parties, except two Sunni-based formations, supported the US invasion and have participated in the puppet regimes that have sanctioned the US occupation and its ongoing campaign of military repression.
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad bluntly spelled out the political prerequisite for participation in the next Baghdad government when he chided Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for his rather empty public appeals for US withdrawal. In a "message" to al-Sadr in the al-Hayat newspaper, Khalilzad bluntly declared: "You cannot be a part of the government, while at the same time you issue statements demanding that we leave."
Al-Sadr, whose movement clashed with the US military in 2004, has now thrown his political weight behind the Shiite-based United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) and the current prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Jaafari, who is also the UIA's nominee as the next prime minister, is opposed by an alliance involving the two Sunni parties, the Kurdish Alliance (KA) and the National Iraqi List of long-time CIA asset Iyad Allawi.
All of these leaderships are under intense pressure from their social base to improve the appalling living conditions facing the majority of the population. The universal character of this popular hostility was highlighted by a violent protest this week in Halabja in the Kurdish north, previously regarded as the most stable region of the country.
Hundreds of Halabja residents, protesting over poor housing and the lack of water and electricity, set fire to a memorial erected to the 1988 poison gas attack on the town by the Iraqi army that left more than 5,000 dead. "[Kurdish] officials visit Halabja just for the publicity. Halabja looks the same as the day it was attacked," a shopkeeper told the press. Kurdish security forces opened fire on the protest, killing at least one man and wounding eight others.
Having no solution to this social crisis, the KA, like its Shiite and Sunni counterparts, shamelessly resorts to stirring up communal tensions to shore up its base of support and to advance the narrow interests of the Kurdish ruling cliques. One of the main KA demands is for the northern city of Kirkuk and its adjacent oil-rich districts to be included in an autonomous Kurdish region--a demand that Jaafari, backed by the Sadrist movement, has adamantly opposed.
It is impossible, however, to explain the current standoff over the next government simply from the competing communal and sectarian interests of the venal ruling cliques in Iraq. The incongruous character of these alliances is perhaps best illustrated by the coalition between two Sunni parties--the Iraqi Consensus Front and the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue--that have connections to the anti-occupation insurgency, and Iyad Allawi, who as prime minister gave the green light for US military's levelling of the Sunni town of Fallujah in 2004.
Above all, the decisions about the next Iraqi government will be made in Washington, not Baghdad. Having relied on Jaafari and the UIA to help wage a dirty war of attrition against the predominantly-Sunni armed resistance, the Bush administration has switched tack. As it provokes a new confrontation with neighbouring Iran, Washington is concerned about the loyalties of the Shiite parties, all of which, to a lesser or greater degree, have ties with Tehran.
The current deadlock between the UIA and its rivals is the product of US efforts to cut the Shiite parties down to size and to include approved Sunni parties in the next Iraqi government--a tactic that is also aimed at politically dividing the anti-occupation resistance. All of this cynical manoeuvring, which is being overseen by US ambassador Khalilzad, is carried out under the fraudulent banner of forming "a national unity government". Khalilzad, who is one of the Bush administration's chief political fixers, played the same role in Afghanistan where he secured the installation of US puppet Hamid Karzai as president.
Khalilzad's behind-the-scenes efforts to bully, bribe and cajole the Iraqi parties to accept Washingtonâ·s plan intensified last week. Having broken the Kurdish parties away from their previous alliance with the UIA, he has engineered a situation where neither bloc has the necessary two-thirds of assembly seats to elect the president and two vice-presidents, who in turn select the prime minister.
After a series of "make or break" meetings of political leaders that began last Sunday, Khalilzad told the New York Times that he felt the "logjam" had been broken "because people realised that if one side has red lines, all sides will have red lines". His main "success" appears to have been to get al-Sadr's supporters to drop their opposition to the inclusion of Allawi, who sanctioned the bloody US attacks on the Sadrist militia in Najaf in 2004.
In the present highly-charged sectarian climate, however, the UAI is still unwilling to make major concessions. As a result, Khalilzad, with the approval of the White House, has taken the extraordinary step of seeking talks with top Iranian officials--even as Washington is menacing Iran with sanctions and military strikes. For its part, Tehran has quickly modified its anti-US bluster and declared its willingness to discuss how to assist Washington in maintaining its occupation of Iraq.
Any "national unity government" formed under these circumstances will inevitably be a highly unstable formation, which, far from ending sectarian conflict, will only inflame the tensions that are plunging the country towards civil war. All of this makes a mockery of the absurd claims of the Bush administration to be moving towards "democracy" in Iraq. Washington's chief objective remains the same as three years ago: to subjugate Iraq and its people in order to loot its oil and to transform the country into a base of operations for its broader strategic and economic ambitions throughout the region.
Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
*****
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ONLINE JOURNAL
Special Reports
March 15, 2006
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_598.shtml
By Nicolas J S Davies
Online Journal Contributing Writer
The annual U.S. State Department report on human rights for 2005 has acknowledged that the governing institutions created by the United States in Iraq are engaged in an organized campaign of detention and torture.
The State Department report found, "Police abuses included threats, intimidation, beatings, and suspension by the arms or legs, as well as the reported use of electric drills and cords and the application of electric shocks."
A U.N. human rights report issued last September also found evidence of extrajudicial executions, "Corpses appear regularly in and around Baghdad and other areas. Most bear signs of torture and appear to be victims of extrajudicial executions ... Serious allegations of extrajudicial executions underline a deterioration in the situation of law and order ... Accounts consistently point to the systematic use of torture during interrogations at police stations and within other premises belonging to the Ministry of the Interior."
Dr. John Pace, who wrote the U.N. report, has now left Iraq, and reports that 23,000 people are currently imprisoned in detention centers where torture is rife, and that at least 80 percent of them are innocent of any crime.
These reports acknowledge what a small number of journalists have been reporting for at least two years, that a brutal "dirty war" has grown out of the fertile soil of the U.S. occupation. On March 15, 2004, the New Statesman published an article by Stephen Grey, titled "Rule of the Death Squads," about the murder of Professor Abdullatif al-Mayah in Baghdad on January 19, 2004, 12 hours after he had appeared on Al-Jazeera to denounce the corruption of the Iraqi Governing Council.
Grey quoted a senior commander at the headquarters of the U.S.-installed Iraqi police, "Dr. Abdullatif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the street here. He made some politicians quite jealous . . . You can look no further than the Governing Council. There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived to Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies. They are killing people one by one."
On January 16, 2005, USA Today reported on the work of Isam al-Rawi, a geology professor who heads the Iraqi Association of University Lecturers. He had been cataloging assassinations of academics in occupied Iraq and had documented 300 of them by the time of the article. He was unable to identify a clear pattern to the killings, except that, like Professor al-Mayah, the victims were usually the most respected and popular members of their universities and their communities.
The killing of academics has continued, and the minister of education stated recently that 296 faculty and staff members at universities in Iraq were killed in 2005. The Brussels Tribunal on Iraq has forwarded a list of murdered academics to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions, noting that the victims were from different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds, but were mostly vocal opponents of the U.S. occupation.
On January 14, 2005, Newsweek reported on "The Salvador Option," the proposed use of death squads as part of the U.S. strategy to subdue the country. A U.S. military source told Newsweek, "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists. From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation." This source was expressing quite precisely the rationale that lay behind the dirty wars in Latin America and the worst abuses of the Vietnam War. The purpose of such a strategy is not to identify, detain and kill actual resistance fighters, but rather to terrorize an entire civilian population into submission.
The exile groups who began this dirty war in the early days of the occupation have come to form the core of successive governing institutions established by the United States. Their campaign of killing and torture has evolved and become institutionalized and their victims now number in the thousands. The State Department and U.N. reports do not address the possibility of a direct U.S. role in the campaign, but the Interior Ministry units that are most frequently implicated in these abuses were formed under U.S. supervision and have been trained by American advisors. The identities of their two principal advisors only reinforce these concerns. They are retired Colonel James Steele and former D.E.A. officer Steven Casteel, and they are both veterans of previous dirty wars.
In El Salvador between 1984 and 1986, Colonel Steele commanded the U.S. Military Advisor Group, training Salvadoran forces that conducted a brutal campaign against the civilian population. At other stages in his career, he performed similar duties during U.S. military operations in Cambodia and Panama. After failing a polygraph test, he confessed to Iran-Contra investigators that he had also shipped weapons from El Salvador to Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, leading Senator Tom Harkin to block his promotion to Brigadier General. Until April 2005, Steele was the principal U.S. advisor to the Iraqi Interior Ministry's "Special Police Commandos," the group most frequently linked to torture and summary executions in recent reports.
Steven Casteel worked in Colombia with paramilitaries called Los Pepes that later joined forces to form the A.U.C. in 1997, and have been responsible for most of the violence against civilians in Colombia. Casteel is now credited with founding the Special Police Commandos in his capacity as senior advisor to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
Assigning responsibility for atrocities to particular units or individuals is complicated by the dual nature of the Iraqi security forces, which take orders both from their nominal superiors and from separate chains of command in the factional militias that most of them belong to. Ultimate responsibility for abuses is thus blurred by the fiction of the "government" and the militias as distinct entities, when the same people are really involved in both all the way to the top.
However, reports of torture and extrajudicial killings have followed the Special Police Commandos around the country wherever they have been deployed, from Anbar province and Mosul since October 2004, to Samarra in March 2005, to areas around Baghdad since April 2005. The U.N. report highlighted 36 bodies found near Badhra, close to the Iranian border, on August 25, 2005, who were identified by relatives as men who had been arrested by Interior Ministry forces in Baghdad.
A second group of 22 young men whose bodies were found near Badhra on September 27 had been arrested in Baghdad on August 18. Fifty police vehicles full of Special Police Commandos swept through the Iskan neighborhood early that morning seizing young men from their homes. At their funeral, the cleric declared "They took them from their bedrooms. We blame the government, which came to save us from Saddam's terrorism but has brought terrorism worse than Saddam."
After Special Police Commandos were first deployed in Baghdad in April, 14 farmers were found in a shallow grave on May 5, 2005, with their right eyeballs removed and other signs of torture, after they were seen being arrested at a vegetable market. Another incident 10 days later, in which eight bodies were found in a garbage dump, prompted Hareth al-Dhari, the secretary general of the Association of Muslim Scholars, to accuse the Interior Ministry directly. "This is state terrorism by the Ministry of Interior," he claimed. The defense minister responded by blaming "terrorists wearing military uniforms."
Then there is the work and tragic death of Yasser Salihee, the Iraqi physician turned journalist, who dared to launch an investigation into abuses by the Special Police Commandos. Knight Ridder posthumously published his work under the title "Sunni men in Baghdad targeted by attackers in police uniforms" on June 27, 2005. The cautious language of the report verged on irony, but it described eyewitness accounts of numerous abductions by "large groups of men driving white Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The men were wearing police commando uniforms and bulletproof vests, carrying expensive 9-millimeter Glock pistols and using sophisticated radios."
Knight Ridder interviewed Steven Casteel for their story. He blamed the killings on "insurgents" impersonating commandos. As the article pointed out, this raised "troubling questions about how insurgents are getting expensive new police equipment. The Toyotas, which cost more than $55,000 apiece, and Glocks, at about $500 each, are hard to come by in Iraq, and they're rarely used by anyone other than Western contractors and Iraqi security forces."
Faik Baqr, the director of the central morgue in Baghdad, would only tell Knight Ridder, "It is a very delicate subject for society when you are blaming the police officers . . . It is not an easy issue. We hear that they are captured by the police and then the bodies are found killed . . . it's obviously increasing." Mr. Baqr recently fled the country after receiving a succession of death threats. Dr. Pace, the U.N. human rights officer who visited the Baghdad morgue regularly, has said that sometimes as many as 80 percent of the bodies in the morgue showed signs of torture.
Yasser Salihee was shot by a U.S. sniper on his way to get gas to drive his family to a swimming pool on his day off. His editor in Washington, Steve Butler, told me he had no reason to think Yasser's death was connected to his work, and the U.S. Army's account of the incident described a "random" shooting based only on rules of engagement that greatly prioritize American over Iraqi lives. However, as Italian investigators found in the case of Nicola Calipari, U.S. accounts of such incidents are not reliable, and U.S. links to the forces Dr. Salihee was investigating cast a dark shadow over his death.
The Iraqi death squads have also killed an American journalist. Steven Vincent was an award-winning art critic from New York who went to Iraq as a freelance writer for National Review, The Wall Street Journal & Harpers, and wrote a book, In the Red Zone, about the experiences of Iraqis living under occupation. On July 29, 2005, he wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times that many of the police in Basra were also active in Shiite militias that had killed hundreds of Sunnis in the city. Four days later, he was abducted by a group of men in a brand new white Chevy pick-up with police markings. His body was found by the side of a road outside the city with three gunshot wounds to the chest.
In recent weeks, U.S. forces have freed prisoners from Interior Ministry prisons and rescued a Sunni prisoner en route to his execution. U.S. officials have made strong statements condemning human rights abuses by their Iraqi allies. It appears that the "Salvador Option," like so many U.S. policies born of ignorance of local conditions in Iraq, has spun out of control to the point that U.S. officials now feel obliged to restrain it. Or, as so often in the history of U.S. covert action, different factions in the bureaucracy of the occupation may actually be working both with and against the death squads, making an absurdity of any singular explanation of U.S. policy.
Iraqis question whether the chaos unleashed on their country by the United States is the result of incompetence, as most Americans assume, or of a more sinister and deliberate design to destroy their country and society. In fact, setting aside the privatized paradise of Western investment envisioned by a few neoconservative dreamers, U.S. goals in Iraq are fairly limited and don't have much to do with the people of Iraq at all. They can be summarized as "lily pads" (U.S. bases) and oil, and a "government" in the Green Zone to legitimize access to both. The fate of the Iraqi people is only a major concern to U.S. policymakers to the extent that it threatens to impact these primary goals.
Viewed from this perspective, the reactive twists and turns of U.S. policy in Iraq since March 2003 make a lot more sense: abandoning all but the oil ministry to looting; failing to "reconstruct" anything but the Green Zone and U.S. bases; the alternating marginalization and rehabilitation of different political and sectarian figures and groups; the seemingly counter-productive collective punishment and brutalization of the population; and, underlying everything, the political division of the country along sectarian and ethnic lines and the manipulation of these divisions to prevent the formation of a government that rejects U.S. objectives.
In this context, whether U.S. policymakers realized it or not, a smashed Iraq was always going to serve U.S. goals better than a resurgent, independent Iraq under any government. The dirty war advances U.S. policy by terrorizing the population, as explained in the Newsweek article, but also by transforming nationalist resistance into internecine conflict between Iraqis, leaving U.S. forces secure in their bases. Indeed, U.S. casualty figures have fallen as Iraqi casualties have increased since the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra three weeks ago.
Assassinations of academics, doctors and local leaders and the resultant exodus of the professional class deprive the country of the intellectual and political resources that might arrest the slide into chaos and impotence. Iraqi novelist Haifa Zangana wrote in an op-ed piece in the Guardian, "For the occupation's aims to be fulfilled, independent minds have to be eradicated. We feel that we are witnessing a deliberate attempt to destroy intellectual life in Iraq."
Should the U.S. permit the dirty war to escalate further, whether by miscalculation or simply as the best option in terms of its primary goals, the history of U.S. military and covert operations in other countries suggests that the U.S. will then escalate its own violence beyond all previous restraints. The U.S. Air Force has reported that air strikes intensified in late 2005 from 25 to 145 strikes per month, and U.S. Special Forces Command is redeploying AC-130 Specter gunships to Iraq, an ominous sign of what is to come. Rumsfeld wants his lily pads and the oil companies want their oil, and what U.S. soldiers see when they look out beyond the walls of their "crusader castles" is of secondary importance to U.S. policy. The tragedy for the people of Iraq is that, whether this policy ultimately achieves any of its goals or not, they will continue to be its victims.
Copyright 1998-2006 Online Journal
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3. Task Force 6-26: Before and After Abu Ghraib,
a U.S. Unit Abused Detainees.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
International: Middle East
March 19, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.html
By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL
As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.
The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.
Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.
The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.
It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world.
The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib.
The abuses at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from an Army investigator and American intelligence and law enforcement officials in Iraq. The C.I.A. was concerned enough to bar its personnel from Camp Nama that August.
It is difficult to compare the conditions at the camp with those at Abu Ghraib because so little is known about the secret compound, which was off limits even to the Red Cross. The abuses appeared to have been unsanctioned, but some of them seemed to have been well known throughout the camp.
For an elite unit with roughly 1,000 people at any given time, Task Force 6-26 seems to have had a large number of troops punished for detainee abuse. Since 2003, 34 task force members have been disciplined in some form for mistreating prisoners, and at least 11 members have been removed from the unit, according to new figures the Special Operations Command provided in response to questions from The New York Times. Five Army Rangers in the unit were convicted three months ago for kicking and punching three detainees in September 2005.
Some of the serious accusations against Task Force 6-26 have been reported over the past 16 months by news organizations including NBC, The Washington Post and The Times. Many details emerged in hundreds of pages of documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union. But taken together for the first time, the declassified documents and interviews with more than a dozen military and civilian Defense Department and other federal personnel provide the most detailed portrait yet of the secret camp and the inner workings of the clandestine unit.
The documents and interviews also reflect a culture clash between the free-wheeling military commandos and the more cautious Pentagon civilians working with them that escalated to a tense confrontation. At one point, one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's top aides, Stephen A. Cambone, ordered a subordinate to "get to the bottom" of any misconduct.
Most of the people interviewed for this article were midlevel civilian and military Defense Department personnel who worked with Task Force 6-26 and said they witnessed abuses, or who were briefed on its operations over the past three years.
Many were initially reluctant to discuss Task Force 6-26 because its missions are classified. But when pressed repeatedly by reporters who contacted them, they agreed to speak about their experiences and observations out of what they said was anger and disgust over the unit's treatment of detainees and the failure of task force commanders to punish misconduct more aggressively. The critics said the harsh interrogations yielded little information to help capture insurgents or save American lives.
Virtually all of those who agreed to speak are career government employees, many with previous military service, and they were granted anonymity to encourage them to speak candidly without fear of retribution from the Pentagon. Many of their complaints are supported by declassified military documents and e-mail messages from F.B.I. agents who worked regularly with the task force in Iraq.
A Demand for Intelligence
Military officials say there may have been extenuating circumstances for some of the harsh treatment at Camp Nama and its field stations in other parts of Iraq. By the spring of 2004, the demand on interrogators for intelligence was growing to help combat the increasingly numerous and deadly insurgent attacks.
Some detainees may have been injured resisting capture. A spokesman for the Special Operations Command, Kenneth S. McGraw, said there was sufficient evidence to prove misconduct in only 5 of 29 abuse allegations against task force members since 2003. As a result of those five incidents, 34 people were disciplined.
"We take all those allegations seriously," Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the commander of the Special Operations Command, said in a brief hallway exchange on Capitol Hill on March 8. "Any kind of abuse is not consistent with the values of the Special Operations Command."
The secrecy surrounding the highly classified unit has helped to shield its conduct from public scrutiny. The Pentagon will not disclose the unit's precise size, the names of its commanders, its operating bases or specific missions. Even the task force's name changes regularly to confuse adversaries, and the courts-martial and other disciplinary proceedings have not identified the soldiers in public announcements as task force members.
General Brown's command declined requests for interviews with several former task force members and with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who leads the Joint Special Operations Command, the headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., that supplies the unit's most elite troops.
One Special Operations officer and a senior enlisted soldier identified by Defense Department personnel as former task force members at Camp Nama declined to comment when contacted by telephone. Attempts to contact three other Special Operations soldiers who were in the unit â· by phone, through relatives and former neighbors â· were also unsuccessful.
Cases of detainee abuse attributed to Task Force 6-26 demonstrate both confusion over and, in some cases, disregard for approved interrogation practices and standards for detainee treatment, according to Defense Department specialists who have worked with the unit.
In early 2004, an 18-year-old man suspected of selling cars to members of the Zarqawi terrorist network was seized with his entire family at their home in Baghdad. Task force soldiers beat him repeatedly with a rifle butt and punched him in the head and kidneys, said a Defense Department specialist briefed on the incident.
Some complaints were ignored or played down in a unit where a conspiracy of silence contributed to the overall secretiveness. "It's under control," one unit commander told a Defense Department official who complained about mistreatment at Camp Nama in the spring of 2004.
For hundreds of suspected insurgents, Camp Nama was a way station on a journey that started with their capture on the battlefield or in their homes, and ended often in a cell at Abu Ghraib. Hidden in plain sight just off a dusty road fronting Baghdad International Airport, Camp Nama was an unmarked, virtually unknown compound at the edge of the taxiways.
The heart of the camp was the Battlefield Interrogation Facility, alternately known as the Temporary Detention Facility and the Temporary Holding Facility. The interrogation and detention areas occupied a corner of the larger compound, separated by a fence topped with razor wire.
Unmarked helicopters flew detainees into the camp almost daily, former task force members said. Dressed in blue jumpsuits with taped goggles covering their eyes, the shackled prisoners were led into a screening room where they were registered and examined by medics.
Just beyond the screening rooms, where Saddam Hussein was given a medical exam after his capture, detainees were kept in as many as 85 cells spread over two buildings. Some detainees were kept in what was known as Motel 6, a group of crudely built plywood shacks that reeked of urine and excrement. The shacks were cramped, forcing many prisoners to squat or crouch. Other detainees were housed inside a separate building in 6-by-8-foot cubicles in a cellblock called Hotel California.
The interrogation rooms were stark. High-value detainees were questioned in the Black Room, nearly bare but for several 18-inch hooks that jutted from the ceiling, a grisly reminder of the terrors inflicted by Mr. Hussein's inquisitors. Jailers often blared rap music or rock 'n' roll at deafening decibels over a loudspeaker to unnerve their subjects.
Another smaller room offered basic comforts like carpets and cushioned seating to put more cooperative prisoners at ease, said several Defense Department specialists who worked at Camp Nama. Detainees wore heavy, olive-drab hoods outside their cells. By June 2004, the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib galvanized the military to promise better treatment for prisoners. In one small concession at Camp Nama, soldiers exchanged the hoods for cloth blindfolds with drop veils that allowed detainees to breathe more freely but prevented them from peeking out.
Some former task force members said the Nama in the camp's name stood for a coarse phrase that soldiers used to describe the compound. One Defense Department specialist recalled seeing pink blotches on detainees' clothing as well as red welts on their bodies, marks he learned later were inflicted by soldiers who used detainees as targets and called themselves the High Five Paintball Club.
Mr. McGraw, the military spokesman, said he had not heard of the Black Room or the paintball club and had not seen any mention of them in the documents he had reviewed.
In a nearby operations center, task force analysts pored over intelligence collected from spies, detainees and remotely piloted Predator surveillance aircraft, to piece together clues to aid soldiers on their raids. Twice daily at noon and midnight military interrogators and their supervisors met with officials from the C.I.A., F.B.I. and allied military units to review operations and new intelligence.
Task Force 6-26 was a creation of the Pentagon's post-Sept. 11 campaign against terrorism, and it quickly became the model for how the military would gain intelligence and battle insurgents in the future. Originally known as Task Force 121, it was formed in the summer of 2003, when the military merged two existing Special Operations units, one hunting Osama bin Laden in and around Afghanistan, and the other tracking Mr. Hussein in Iraq. (Its current name is Task Force 145.)
The task force was a melting pot of military and civilian units. It drew on elite troops from the Joint Special Operations Command, whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force, Navy's Seal Team 6 and the 75th Ranger Regiment. Military reservists and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel with special skills, like interrogators, were temporarily assigned to the unit. C.I.A. officers, F.B.I. agents and special operations forces from other countries also worked closely with the task force.
Many of the American Special Operations soldiers wore civilian clothes and were allowed to grow beards and long hair, setting them apart from their uniformed colleagues. Unlike conventional soldiers and marines whose Iraq tours lasted 7 to 12 months, unit members and their commanders typically rotated every 90 days.
Task Force 6-26 had a singular focus: capture or kill Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant operating in Iraq. "Anytime there was even the smell of Zarqawi nearby, they would go out and use any means possible to get information from a detainee," one official said.
Defense Department personnel briefed on the unit's operations said the harsh treatment extended beyond Camp Nama to small field outposts in Baghdad, Falluja, Balad, Ramadi and Kirkuk. These stations were often nestled within the alleys of a city in nondescript buildings with suburban-size yards where helicopters could land to drop off or pick up detainees.
At the outposts, some detainees were stripped naked and had cold water thrown on them to cause the sensation of drowning, said Defense Department personnel who served with the unit.
In January 2004, the task force captured the son of one of Mr. Hussein's bodyguards in Tikrit. The man told Army investigators that he was forced to strip and that he was punched in the spine until he fainted, put in front of an air-conditioner while cold water was poured on him and kicked in the stomach until he vomited. Army investigators were forced to close their inquiry in June 2005 after they said task force members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it impossible to identify and locate the soldiers involved. The unit also asserted that 70 percent of its computer files had been lost.
Despite the task force's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids were often dry holes, yielding little if any intelligence and alienating ordinary Iraqis, Defense Department personnel said. Prisoners deemed no threat to American troops were often driven deep into the Iraqi desert at night and released, sometimes given $100 or more in American money for their trouble.
Back at Camp Nama, the task force leaders established a ritual for departing personnel who did a good job, Pentagon officials said. The commanders presented them with two unusual mementos: a detainee hood and a souvenir piece of tile from the medical screening room that once held Mr. Hussein.
Early Signs of Trouble
Accusations of abuse by Task Force 6-26 came as no surprise to many other officials in Iraq. By early 2004, both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. had expressed alarm about the military's harsh interrogation techniques.
The C.I.A.'s Baghdad station sent a cable to headquarters on Aug. 3, 2003, raising concern that Special Operations troops who served with agency officers had used techniques that had become too aggressive. Five days later, the C.I.A. issued a classified directive that prohibited its officers from participating in harsh interrogations. Separately, the C.I.A. barred its officers from working at Camp Nama but allowed them to keep providing target information and other intelligence to the task force.
The warnings still echoed nearly a year later. On June 25, 2004, nearly two months after the disclosure of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, an F.B.I. agent in Iraq sent an e-mail message to his superiors in Washington, warning that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 had suspicious burn marks on his body. The detainee said he had been tortured. A month earlier, another F.B.I. agent asked top bureau officials for guidance on how to deal with military interrogators across Iraq who used techniques like loud music and yelling that exceeded "the bounds of standard F.B.I. practice."
American generals were also alerted to the problem. In December 2003, Col. Stuart A. Herrington, a retired Army intelligence officer, warned in a confidential memo that medical personnel reported that prisoners seized by the unit, then known as Task Force 121, had injuries consistent with beatings. "It seems clear that TF 121 needs to be reined in with respect to its treatment of detainees," Colonel Herrington concluded.
By May 2004, just as the scandal at Abu Ghraib was breaking, tensions increased at Camp Nama between the Special Operations troops and civilian interrogators and case officers from the D.I.A.'s Defense Human Intelligence Service, who were there to support the unit in its fight against the Zarqawi network. The discord, according to documents, centered on the harsh treatment of detainees as well as restrictions the Special Operations troops placed on their civilian colleagues, like monitoring their e-mail messages and phone calls.
Maj. Gen. George E. Ennis, who until recently commanded the D.I.A.'s human intelligence division, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in written responses to questions, General Ennis said he never heard about the numerous complaints made by D.I.A. personnel until he and his boss, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, then the agency's director, were briefed on June 24, 2004.
The next day, Admiral Jacoby wrote a two-page memo to Mr. Cambone, under secretary of defense for intelligence. In it, he described a series of complaints, including a May 2004 incident in which a D.I.A. interrogator said he witnessed task force soldiers punch a detainee hard enough to require medical help. The D.I.A. officer took photos of the injuries, but a supervisor confiscated them, the memo said.
The tensions laid bare a clash of military cultures. Combat-hardened commandos seeking a steady flow of intelligence to pinpoint insurgents grew exasperated with civilian interrogators sent from Washington, many of whom were novices at interrogating hostile prisoners fresh off the battlefield.
"These guys wanted results, and our debriefers were used to a civil environment," said one Defense Department official who was briefed on the task force operations.
Within days after Admiral Jacoby sent his memo, the D.I.A. took the extraordinary step of temporarily withdrawing its personnel from Camp Nama.
Admiral Jacoby's memo also provoked an angry reaction from Mr. Cambone. "Get to the bottom of this immediately. This is not acceptable," Mr. Cambone said in a handwritten note on June 26, 2004, to his top deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin. "In particular, I want to know if this is part of a pattern of behavior by TF 6-26."
General Boykin said through a spokesman on March 17 that at the time he told Mr. Cambone he had found no pattern of misconduct with the task force.
A Shroud of Secrecy
Military and legal experts say the full breadth of abuses committed by Task Force 6-26 may never be known because of the secrecy surrounding the unit, and the likelihood that some allegations went unreported.
In the summer of 2004, Camp Nama closed and the unit moved to a new headquarters in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad. The unit's operations are now shrouded in even tighter secrecy.
Soon after their rank-and-file clashed in 2004, D.I.A. officials in Washington and military commanders at Fort Bragg agreed to improve how the task force integrated specialists into its ranks. The D.I.A. is now sending small teams of interrogators, debriefers and case officers, called "deployable Humint teams," to work with Special Operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Senior military commanders insist that the elite warriors, who will be relied on more than ever in the campaign against terrorism, are now treating detainees more humanely and can police themselves. The C.I.A. has resumed conducting debriefings with the task force, but does not permit harsh questioning, a C.I.A. official said.
General McChrystal, the leader of the Joint Special Operations Command, received his third star in a promotion ceremony at Fort Bragg on March 13.
On Dec. 8, 2004, the Pentagon's spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said that four Special Operations soldiers from the task force were punished for "excessive use of force" and administering electric shocks to detainees with stun guns. Two of the soldiers were removed from the unit. To that point, Mr. Di Rita said, 10 task force members had been disciplined. Since then, according to the new figures provided to The Times, the number of those disciplined for detainee abuse has more than tripled. Nine of the 34 troops disciplined received written or oral counseling. Others were reprimanded for slapping detainees and other offenses.
The five Army Rangers who were court-martialed in December received punishments including jail time of 30 days to six months and reduction in rank. Two of them will receive bad-conduct discharges upon completion of their sentences.
Human rights advocates and leading members of Congress say the Pentagon must still do more to hold senior-level commanders and civilian officials accountable for the misconduct.
The Justice Department inspector general is investigating complaints of detainee abuse by Task Force 6-26, a senior law enforcement official said. The only wide-ranging military inquiry into prisoner abuse by Special Operations forces was completed nearly a year ago by Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica, and was sent to Congress.
But the United States Central Command has refused repeated requests from The Times over the past several months to provide an unclassified copy of General Formica's findings despite Mr. Rumsfeld's instructions that such a version of all 12 major reports into detainee abuse be made public.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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4. Pentagon Hired Contractor to Advise on Collecting Information
On Churches, Mosques, Other U.S. Sites.
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KNIGHT RIDDER WASHINGTON BUREAU
Top Stories
March 17, 2006
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14126125.htm
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on American anti-war activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.
MZM Inc., headed by Mitchell Wade, also received three contracts totaling more than $250,000 to provide unspecified "intelligence services" to the White House, according to documents obtained by Knight Ridder. The White House didn't respond to an inquiry about what those intelligence services entailed.
MZM's Pentagon and White House deals were part of tens of millions of dollars in federal government business that Wade's company attracted beginning in 2002.
MZM and Wade, who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials to steer work to his firm, are the focus of ongoing probes by Pentagon and Department of Justice investigators.
In February 2003, MZM won a two-month contract worth $503,144.70 to provide technical support to the Pentagon's Joint Counter-Intelligence Field Activity, or CIFA. The top-secret agency was created five months earlier primarily to protect U.S. defense personnel and facilities from foreign terrorists.
The job involved advising CIFA on selecting software and technology designed to ferret out commercial and government data that could be used in what's called a Geospatial Information System. A GIS system inserts information about geographic locations, such as buildings, into digital maps produced from satellite photographs.
According to a "statement of work," the data that CIFA was interested in obtaining included "maps, street addresses, lines of communication, critical infrastructure elements, demographic and other pertinent sources that would support geocoding and multi-level analysis."
Geocoding involves assigning latitudes and longitudes to locations, such as street addresses, so they can be displayed as points on maps. Such tools increasingly are being used by U.S. corporations and law enforcement agencies.
MZM was to "assist the government in identifying and procuring data" on maps, as well as "airports, ports, dams, churches/mosques/synagogues, schools (and) power plants," said the statement of work.
"In many cases, the government already owns such data, and for reasons of economy, government-owned data is preferred," said the statement. It isn't clear why U.S. intelligence agencies couldn't do the work themselves.
Navy Cmdr. Gregory Hicks, a Pentagon spokesman, said MZM began working on the project in October 2002, when the agency was created.
Its job was to help the agency integrate technology into its "information architecture to help CIFA use available (satellite) imagery, which is produced legally by other commercial and government agencies," Hicks said.
"GIS software ... is designed to allow integration of geographic and imagery data with threat information to provide complex analytic products," he said. "Not knowing the location of key infrastructure and points of interest, such as bridges, chemical plants, schools, parks, and even religious facilities, as they relate to threat information, could significantly affect the accuracy of such analysis and plans and lead to disastrous results."
He was unable to discuss further details of CIFA's dealings with MZM, citing the ongoing investigations into Wade's dealings with the Pentagon.
CIFA recently has come under fire following disclosures that it maintained information on individuals and groups involved in peaceful anti-war protests at defense facilities and recruiting offices.
The information was stored in a database that was supposed to be reserved for reports related to potential foreign terrorist activity.
In a March 8 letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a senior Pentagon official said that a review of the Cornerstone database had identified 186 "protest-related reports" containing the names of 43 people that were mistakenly retained in the database.
"These reports have since been removed from the Cornerstone database and refresher training on intelligence oversight and database management is being given to all CI (counter-intelligence) and intelligence personnel," said the letter from Robert W. Rogalski, an acting deputy undersecretary of defense.
The disclosure that CIFA was storing information on anti-war activities added to concerns that the Bush administration may have used its war on terrorism to give government agencies expanded power to monitor Americans' finances, associations, travel and other activities.
The administration's domestic eavesdropping program and FBI monitoring of environmental, animal rights and anti-war groups have also fueled such fears. The administration contends that its programs are legal and insists that they're designed to ensure civil liberties while protecting national security.
A Washington Post story last year contained a brief reference to the White House contracts in a report on the company's dealings with the Pentagon.
Wade, who faces up to 20 years in prison, was one of four men charged in the Cunningham case. Cunningham, who resigned from Congress in November after serving for 15 years, was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison earlier this month.
Copyright 2006 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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Tales of contract fraud, money laundering, Filipino house maids and massages,
Close White House and Pentagon friends, and a guy "too sexy for his shirt."
_________________________________________________________________________
WAYNE MADSEN REPORT
"From Deep Inside the Washington Beltway"
March 19, 2006
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com
By Wayne Madsen
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- GOP-connected contractor Custer Battles e-mail talks of Filipino house maids, fashion queens (in the manner of former FEMA Nordstrom shirt aficionado Michael Brown), and, more importantly, raising a $100 million fund to pursue non-government contracting work with "a lot less risk." Later, Custer Battles did attempt to negotiate a $100 million infusion from an unknown firm in Dubai after receiving $15 million in seed money from the benefactor. Custer Battles, Inc. was formed by former US Army Ranger Mike Battles and Scott Custer from a firm called Blue Sky. The firm soon became enmeshed in major contracting fraud in Iraq (see March 18 and 15 stories below for more on Custer Battles court testimony in Alexandria, Virginia).
Battles was an unsuccessful GOP House candidate in Rhode Island in 2002. Battles was also active with the conservative Council for Emerging National Security Affairs (CENSA), a group that advocated regime change in Iran, supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and argued that the Vietnam war was winnable. One of its board members was Lee Wolosky, who served in the National Security Council for both the first Bush and Clinton.
The Iraq invasion offered up the possibility for windfall financial gains for Battles and his partner Custer. WMR has obtained a September 10, 2003 e-mail from Custer to Battles that identifies two of the firm's close contacts within the Bush administration -- Al Kampanen, the White House representative at the Department of Defense, and Douglas Combs, the acting Undersecretary of the Navy. Combs was the Secretary of the Navy's Special Assistant for Business and Strategic Initiatives. These two Bush administration officials were discussing helping Custer Battles obtain contracts outside of Iraq after the firm's dubious accounting and billing practices attracted the attention of Coalition Provisional Authority and Department of Defense investigators and auditors.
The e-mail from Custer to Battles states, "I know you can't handle any more BD (business development) right now and I understand but we have to start planning for work outside Iraq. Al Kampanen, the White House rep at the Pentagon, who works directly for Rumsfeld, has asked me to come down and talk to him about our ability to work in Liberia and Afghanistan. He also is interested in our ability to do high risk embassy support. Doug Combs, now acting Undersecretary of the Navy, also called to see if he could 'help us grow' outside of Iraq."
Custer also informs Battles, "I would rather work the big business deals, relationships and concentrate on raising a $100 million dollar fund which will make us more money than we could ever make in govt [government] contracting with a lot less risk." According to the January 25, 2004 Providence Journal, Custer Battles received $15 million in seed money from a Dubai venture capital firm. The firm hoped to raise an additional $100 million for Custer Battles ventures in Iraq. Battles refused to disclose the name of the Dubai firm to the Journal.
The e-mail also discussed potential Custer Battles work for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It states, "A final issue is HR [human resources]. Do we need to hire an HR person or HR shop here in the states? I have zero confidence in Tony's ability to handle the staffing issues going forward especially if we get Basra, Mosul and/or USAID."
Custer also talk of including former Lebanese Shia Amal official Mohammed Darwish, the owner of Cyprus-based Laru, Ltd., into the Custer Battles organization and decision making process. "You are right that we need to figure out the Mohamed [Darwish] relationship. He does a lot of work that we don't have visibility over and he would do a bad job of keeping others in the loop. I know Mohamed is frustrated by the lack of organization and clearly outlined roles and responsibility. We have to remember that we could not be in Iraq if it were not for Mohamed's help on the first two trips. All and all it will come down to the fact that we can't back out on our deal with him and we have to integrate him into our team in a meaningful way." In January 2004, Darwish and Michel Mukattaf, a son-in-law of former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel and owner of a Lebanese currency exchange company, and Richard Jreisati, a former Lebanese military officer, were arrested by Lebanese authorities for attempting to smuggle a cache of 164 million in 25,000 Iraqi dinar notes into Lebanon from Baghdad Airport. Custer Battles had the Iraqi Currency Exchange (ICE) contract with the Coalition Provisional Authority and a major security contract for Baghdad Airport.
Custer also tells Battles, "We actually ordered 5 Filipino house workers, one for each bedroom! I'm actually not joking, except the bedroom part. Getting very concerned about the security situation, and while I have total confidence in Mort's staff I would not have any confidence in our new staff. We are going to bring in Flips [a pejorative term for Filipinos] to man the inside of the house, with the Sudanese and Iraqis being outside. Otherwise, we'd literally have to clear the house of boobytraps every time we left the house. Plus it will be great for parties, and Mercy can run herd." Custer concludes the e-mail, "As a reminder please send the RI [Rhode Island] water stuff and the rotation schedule so I can plan my return. Thanks again I know how hard you are working. Can I sleep in your bed while you are gone? Did you order my Pilipino masseuse?"
The e-mail continues to reveal the party atmosphere among the Custer Battles crew in Iraq. "I think we have a great brand in some young guys who just make things happen. There is no way that Fred (CAG [Civil Affairs Group] is now Project Right Said Fred for "I'm too sexy for my shirt" and shortened to Fred) would deal with Baumann [retired Brig. Gen. Charles Baumann, Custer Battles' contract director in Iraq] like they are with us..."
Click here, http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/custerbattles3.htm, for additional testimony in the Custer Battles case in US Federal Court in Alexandria, Virginia.
Copyright 2006 Wayne Madsen Report. All rights reserved.
*****
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6. Wayne Madsen Interview on KPOO's "Jumpstart" Program.
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THE WALTER BENJAMIN RESEARCH SYNDICATE
Saturday, March 18, 2006
http://www.wbenjamin.org/walterbenjamin.html
Joe Broadhurst of radio station CKUT has done an important interview with Wayne Madsen. It is archived on the radio4all.net website:
FMA on CKUT: Wayne Madsen Discusses DC Scandals: Update on Claude Allen, Libby & Gale Norton & more
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=17141&nav=&
This interview will be rebroadcast at 8:00 a.m. on "Jumpstart: A Wake-up Call for Thurs. Morning" on KPOO 89.5 FM San Francisco, 6 a.m. - 9. a.m.
To listen online, go to:
http://www.kpoo.com/hearus.html
*****
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THE MOSCOW TIMES
Global Eye
March 17, 2006
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/166688/
By Chris Floyd
Hardened cynics often accuse President George W. Bush of ruthlessly exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 to advance his preset agenda of killing a whole heap of foreigners. This is, of course, a calumnious slander against the Dear Leader's noble ambitions. For as he demonstrated last week, Bush is also exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 to advance his preset agenda of killing a whole heap of Americans as well.
In yet another one of those momentous degradations of public morality that go unremarked by the ever-vigilant watchdogs of the U.S. media, Bush slipped a measure into the revamped "Patriot [sic] Act" he signed last week that will allow him to expedite the death penalty process across the land, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
Prisoners just aren't being killed fast enough for ol' George, you see. They hang on for years and years, using all them lawyer tricks and court procedures, that DNA hocus-pocus and habeas corpus junk, or even new testimony showing they're innocent -- as if that mattered. No, you got to strap 'em down and shoot 'em up with that poison juice lickety-split, churn those convict corpses out like so much prime pork sausage, the way ol' George did it when he was head honcho down in Texas.
This remarkably vindictive and bloodthirsty measure -- which has absolutely nothing to do with the "war on terrorism" or "homeland security," the ostensible subjects of the Patriot Act -- strips the judiciary of its supervision over state-devised "fast-track" procedures to speed up the execution process. During the Reagan Administration, it became all the rage to "cut the red tape" that kept prisoners alive until the appeals process had run its course and determined there were no egregious errors in their cases before the government killed them. The red tape-cutting crusade was led by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who once ruled that even new proof of innocence was no bar to killing a prisoner if state courts had earlier upheld his conviction, the Washington Times reports. Urged on by Rehnquist -- who was executed by God last year -- several states went the fast-track route, limiting the time that prisoners have to file petitions and narrowing the range of factors that judges can consider in death-row appeals.
Unfortunately, America's courts were not yet fully packed with hard-right cadres, and even the vulturous Rehnquist couldn't keep them all in line. Fast-track options in state after state were struck down by federal judges because the fast-trackers' death-penalty systems were such a shambles, riddled with literally fatal incompetence. One glaring example could be found in -- where else? -- Texas, where Governor Bush was mowing them down on his way to becoming the greatest mass killer in modern U.S. history, with 152 notches on his belt.
Bush had set up a veritable execution assembly line in his fiefdom, assisted by his trusty legal aide, Alberto Gonzales. Knowing just what the boss wanted, Al would prepare dumbed-down capsules of death-penalty cases, stripping away pesky details like "ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence and even actual evidence of innocence," the Atlantic Monthly reports. Bush would "sometimes" bother to look at the reports, sometimes not, Gonzales said. In his six years as governor, Bush spared only one condemned prisoner from execution: the serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. All the rest -- including women, juvenile offenders and even the mentally retarded -- got the spike. Yet one in every eight death row inmates has been exonerated since the United States resumed the death penalty in 1976, the Washington Times reports -- an astonishing percentage of false imprisonment in capital cases. It is virtually impossible that Bush did not kill some innocent people with his relentless 152-1 execution ratio.
In 1996, the courts put a crimp in Bush's carnival of death, ruling that Texas failed to meet "minimum competency standards" for the fast-track system. He had to make do with the old-fashioned appeals process, which slowed but never stopped his killing spree: He averaged almost two executions per month during the course of his term. But he never forgot or forgave the judicial interference with his dominion over life and death. How it must have rankled, to think that this judicial brake on wholesale state-sponsored slaughter still existed in the Homeland, when he -- the great Commander, breaker of nations -- could now order the "extra-judicial killing" of anyone on earth whom he arbitrarily deemed a "terrorist" and send mighty armies to grind tens of thousands of people into bloody mulch. Who would dare put fetters on the godlike sway of the "unitary executive"?
So now he has taken his revenge. The backdoor measure in the Patriot Act decrees that responsibility for awarding fast-track death-penalty status to the states will now be the sole prerogative of the U.S. Attorney General -- one Alberto Gonzales. Yes, the fawning minion whose perversions of law on behalf of his boss have abetted war, torture, corruption, assassination, abduction, rendition, dictatorship and the slipshod Texas death machinery will now decide if states are scrupulous enough to resume lickety-split executions. You can hear those sausage grinders gearing up all over America.
God only knows what festering psychic wounds drive these spiritual cripples and their obsession with death. But for them, power isn't real unless it's written on the body of another human being -- a prisoner, guilty or not; an "enemy," real or imagined; or the multitude of slaughtered innocents whose only crime was living in a land that the cripples wanted to conquer.
Copyright 2006 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
*****
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News * Analysis * Research * Action
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- AFIB No. 704, March 15, 2006 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
In 1992, several thousand Islamic "holy warriors" entered Bosnia, mostly with accreditation to humanitarian organizations based in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Muslim countries. A principle channel for illegal arms smuggling into Bosnia was the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA)...to encourage the rebirth of Islam in Eastern Europe and the USSR. ... The Islamic recruits included veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and members of the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armee (GIA), held responsible for massive massacres of Algerian civilians. Described as "pretty good fighters and certainly ruthless" by U.S. officials, some 4,000 of these volunteers were assigned to the Bosnian army's 3rd Corps with headquarters in Zenica. A special "Al Mujahed" unit was registered in August 1993 under direct command of Itzetbegovic himself. The best-armed unit in the 3rd Corps, Al Mujahed was credited with the Muslims' greatest victories against the Serbs in the spring of 1995, as well as with the habit of beheading Serbian soldiers. The emir, of commander, of Al Mujahed during the successful 1995 campaign was an Algerian member of the GIA close to Osama bin Laden. -- Diana Johnstone, Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions [New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002] pp. 61-62.
Contents: Number 704
*****
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Tuesday, 14 March 2006 -
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1. Mystery Deepens Over Milosevic's Death.
Sordid end to "international justice" charade.
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News & Analysis: Europe: The Balkans
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/milo-m14.shtml
By Bill Van Auken
The controversy surrounding the sudden death of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in his jail cell at the Hague has only deepened with the autopsy performed in the Netherlands and the vague, self-serving statements made by officials of the UN war crimes tribunal.
After a Dutch toxicologist confirmed that the drug rifampicin--used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis--had been found in the 64-year-old Milosevic's blood, the UN authorities suggested he may have committed suicide or deliberately sought to injure his health in order to press his demand to receive treatment in Russia, where his wife and children now live.
Rifampicin counteracts the effects of medications Milosevic was taking to treat high blood pressure and heart disease. The autopsy concluded that the former Yugoslav president died of a heart attack.
Milosevic's lawyer insisted that his client did not self-administer the drug. "Mr. Milosevic said he never used any medicine against leprosy or tuberculosis," the lawyer, Zdenko Tomanovic, said Monday.
He also cited a letter Milosevic had sent to the Russian government the day before he was found dead in his cell, charging that he was being poisoned. "I am writing to you and asking you for help in protecting me from the criminal activities being perpetrated in the institution operating under the sign of the United Nations organization," the letter stated.
Tomanovic added, "One issue is whether Mr. Milosevic's claim that he was being poisoned is justified or not. The central issue is whether or not Mr. Milosevic had appropriate medical care."
This same charge was leveled against the UN war crimes tribunal by Serbian President Boris Tadic. "Undoubtedly, Milosevic had demanded a higher level of health care," he said. "That right should have been granted to all war crimes defendants."
Tadic, who was brought to power following demonstrations that toppled Milosevic in 2000, criticized the UN tribunal for its statements blaming Milosevic for his own death. "I think they are responsible for what happened," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced in Moscow that his government did not trust the autopsy on Milosevic commissioned by the UN and was sending its own team of doctors to the Hague to examine his body. He said Moscow was "disturbed" by the tribunal's decision to deny Milosevic's request to receive medical treatment in Russia. "It cannot fail to alarm us that Milosevic died shortly afterwards," he said.
Even the UN tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, while insisting that the death was the result of either natural causes or suicide, questioned why his deteriorating health was not detected in the course of frequent medical examinations. "It is very strange, even if it is of course possible, that he should have died so suddenly without these medics having noticed a worsening of his condition," she said.
Suicide appears highly unlikely. Milosevic was in the middle of mounting his defense against the 66-count indictment charging him with war crimes and genocide. He was attempting to turn the tables on his accusers, using the trial as a platform for indicting the US and other Western powers for waging a one-sided war against Yugoslavia in 1999 and promoting the secessions that broke the country apart in the years that preceded the US-NATO war.
Milosevic was acutely aware that his defense was being broadcast live to Serbia, where his attack on the legitimacy of the tribunal enjoyed significant support. He also continued to play an active role politically, through the Serbian Socialist Party, which consulted with him regularly on its policies.
In the weeks before his death, he had asked the tribunal to subpoena Bill Clinton, who was the US president throughout the wars in the Balkans, and retired general Wesley Clark, who commanded the NATO forces that conducted a 78-day bombing campaign which claimed thousands of lives and wrecked much of the country's infrastructure. The former US president and the ex-general--both leading Democrats--are among the chief beneficiaries of Milosevic's sudden demise.
Amid the media's ubiquitous references to Milosevic as the "Butcher of the Balkans" and statements of regret about his death cheating "justice," there is barely a critical word to be found about the war launched by the Clinton administration almost exactly seven years ago. It was very much a liberals' war, with Clinton administration officials smugly proclaiming it the first military intervention launched for purely "humanitarian" purposes--a war to defend human rights and halt ethnic cleansing. These pretexts, used in a well-orchestrated media campaign to generate support for the US intervention, played much the same role in American propaganda as "weapons of mass destruction" would in the next major US military aggression.
The Guardian newspaper, the mouthpiece of British liberalism and a firm advocate of "humanitarian" imperialism, inadvertently let the cat of the bag in its lead editorial Monday on the former Yugoslav president's death:
"Milosevic's legacy will... be the opposite of what he would have wished for. His actions helped establish the idea of liberal intervention that emerged in the '90s after the first Iraq war and in response to the Rwandan massacres and the Balkan conflicts. Assuming a right to violently intervene in the affairs of Serbia's neighbours, he ended by provoking a series of interventions against Serbia that established the principle that neither sovereignty nor specious arguments about civil war can protect a leader or a regime guilty of crimes against its own and neighbouring peoples."
This "principle"--that major imperialist powers may ignore the national sovereignty of small nations in enforcing their interests by military might--was to have been given international legitimacy by the trial of Milosevic, which had already entered its fifth year by the time of his death. It was the first such prosecution of a sitting head of state, and was intended to establish the "right" of the imperialist powers to sit in judgment of those it deemed to be war criminals--almost invariably their former allies--while remaining fully immune from any such charges themselves.
In the event, the trial became a rather embarrassing sideshow, largely ignored by the media and then eclipsed by the US-orchestrated proceedings against that other former ally of Washington, Saddam Hussein. Prosecutors were unable to bring forward any probative evidence demonstrating that Milosevic had ordered the commission of war crimes.
The trial was based largely on a political indictment, designed to prove that the ex-president was singularly responsible for the carnage that took place with the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This theory, of course, conveniently absolves the imperialist powers--especially Germany and the US--for the role they played in fostering the country's division along ethno-nationalist lines--a process they promoted with reckless indifference to the civil wars it was bound to provoke.
As for ethnic cleansing, Washington's moral indignation was highly selective. Kosovo, where wildly inflated claims of "genocide" supplied the casus belli for the war against Yugoslavia in 1999, was deemed by Washington to be a "success." Some in the Clinton administration compared their war favorably with that of Bush senior eight years earlier, claiming they would have produced a more successful outcome in Iraq.
In reality, from the standpoint of political stability, human rights or a halt to ethnic cleansing, the US intervention only facilitated a continuing catastrophe, with an estimated quarter of a million ethnic Serbs driven from their homes in Kosovo. As one UN report acknowledged, non-Albanian ethnic minorities in the province, still nominally a part of Serbia, have faced an "unrelenting tide of violence" since the American intervention brought to power a government based on the US-backed Kosovo Liberation Army and allied gangster elements.
The "human rights" war launched by the Clinton administration in 1999 and the "war against terrorism" initiated by the Bush administration four years later are not two different types of wars, but merely successive stages in the evolution of the same policy of utilizing US military power to assert the hegemony of American imperialism in geopolitically strategic regions of the globe.
If there was a politically important difference between these two episodes, it was the ability of the Clinton administration to exploit the credulity of petty-bourgeois liberals and lefts in building a constituency for a "moral" use of military force against a small and historically oppressed country.
In fact, the intervention in the Balkans, just as the war that was to follow against Iraq, was motivated by the drive of the US ruling elite to dominate world markets, control strategic raw materials and exploit new sources of cheap labor. In Yugoslavia, this translated into support for the dismantling of the multinational federation into constituent ethno-nationalist states and a war against Serbia, which opposed the carve-up for powerful historical reasons bound up with the dispersion of the Serbian population among Yugoslavia's different constituent republics.
While there is no doubt that Milosevic bore his share of responsibility for the bloodshed that erupted in the Balkans in the 1990s, in the end the political source of his guilt lay principally in his adaptation--like other Yugoslav ex-Stalinist bureaucrats turned nationalists--to the capitalist market policies of imperialism in the region and his use of nationalism to divert the opposition of working people to the economic devastation wrought by these policies.
He found himself on trial because his government's policies fell on the wrong side of US interests. Others who carried out similar policies have been embraced as people with whom Washington can do business.
A case in point is Agim Ceku, named this month as the prime minister of Kosovo. An indicted war criminal, Ceku was a general in the Croatian forces, which he led in the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs from the Krajina region in 1995. He went on to become Washington's handpicked commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, directing new atrocities, backed by NATO bombing, four years later.
Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
*****
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ANTIWAR.COM
Top Story
March 13, 2006
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jscahill.php?articleid=8692
by Jeremy Scahill
Slobodan Milosevic is characterized in the obituaries as the "Butcher of the Balkans." If that is the story you want to read about, please go to almost any other media outlet and read it again and again. Some are now suggesting that death is Milosevic's final revenge, that he "ended up cheating history" by dying before judgment was passed. But the world has already passed judgment on Milosevic, and what is being cheated by his death is history itself.
What the corporate media overwhelmingly ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life as well -- his intimate knowledge of U.S. war crimes in Yugoslavia. While Milosevic was undoubtedly a war criminal who deserved to be tried for his crimes, he was also the only man in the unique position of being able to expose and detail the full extent of the U.S. role in the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In fact, that is precisely what he was fighting to do at his war crimes trial when he died.
Because of the rule of victors' justice in the ad hoc tribunal system (a poor and unfair substitute for a true international court), Milosevic's case would have been the only international trial to potentially expose the details of the illegal, U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days in 1999. While the U.S.-backed court consistently tried to limit Milosevic's right to speak, stripping him of his right to self-representation, Milosevic battled regularly to raise U.S. war crimes. Sadly, with Milosevic will likely die the last hope the victims of these crimes in Yugoslavia had of getting their day (if it could even be called that) in court -- a tragic and unjust reality to begin with that speaks volumes about the twisted state of international justice.
Milosevic's cause, regardless of what one thinks of it, was a casualty of 9/11 -- an event that relegated him and his trial to the annals of history before it was even over. Most people in the world -- with the exception of those in the Balkans, where the proceedings were broadcast live, daily -- probably didn't even know Milosevic was still on trial in The Hague. It became an obscure sideshow to the blood and gore unfolding constantly on the international stage.
Milosevic's death means that those who bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days beginning seven years ago this month, killing thousands, will be once and for all protected from any public scrutiny for their crimes. However opportunistic Milosevic may have been, he would have been one of the few people to appear at The Hague who could have -- and would have â·" laid out these crimes in great detail. Now, there is almost certain to be no condemnation of the U.S. bombing of Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers; the cluster bombing of the Nis marketplace, shredding human beings into meat; the use of depleted uranium munitions; and the targeting of petrochemical plants, causing toxic chemical waste to pour into the Danube River. There will be no condemnation of the bombing of Albanian refugees by the U.S., or the deliberate targeting of a civilian passenger train, or the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Milosevic also would have discussed how the U.S. supports a regime in Kosovo that has systematically expelled Serbs, Romas, and other ethnic minorities from their homes and burned down scores of churches. He would have discussed the role of the U.S. in funding and arming the Kosovo Liberation Army, which operates like a death squad, and how the new prime minister of Kosovo, Agim Ceku, is a U.S.-trained war criminal who gained infamy in both the Bosnian war and the 1999 Kosovo conflict. And Milosevic would have talked of the U.S. interference in the Yugoslav elections in 2000 and the ultimate neoliberal takeover that was the aim of Clinton's sanctions and 78 days of bombing. In reality, it would have fallen on deaf ears, but it would have been stated for the record.
It is ironic that Milosevic's last legal battle was an attempt to compel his old friend-turned-nemesis Bill Clinton to testify at his trial. If successful, Milosevic would have grilled the man who was U.S. president through the entire Yugoslav war in what would have been a fiery direct examination. Clinton and Milosevic were once pals who talked collective strategy in the 1990s. Milosevic had many damning stories to tell and, without a doubt, uncomfortable questions to ask Clinton. The judges in Milosevic's case clearly worked to keep those moments from ever happening, and the U.S. government made clear its forceful opposition to such subpoenas of U.S. officials, even considering invading a country that would put a U.S. official on trial. With or without Clinton, Milosevic's defense would have brought to light some serious documentation of U.S. war crimes, but he died, muzzled, before he really got started.
Little attention, therefore, has been paid to Milosevic's long-term efforts -- which predated 9/11, the 1999 NATO bombing, and his own trial -- to expose the presence of al-Qaeda in the Balkans, from Bosnia to Kosovo. With 9/11, Milosevic's talk of al-Qaeda was easily dismissed as laughable, pathetic opportunism. But those who followed Milosevic's career and more importantly the events of the 1990s in Yugoslavia know it was not. Those allegations were based on events the U.S. does not want discussed in an international court. Following the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, many mujahedin eventually turned their sights on Yugoslavia, where they went to fight alongside the Bosnian Muslims against the Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. Once again, the U.S. and bin Laden were on the same team. To this day, there are reports of training camps in Bosnia, which remains under occupation. It is also a likely training ground for future blowback.
In his opening statement, Milosevic alluded to some of the information he would introduce during his defense.
"In 1998 when [Clinton envoy Richard] Holbrooke visited us in Belgrade, we told him the information we had at our disposal, that in Northern Albania the KLA is being aided by Osama bin Laden, that he was arming, training, and preparing the members of this terrorist organization in Albania. However, they decided to cooperate with the KLA and indirectly, therefore, with bin Laden, although before that he had bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania [and] had already declared war."
Milosevic concluded that "one day all this will have to come to light, these links."
That, however, is unlikely, and more so now that Milosevic is dead.
To be sure, there will never be indictments of these U.S. war criminals at The Hague: Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Jamie Rubin, William Cohen, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke, and Wesley Clark. For many of Serbia's victims of U.S. war crimes, Milosevic's trial was a "Hail Mary" pass, as awful an historical irony as that is, aimed at someone recognizing their forgotten suffering.
It is a sad testimony to the state of international jurisprudence that after many attempts to find justice, the only hope for U.S. victims in the Yugoslavia wars was the trial defense of a man many of those same victims despised. If there was an independent international court that was recognized and respected by the U.S., those responsible for bombing Yugoslavia would have been alongside Slobodan Milosevic in the docks these past years instead of having their responsibility buried with him.
Jeremy Scahill is an independent, unembedded international journalist. He is a correspondent for the national radio and TV show Democracy Now! and writes regularly for The Nation magazine. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the prestigious George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting.
Copyright 2006 Antiwar.com
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3. Uncle Chutzpah and His Willing Executioners on the Dire Iran Threat.
With Twelve Principles of War Propaganda in Ongoing Service.
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ZNET
Iran
March 14, 2006
http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm
By Edward S. Herman
Back at the time of a major Bush-1 "drug war" in 1989, Hodding Carter pointed out that with increasing attention to the newly declared "crisis" by the administration and media, the public's estimate of the importance of the drug problem rose spectacularly. "Today's big news is the drug war. The president says so, so television says so, newspapers and magazines say so, and the public says so." Today's big news is the possibility that Iran, the Little Satan, might some day acquire a nuclear weapon: the administration says so, the media say so, and now three times as many people regard Iran as the U.S.'s greatest menace than four months ago and 47 percent of the public agrees that Iran should be bombed if needed to prevent its acquiring any nuclear weapon capability.
The system works this mobilization process like a well-oiled propaganda machine--which it is--and it can apparently sell almost anything in the way of justifying external violence to a large fraction of the populace, at least in the short run. The attack on Iraq was a remarkable achievement in this respect, given that it was built on a series of lies about Iraq weapons, links, and threats that were extremely dubious at best, a number clearly false and even quite silly (the mushroom cloud and threat to U.S. national security); and given that the actions taken were in blatant violation of the UN Charter. To put this over required tacit collusion between the administration and mainstream media, with the latter serving as de facto propaganda arms of the war-makers.
We may recall that the justification for NATO's bombing of the Serb TV broadcasting facilities in 1999 (killing 16 people) was that it was a propaganda arm of the Serb military. On that logic, accepted by respectable opinion and Carla Del Ponte on behalf of the Yugoslavia Tribunal, in a just world, where Bush and company would surely be brought to trial for manifold war crimes in the Iraq aggression-occupation, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Bill Keller, Thomas Friedman, Donald Graham, Leonard Downie, Jr., Richard Cohen, George Will, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly, and numerous others would be in the dock alongside them.
The further remarkable thing is that, despite their semi-apologies for betraying the public interest and their readers in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq--at least at the New York Times and Washington Post--the media are going through the same routines of propaganda service in the buildup to a possible attack on Iran. They quite generally avoid mentioning the similarity of the arguments made earlier, or that the administration lied egregiously earlier, or their own earlier hyper-gullibility. A tabula rasa is required if the system calls for serial propaganda service that entails the serial conveying of disinformation and suppression of inconvenient evidence. The "Drumbeat sounds familiar" to Simon Tisdall in the London Guardian (March 7, 2006), but not to the servants of power in the U.S. media.
Twelve Principles of Propaganda Used in Setting the Stage for War: the Iran Case
The first principle in manufacturing propaganda for the U.S. war party is to take it as a given that the United States has the legal and moral right to take the lead in making a case that the international community must act--here to stop Iran's nuclear program. Consider that the United States is in the midst of an occupation in Iraq in which it is daily committing war crimes, all of which follow on a major act of aggression that violated the UN Charter. A lesser power doing this would be declared an international outlaw, and would not be considered a proper leader to guide the international community in the pursuit of villainy. In fact, containing the outlaw would be deemed of primary importance. Furthermore, the United States showed its contempt for the rule of law and for any UN legal procedures in the runup to the Iraq war, when it fabricated a crisis--Iraqi violation of international rules and an Iraqi threat to U.S. national security--and on that basis simply ran roughshod over UN processes and international law.
Beyond these outrages, the United States has unclean hands as regards the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that Iran is allegedly violating: as a signatory to the NPT, the United States pledged "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." It has not met this pledge, nor the promise not to threaten or use nuclear weapons against signers who agreed to forego developing nuclear weapons. It is even "upgrading" and "modernizing" its nuclear weapons to make them more "practical." In theory, Iran or any other party could complain to the IAEA that the United States is in clear breach of the NPT, but somehow this doesn't happen; only possible breaches that the United States sees fit to pursue can be attended to in the New World Order. Furthermore, the United States has given crucial support to Israel, engaged in a massive ethnic cleansing operation in violation of international law, with both superpower and client simply brushing aside a stream of UN rulings and an International Court condemnation of Israel's apartheid wall. The United States has either aided or given tacit approval to breaches of the NPT by Israel, Pakistan and India. In short, its moral right to challenge Iran is non-existent--it can do so only by virtue of power, bribery and threats, and because the patriotic mainstream media take its moral right as an undiscussible given.
The second principle, paralleling the U.S. right to do as it pleases, is the absence of the target's right even to defend itself. The United States and Israel may possess nuclear weapons, the latter refusing to subject itself to the NPT and the former violating it and threatening Iran with "regime change," but any Iran move to right the balance by acquiring such weapons for itself is a terrible thing that threatens "international peace and security," as stated in House Concurrent Resolution 341. The United States and Israel have been bringing "peace and security" to the Middle East! It should be noted that in the EU negotiations on Iran's nuclear activities, the United States has refused to give any security guarantee to Iran as part of the package, making its un-peaceful intentions toward Iran clear, but this still does not give Iran the right to acquire weapons that might reduce that open threat. For the media this is all irrelevant, as its leadership says that Iran is a menace and nothing else matters.
A third principle is inflating the menace that would follow from Iran's possession of nuclear weapons. This of course parallels closely the earlier inflation of the Iraq threat, where the Bush administration propagandists were not laughed off the stage for talking about mushroom clouds off New York and other dire threats. Then and now the media have not pointed out that Saddam Hussein had only used chemical weapons in the 1980's against Iran (and Iraqi Kurds) at a time when he was serving U.S. interests--and therefore with tacit U.S. approval--but that he didn't use them at all in the Persian Gulf War when the United States was the opponent and could retaliate in kind and with greater force. By the same token, as the United States and Israel have enormous retaliatory capability, the Iranians could never use nuclear weapons as an offensive tool without committing national suicide. But nuclear weapons would serve as a default weapon if Iran were attacked; that is, it would contribute to self-defense. This line of argument is carefully avoided in the mainstream propaganda flow.
Of course, demons shouldn't have the right of self-defense, and the fourth principle applied in the media's beating the drums of war is unrelenting demonization of the target. This was easy to do with Saddam Hussein, but it can be worked for almost anyone, as there are few political leaders who don't have some unsavory elements in their record or who haven't made indiscreet or wild statements that can be latched onto, taken out of context, and used to suggest irresponsibility and menace. Iran's mullahs have run a fairly repressive state, although its repression has eased up and democratic voices have not been silenced. The newly elected president Mahmoud Ahmandinejad, of course, made an indefensible statement on the Holocaust (a "myth") and a wild statement that Israel should be "wiped off the map." In his recent classic of war propaganda ("Judicious Double Standards," Washington Post, March 7, 2006), Richard Cohen even says that the Iranian leader is a "zealot who has pledged to eradicate Israel," a straightforward lie. Victor David Hanson makes the current scene one of "appeasement," as in the treatment of Hitler in the 1930s, and Iran now a threatening "bully." ("Appeasement 101: dealing with bullies," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 17, 2006). Iran of course has zero nuclear weapons, whereas the United States and Israel both have massive numbers and delivery systems, and Iran hasn't once moved beyond its borders, whereas the United States and Israel have done so regularly and are pummeling Middle East populations right now, but Iran is the "bully," and appeasement means failing to make sure by threat or violence that it cannot ever acquire a single nuclear weapon. But lies and inflated rhetoric are par for the course, and in the panicky environment of the pre-war threat buildup there is no cost to lying or comical threat inflation.
A fifth principle is to avoid discussion of any current relationships with governments that might deserve demon status as much or even more than the target (here Iran). Saudi Arabia is more fundamentalist Islamic and more repressive than Iran, and Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco, and Uzbekistan are at least as vulnerable to criticism for undemocratic practice as Iran, but they are U.S. client states, hence relatively free from criticism let alone threat of destabilization or attack. Pakistan even has nuclear weapons, and the United States finds that tolerable.
Israel of course has a sizable nuclear arsenal, which the United States helped Israel develop and which the United States accepts as reasonable. Richard Cohen explains that this is part of the judicious double standard because "Israel has not threatened to blow Iran off the map; because it is vastly outnumbered in a tough, belligerent neighborhood; and because it is the lone real democracy in a region run mostly by thugs." But Israel has threatened to bomb Iran, and made this threat long before Ahmadinejad's pugnacious statements, which have never been as specific or realistic as Israel's threats; and Israel has regularly invaded its neighbors, which Iran has not done (although it was invaded by Iraq, which was helped in this by the United States). Cohen fails to mention that the "thugs" in the neighborhood are mainly U.S. client states, whose thuggery is accepted because used only against their own citizenry. Israel is "outnumbered" in people but not in tanks, modern aircraft, missiles, and nuclear arms, and it has the full backing of the United States, so that it threatens and beats up others, but remains invulnerable. It is not a true democracy--it is a racist democracy, and it is the world's only state that is free to occupy another people's land and ethnically cleanse them over many years in violation of international law and accepted standards of morality, from which it is exempt by virtue of its and its patron's military power. In short, this "judicious double standard" is built on racism, lies, and Orwellian thought, now institutionalized (see my "Ethnic Cleansing and the 'Moral Instinct'," Z Magazine, March 2006).
A sixth and closely related principle is the need to keep under the rug any awkward past actions or relationships with the target that might show both hypocrisy and the fraudulence of the claimed threat. This was dramatically so in the case of Saddam Hussein, aided and protected by U.S. (and British) officials in the 1980s when he was actually using the dread "weapons of mass destruction," although he was using them on a U.S.-approved target (Iran) as well as on some of his own citizens. In the case of Iran, the United States actually promoted that country's development of nuclear energy when the Shah of Iran was in power. He was far more oppressive of his people than the mullahs are today--his torture chambers were state-of-art, with U.S. and Israeli aid--but he took orders, so using Cohen's "judicious double standards" it was reasonable that he should be encouraged to go nuclear. The media's ability to forget these inconvenient facts and to dredge up long neglected "principles" now applied to Iran with the utmost seriousness is a reminder of the principles of Newspeak (Ingsoc) described in Orwell's 1984.
A seventh principle is keeping under that (rapidly bulging) rug any current actions of the United States that might appear incompatible with its harsh stand opposing Iran's pursuing any nuclear program. Most obvious today is the new agreement with India just signed by U.S. president George Bush and Indian president Manmohan Singh, that offers U.S. nuclear aid to India for its civilian uses of nuclear energy, but which therefore frees India's ongoing processing of nuclear fuel for use in its nuclear weapons program. The mainstream media have not buried the fact of this agreement, but they have done an outstanding job of avoiding any stress on its violation of principles: India, a country that has avoided joining the NPT and instead built nuclear weapons, instead of being penalized for this evasion and contribution to nuclear proliferation is accepted as a nuclear weapons power and helped to enhance its nuclear status, civilian and military; whereas Iran, which did sign that treaty and allowed itself to be subjected to IAEA inspections, and which has no nuclear weapons, is denied even the right to civilian uses of nuclear energy and is threatened with sanctions and even attack.
An eighth principle is that the United States not only has a right to ignore the NPT as it applies to itself, it can also alter the terms of the NPT as it applies to its target. In this case, the NPT gives Iran the "inalienable right to develop, research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes" (Art. IV.1). But the U.S. Ambassador to the UN has asserted that "no enrichment in Iran is permissible" because it "could give Iran the possibility of mastering the technical difficulties it's currently encountering in its program," and having done that it could use these processes elsewhere. Once again, the law is irrelevant, and the violator of the UN Charter in the Iraq aggression is once again threatening aggression because it deems Iran to be a menace. Of course all the serious threats are emanating from the United States and Israel, and there is no hard evidence that Iran is going beyond its perfectly legal rights under the NPT, but these considerations can be disregarded as the biggest and strongest has spoken.
A ninth principle is that if the target cannot prove a negative, the severity of the threat to U.S. "national security" requires that Iran be bombed and that there be a change in regime to one that can be trusted (like that of the Shah of Iran, or Sharon, or Musharraf). This of course parallels the course of events in Iraq in 2002-March 2003, where the inspectors found nothing, despite very extensive searching (including searches in all places that U.S.-British intelligence had suggested as promising), but on this principle an invasion was required because the negative was not (and could not be) proved. We may see the same process in the Iran case.
A tenth principle is to use the mechanisms of international regulation linked to the UN to serve the war and goal of regime change: by pushing for ever more intensive inspections and ultimatums; by denigrating the adequacy of inspections; by taking any absence of proof of the negative and any target country foot-dragging on cooperation with increasingly intrusive inspections to demonstrate its nefarious character and virtual proof of its secret operations; and by getting the UN and Security Council to make concessions appeasing the aggressor that give his aggression an aura of semi-legality. The UN and France and Germany took a lot of flak in the runup to the Iraq aggression for failing to give the United States carte blanche, although they all bent over backwards to placate the aggressor (and eventually gave their sanction to his illegal and murderous occupation). In the runup to the attack on Iran, the United States has kept intense pressure on the IAEA and EU to condemn Iran for its "concealment" and lack of "transparency," pressing the IAEA to inspect frequently and intensively (it has put up 17 written and four oral reports on its inspections of Iran to its board since March 17, 2003), possibly hoping that Iran will be provoked into withdrawing from the NPT and giving the aggressor his casus belli. Again, this is being pressed by an aggressor who has still not digested his last meal and that is himself in gross violation of the NPT.
An eleventh principle is to pretend that all the frenzy and activity of the Great Powers to deal with the Iran threat is based on a universal worry, and does not reflect U.S. power and the attempts to appease that power. The EU has cooperated with the Bush administration even more willingly than they did before the attack on Iraq, going along with publicizing and condemning Iran's supposed misbehavior, and pressing the IAEA to go after Iran more aggressively--while of course ignoring completely the U.S. violations of the NPT, its open threats directed to Iran and openly announced programs of intervention and destabilization, threats that once again violate the UN Charter. So the "international community" is actively cooperating in a planned and threatened further U.S. aggression.
A twelfth principle is to disregard any hidden agenda the U.S. may have in going after Iran. In fact, as the explicit agenda of removing a threat to U.S. national security is as fraudulent as the threat to U.S. security posed by Iraq, and as the United States refuses to give Iran a security guarantee as part of a weapons control package, the failure to examine the real reasons for the U.S. program is the height of "international community" and journalistic irresponsibility. Is it a simple projection of power by an imperial state, as urged by many Bush officials in the Project for a New American Century, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (2000) and spelled out in the "National Security Strategy of the United States" (2002)? Is it part of a quest for domination of oil supplies, which may call for a controlled client state in Iran as well as Iraq? Is it to prevent the rise of an oil bourse in Iran and potential diminution of the role of the dollar as a dominant currency? Is it to prevent an energy-based power alignment between Iran, China, and other Asian countries? Is it to help Israel retain its dominance in the Middle East and its ability to continue the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem without any interference? Some combination of these undoubtedly underlies the U.S. bullying and threats. A democratic media and a responsibility international community would be debating these and drawing the proper conclusions.
Conclusions
Uncle Chutzpah and his willing executioners--the media, UN and coalition of the cowardly and bribed--have isolated Iran and set her up for possible destabilization and aggression. One wouldn't think this possible given the remarkable parallels in argument and (phony) evidence in this case and that of the failed aggression in Iraq, but the power of the aggressor and subservience of the media and international community are apparently boundless.
It is certainly not assured that Iran will be attacked, and if it is attacked that is most likely to be by bombs only, but it can well happen. The stage is being set, and the folks likely to make those decisions are proven killers, torturers and law violators, confident in their military superiority and invulnerability to prosecution for criminal behavior and with a great capacity for righteous self-deception. And the international community is not only doing nothing to stop them, it is helping them prepare the "(im)moral" and quasi-legal groundwork. The leaders of the aggressor state are also politically astute, and recognize the political value of war as a means of retrieving political fortunes. They may be failures at home as well as abroad, but their service to the business community has been far-reaching, and those successes have protected and sustained them. To continue them, as they damage the great majority, may require forcible action. As Thorstein Veblen pointed out a hundred years ago, "The direct cultural value of a warlike business policy is unequivocal. It makes for a conservative animus on the part of the populace...At the same stroke, it directs popular interest to other, nobler, institutionally less hazardous matters than the unequal distribution of wealth" (The Theory of Business Enterprise [1904], pp. 391-3). When each day you are adding to your service to the rich and damaging the majority, war can come in handy to get folks to turn again to the "nobler, institutionally less hazardous" matters like stopping the dire threat of an Iranian bomb.
Copyright 2006 Z Magazine
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REVOLUTION ONLINE
Box 3486, Merchandise Mart
Chicago, IL 60654
Tel: 773-227-4066
Fax: 773-227-4497
Web: http://www.rwor.org
- No. 39, March 19, 2006 -
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4. There Is No "War on Terror."
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by Larry Everest
http://rwor.org/a/039/there-is-no-war-on-terror.htm
There is no "war on terror." The invasion and occupation of Iraq are not part of a "war on terror." Neither are the current threats and war preparations against Iran. The "war on terror" doesn't exist--no matter how many times the Bush administration cites it to justify its aggressions, no matter how often Republicans and Democrats debate how to best carry it out, and no matter how frequently it's referenced in the U.S. bourgeois media.
What does exist is a horrific and criminal U.S. war OF terror against the people of the world for greater empire. The attacks of Sept. 11 gave the U.S. rulers an opening to launch this war, but it has nothing to do with halting unjust violence or "terror," nor is it fundamentally aimed at stopping future Sept. 11's (and the full truth about the U.S. government's role that day is still not known--see "9/11: New Doubts on the 'Official Story'" in Revolution #13, or at revcom.us) or "protecting" those living in the U.S. or anywhere else. Instead, it has everything to do with waging unbounded war to solidify and extend the U.S. imperialist system's killing grip on the planet and its people.
The evidence is abundant and clear. For instance, this plan for "reshuffling the whole deck and reordering the whole situation," as Bob Avakian puts it, was openly discussed by imperial strategists for over a decade before Sept. 11, including most blatantly by the Project for a New American Century, and openly articulated at the highest levels afterward, particularly in the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy. [See "The New Situation and the Great Challenges," by Bob Avakian (Revolution #36, Feb. 26, 2006, at revcom.us).]
Second, neither Iraq nor Iran had anything to do with Sept. 11 (and the U.S. rulers have known this all along). So why have they become focal points in a war supposedly springing from Sept. 11? This doesn't prove Iraq is a "diversion" from a "war on terror," it proves that the "war on terror" is a fraud. In fact, Iraq shows what this war is really all about. The Bush regime saw conquering this ancient land as a key step in unfolding its broader global agenda: "shocking and awing" the world, strengthening the U.S. grip on the Middle East, turning Iraq into a military and political platform for further aggression, gaining tighter control of international energy supplies, controlling and reshaping the entire arc from North Africa to Central Asia, and strengthening the U.S. hand against rivals--current and future.
Third, Bush and his criminal cohorts refuse to define "terrorism" so they can label any who stands in their path "terrorists"--whether Palestinians fighting Israeli ethnic cleansing, radical nationalists, Maoist guerrillas, reactionary Islamist forces with their own conflicts with U.S. imperialism, states standing in the way of U.S. designs, or even Iraqis resisting the invasion and occupation of their own country.
They also avoid defining "terror" to obscure their own war crimes and crimes against humanity. When former Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2001, he said, "Since 1983 the United States government has defined terrorists as those who perpetuate premeditated, politically motivated violence against noncombatant targets." Applying this definition, and taking into account both the motives and the toll of all its wars and interventions over the past 50 plus years including Iraq, the United States government emerges as the largest and most violent terrorist organization on earth.
You can't seriously oppose, much less stop, Bush wars of aggression by accepting the need for, or legitimacy of, the "war on terror," or debating the pros and cons of U.S. actions within that framework--as the Democratic Party insists on. Its criticisms of Bush are not based on telling the truth about the nature, aims, and objectives of Iraq and other U.S. aggressions; instead they accept, agree with, and promote the whole "war on terror" rationale (and they DO know what it's all about). Their "criticisms" are over how to best carry it out.
This isn't being spineless or confused; it's being an imperialist party that agrees with the goal of deepening and extending U.S. global power but has differences over strategy and tactics--and is energetically working to keep the anti-war movement within these killing confines. This is why they talk of Bush lies, but not of Bush war crimes and crimes against humanity--including the Iraq war and occupation. This concern for U.S. global dominance, including dominance in the Middle East, is why they insist that now the U.S. is in Iraq, it can't "precipitously" withdraw, and it's why they're raising the specter of civil war should U.S. forces withdraw.
In fact it's the U.S. invasion and occupation that have unleashed and fueled a possible civil war. And even if civil war were to intensify with the end of U.S. occupation, which could be a nightmare for Iraqis, continuing that occupation and allowing the U.S. to complete its "mission" in Iraq would be even worse; it would not only guarantee ongoing bloodshed and torture by the U.S. and its Iraqi puppets, but also strengthen the oppression of the Iraqi people in many ways, for decades to come. And even beyond that, the consolidation of the US occupation of Iraq serves a strategic plan to make that country a "model" of US domination in the region, a reliable staging area for more aggression, more plunder and more oppression in a part of the world that has been subject to a dreadful legacy of a hundred years of savage colonial and imperialist domination. (For a history of imperialism in Iraq, see Oil, Power, & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda by Larry Everest [Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2003].)
On the other hand, forcing the U.S. out of Iraq would remove the primary obstacle to genuine liberation for the Iraqi people. It could help change the present horrendous dynamic in Iraq and strengthen secular progressive and revolutionary forces there. Beyond Iraq, a U.S. defeat in Iraq would be a serious blow to the U.S. war on the world and could make further U.S. aggression more difficult.
The most important way people in the U.S. can come to the aid of the oppressed people of Iraq is to build a powerful movement demanding the U.S. get out--NOW!
You can't seriously oppose U.S. wars of aggression by framing things in terms of "national security" either. However any individual may wish to define this, the reality is that this term has already been defined by the U.S. ruling class--and is understood broadly in society--as its predatory interests and power.
Nor can "protecting Americans" be our starting point. The Bush regime's actions have increased hatred for the United States and in various ways put people from this country in harm's way. But why should American lives be worth any more than others? Start from this and you're on a very slippery slope to justifying the murder and torture of others. The U.S. rulers want people to accept a foul, Faustian, and ultimately phony bargain: it will supposedly protect us in exchange for our acquiescence in whatever killings, interventions, or wars it decides to wage, wherever and whenever.
The U.S. rulers have used the fact that currently their main targets are Islamic theocrats, who often have sharp contradictions with the U.S., and whose politics offers no future to the people, to justify aggression in the name of democracy and progress. First, it must be said that the U.S. is increasingly dominated by its own backward-looking ayatollahs. And, the imperialists often build up Islamic reactionary forces in opposition to secular movements in the Mideast, even though that in turn creates unintended problems for them when these forces come into conflict with the U.S. And what the U.S. is bringing to the Middle East is no better. The answer to Islamic reaction is not U.S. imperialist domination.
What is called for is the moral clarity articulated by former UK Ambassador Craig Murray before the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity by the Bush Administration: "Evil begets more evil. If we're supporting a regime--and you must remember most of the people being tortured were Muslims, and most of them were being tortured because they were religious Muslims. If we're supporting a regime like that, is it any wonder some Muslims come to hate us? No, it's no wonder at all. And my charge before this commission is, not only that the CIA knowingly and openly uses information got from torture, that this administration has introduced a dehumanization of our Muslim brothers and sisters which means that anything done to them doesn't count. And that is a step along the road to the ultimate evil. and that, ladies and gentleman, is I believe where we areâ·Which is just to say I don't believe it works, but even if it did work, I would personally rather die than have anyone tortured to save my life."
Democrats Out-Bush Bush on Dubai Ports Deal
Reflecting deep reservations in the ruling class over the Bush administration's foreign policy moves, Democrats and many Republicans in Congress congealed to squash Bush's plan to turn over administration of some US ports to a company based in the Emirate of Dubai.
Score one for the Democrats: They grabbed for the title of "leading the 'war on terror,'" and pandered to and whipped up racism and xenophobia (hatred and fear of foreigners). Howard Dean crowed that, "Democratic senators and representatives forced President Bush to give up the idea that six major American ports should be run by a foreign country." New York Senator Charles Schumer was welcomed onto the radio show of fascist Michael Savageâ·who regularly refers to Muslims and Arabs as "rag-heads" and worse. Democratic Representative Harold Ford of Tennessee produced a television commercial in which he walks through the Port of Baltimore while pictures of black-turbaned Taliban and 9/11 hijackers are shown.
Meanwhile, where is the furor, or even murmur, from the Democrats over Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other U.S.-run torture chambers? Opposing the dire threat to the right to abortion? Or stopping Bush's illegal, vast spying network on people in the U.S.? Where is their outrage over the coverup of Bush's responsibility for the death and destruction in New Orleans? Or to saber-rattling and threats to attack or invade Iran? ...
There are real conflicts within the ruling class. But they are all within the framework of how to pursue a war for imperial plunder--the so-called "war on terror." And neither side can be aligned with.
Copyright 2006 Revolution Online
*****
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THE TELEGRAPH
Nation
Monday, March 13, 2006
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060313/asp/nation/story_5962372.asp
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, March 12--The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed.
The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday.
It claimed that some of the commission members were also bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about Pakistan.
The magazine said the PAC grilled officials in the presence of foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and special secretary Sher Afghan on the money paid to lobbyists.
"The disclosure sheds doubt on the integrity and honesty of the members of the 9/11 inquiry commission and, above all, the authenticity of the information in their final report," it said.
The report quoted an officer as saying that dramatic changes were made in the final draft of the inquiry commission after the lobbyists got to work. The panel was formed to probe the September 11 terror attack and make suggestions to fight terrorism.
After the commission tipped the lobbyists about the damaging revelations on Pakistan's role in 9/11, they contacted the panel members and asked them to go soft on the country. The Friday Times claimed that a lot of money was used to silence these members.
According to the report, the lobbyists also helped Pakistan win the sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad's interests in Washington. "US softened towards Pakistan only because of the efforts of the foreign office," an official was quoted as saying in the report.
The Pakistan foreign office defended the decision to hire the lobbyists, saying it was an established practice in the US.
An observer at the Islamabad meeting said money could play an important role in buying powerful people. The remark came in response to comments made by some US officials after 9/11 that "Pakistanis will sell their mothers for a dollar".
Pakistan had emerged as front-runner in the fight against terrorism unleashed by the US after the terror strikes. Washington pumped in billions of dollars to win President Pervez Musharraf's support in launching a crackdown on al Qaida network thriving on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Copyright 2006 The Telegraph. All rights reserved.
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6. Taliban's Iraq-Style Spring Is Sprung.
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ASIA TIMES ONLINE
South Asia
March 15, 2006
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HC15Df03.html
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI -- As another spring approaches in Afghanistan, another Taliban-led offensive is planned. But this year, the Taliban believe, unlike in the previous offensives in the five years since they were booted out of power in Kabul, they are better organized than ever before.
A key to the Taliban's revival has been the links it has forged with the resistance in Iraq, which has provided hundreds of Taliban with hands-on training in that country, as well as logistical and tactical support.
One such support device is a compact disc released by the Jaishul Islam al-Iraq (Islamic Army of Iraq) that shows how urban guerrilla warfare is being conducted in Iraq and how this can be adapted to the resistance in Afghanistan. The CD, a copy of which has been obtained by Asia Times Online, is widely circulated among the rank and file of the Taliban.
The Jaishul Islam al-Iraq is an indigenous group commanded by many former top Iraqi generals and independent Islamists, and the CD therefore shows the very refined quality of their attacks. The group fully coordinates its activities with other groups, such as Ansarul Sunna, and it also has good ties with al-Qaeda.
The CD contains 10 separate clips, each one showing a significant aspect of Jaishul's strategy. These include: The structure of the group's intelligence; Infiltration of the rank and file of enemy forces; Exhaustive knowledge of the target; Precise identification of the "material" to be used against specified targets; The importance of dedicated foot soldiers.
One of the clips shows two vehicles seconds before one of them, laden with explosives, rams into a US armored vehicle. The other truck, which has been monitoring the progress of the target, can be seen frantically reversing from the scene.
Another clip shows guerrillas taking up positions near a spot used by a US helicopter carrying soldiers. As the chopper takes off, it is hit by a missile and crashes. Several soldiers can be seen burned in the wreckage, while one who survives can be seen pleading, in English, for his life. The response is a hail of bullets that kill him.
Other footage shows an attack on the US base of Tal Afar. The resistance, with the help of collaborators within the Iraqi forces, has planted explosives in the camp, which can be seen going off. In one picture, US soldiers watch the first explosion. In the next second, their building is blown up.
As a background to the images, Koranic verses are recited, as well as resistance songs in Arabic, such as "We will defend our land with full vigor."
The spring is sprung
Asia Times Online has learned that as many as 500 fighters who trained in Iraq are now in Afghanistan or Pakistan, while many others are expected to return soon.
The Taliban's connection with Iraq began before the US-led attack there in 2003 when Taliban leader Mullah Omar sent some of his men to stay with the Ansarul Islam, a Kurdish Islamic group in northern Iraq, to train and fight alongside Kurdish guerrillas against Saddam Hussein's forces. After the US invasion, many of these men went to other parts of the country to fight alongside various groups opposed to the US forces.
In 2003, one of the Taliban commanders who had been sent to Iraq, Mullah Mehmood Allah Haq Yar, returned to Afghanistan, where he rejected the traditional style of guerrilla warfare in operation since the anti-Soviet resistance of the 1980s - heavy reliance on AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.
The first thing he taught the Taliban was the formation of groups that could fight independently and which would be task-orientated to specific missions. Many of these small groups were sent regularly to Iraq between 2004 and 2005, where they spent months with the Jaishul Islam al-Iraq, the Ansarul Sunna and other Islamic groups.
In return, these men passed on their new-found expertise to comrades in Pakistan's tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan, notably North and South Waziristan, the former being a veritable Taliban stronghold, the latter heading that way. And significantly, a la Iraq, they have organized scores of suicide squads, a relatively new phenomenon in Afghanistan.
Taking on Pakistan
In the first phase of their spring offensive, the Taliban aim to contain the Pakistani army by engaging it throughout the tribal belt. This will allow the Taliban freely to cross the leaky border with Afghanistan, or better, strike a deal with the army to leave the Taliban alone. According to contacts who spoke to Asia Times Online, a blueprint for such attacks in the tribal areas has already been approved by the Taliban's command council.
Within Afghanistan, heavyweights Kashmir Khan of the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan, Mullah Dadullah, Mullah Akhtar Usmani and Sirajul Haq Haqqani, son of former Taliban minister and commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, are already in the field to influence local tribes to support the Taliban movement.
Shabname, or "night messages", contained in pamphlets are being distributed asking people to revolt against foreign forces, which, the pamphlets say, are made up of people from countries where caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have been published and his personality ridiculed.
Independent analysts believe that the Taliban, even with training, will be unlikely to achieve anything like the level of warfare being waged by the Iraqi resistance, which has a strong element of hardened professional soldiers.
Nevertheless, the Afghan resistance will be sufficiently competent and equipped and big enough to remain a serious threat to US and allied troops, and even force a rethink on their part.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
*****
INTELLIGENCE ONLINE
Editor, Olivier Schmidt
E-mail: intelligence-adi@wanadoo.fr
Web: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/intelligence-adi
Publishing since 1980
- No. 475, 13 March 2006 -
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7. USA/Vatican: Paul Casimir Marcinkus
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Intelligence, N. 475, 13 March 2006, p. 5
On 22 February, the press announced the death of Archbishop Paul Casimir Marcinkus at his home in Sun City, near Phoenix, Arizona, where he "retired" after fleeing the Vatican and Italy in the late 1980s under the threat of arrest and investigation concerning the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano, the Mafia, the murder of Ambrosiano boss, Roberto Calvi, and the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Vatican's bank that Marcinkus headed for 20 years. Marcinkus was also John Paul II's bodyguard during the Pope's early travels abroad.
Marcinkus' name remains closely associated with Calvi and the Ambrosiano affair. Six months after calvi's death, his lawyer Giorgio Gregori told Rupert Cornwell, author of "God's Banker", that Calvi claimed to have channeled $50 million to aid the Vatican's Ostpolitik and in particular the Polish trade union, Solidarity. The close cooperation between the Vatican and the CIA began in the early 1980s following the election of the Polish Pope, John Paul II and while Marcinkus was acting as the Pope's bodyguard. Between 1981 and 1988, General Vernon Walters, the former CIA deputy director, was received seven times by the Pope. In return, John Paul II was given access to satellite intelligence, electronic eavesdropping and summaries of strategy briefings by the State Department and the CIA. Vatican officials, including Marcinkus, received classified US reports on anti-Communist activity in Eastern Europe, terrorism worldwide, Pakistan's nuclear ambitions Chinese Communism and the occupation of Tibet.
This covert anti-Communist relationship between the Vatican and the Reagan administration was only made possible by the untimely and mysterious death of Pope John Paul I, on 29 September 1978, thirty-three days after being elected, allegedly of heart failure. According to independent investigators, John Paul I was murdered because he planned to investigate Marcinkus' IOR and was preparing to dismiss several powerful figures in the Curia (the Vatican's civil service), including Marcinkus and Secretary of State Cardinal Jean Villot. The murder plot included the Mafia, the Vatican bank and the P2 secret Masonic lodge, and those directly involved included Calvi, Marcinkus and Licio Gelli, the head of the P2 who invested Corleone mafia funds in the IOR.
A visit to the Web site of NameBase, http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?_MARCINKUS_PAUL_CASIMIR, produces a wealth of information on Marcinkus, including the following list of citations in articles and books:
Italy 1967-1989
Copetas, A.C. Metal Men. 1986 (212)
Cornwell, R. God's Banker. 1984 (16, 40, 50-8, 66, 142, 168-9, 177-8, 208-9, 225-7, 231-3, 245)
Covert Action Information Bulletin 1986-#25 (35)
DiFonzo, L. St.Peter's Banker. 1983 (8, 10, 12, 260)
Giancana, S.& C. Double Cross. 1992 (171, 338)
Gurwin, L. The Calvi Affair. 1984 (ix, 13-5, 26, 46, 69-70, 83, 101-3, 119-20, 132, 134, 168-77, 194, 208)
Intelligence (Paris) 1999-01-11 (22)
Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1985-07 (5)
Intelligence/Parapolitics (Paris) 1987-04 (9-10)
Lernoux, P. In Banks We Trust. 1984 (171, 178, 182-3, 187, 191, 195-201, 211-3)
Marshall, J: The Iran-Contra Connection. 1987 (74-5)
Mother Jones 1983-07 (37)
Naylor, R.T. Hot Money and the Politics of Debt. 1994 (80-2, 89, 91, 114, 119-20, 253, 314)
Parapolitics/USA 1983-03-01 (2-3, 6-7)
Parapolitics/USA 1983-06-01 (23)
Scheim, D. Contract on America. 1988 (322)
Tosches, N. Power on Earth. 1986
Vankin, J. Whalen,J. The 60 Greatest Conspiracies. 1998 (115-7)
Walter,I. The Secret Money Market. 1990 (136-46)
Washington Post 1989-06-21 (A16)
Yallop, D. In God's Name. 1985
Copyright ADI 2006
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- AFIB No. 703, March 12, 2006 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
The "war on terrorism" and the development of the authoritarian State are occurring at the outset of a huge global economic depression marked by the downfall of State institutions,, mounting unemployment, the collapse of living standards in all major regions of the world, including Western Europe and North America, and the outbreak of famines over large areas. ... At a global economic level, this depression could be far more devastating than that of the 1930s. Moreover, the war has not only unleashed a massive shift out of civilian economic activities into the military-industrial complex, it has also accelerated the demise of the welfare state in most Western countries. Five days before the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush stated almost prophetically: "I have repeatedly said the only time to use Social Security money is in times of war, times of recession, or times of severe emergency. And I mean that." ... The tone of the President's rhetoric has set the stage for a dramatic expansion of America's war machine. The "recession" and "war" buzzwords are being used to mould US public opinion into accepting the pilfering of the Social Security fund to pay the producers of weapons of mass destruction--i.e., a massive redirection of the nation's resources towards the military-industrial complex. -- Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War On Terrorism' [Pincourt, Quebec, Global Research, 2005] p. 13.
Contents: Number 703
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WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Thursday, 9 March 2006 -
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1. U.S. Senate Panel Votes to Sanction Illegal Spying.
Rubberstamp for police-state measures.
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News & Analysis: North America
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/nsas-m09.shtml
By Bill Van Auken
The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted Wednesday to block any investigation into the Bush administration's illegal domestic spying operation and instead lend this crime a pseudo-legal cover. The action represents another major step in scrapping constitutional forms of rule and moving in the direction of an American police state.
The committee's vote, following a closed session, split along party lines. The Republican chairman of the panel, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, said that the decision was taken to "reject confrontation in favor of accommodation." He added that, as a result of consultations with White House staff members--from which Democrats were excluded--a subcommittee would be formed to "conduct oversight of the terrorist surveillance program," the name given by the administration to its secret use of the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless electronic bugging of American citizens.
The ranking Democrat on the committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia, said that the vote only demonstrated that, "The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House." In response to the defeat of his proposal for an investigation of the covert surveillance, he charged that the Republican majority preferred to "legislate in darkness and in ignorance."
Given the immensity of the attack on democratic rights, Rockefeller's protest is, in typical fashion for the Democrats, mealy-mouthed and politically unserious. The leadership of the Democratic Party has shown no indication that it intends to wage a struggle against either the illegal spying operation--a gross violation of the US Constitution and civil liberties and a patently impeachable offense--or its cover-up by the Congress.
The deal worked out with the White House involves the creation of a seven-member intelligence subcommittee that would be briefed by the administration on its spying operation and would craft legislation to nominally legalize it. The House Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, is working on its own proposal to achieve the same political end.
According to the Washington Post, the proposed Senate legislation, sponsored by Ohio Republican Senator Mike DeWine, would explicitly authorize the government to carry out warrantless domestic spying for a period of 45 days "after which, the government can stop the eavesdropping, seek a warrant, or explain to Congress why it wants to continue without a warrant."
These restrictions are meaningless, placing no impediment whatsoever on the use of police state powers by the White House. In response to the proposals of the Senate Republicans, the Bush administration made no attempt to conceal that it views the proposed legislation as nothing more than window dressing for continuing unrestricted domestic spying.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan told the media Wednesday that the administration is "committed to working with congressional leaders to further codify the constitutional and statutory authority that the president already has."
While the abject capitulation of the Congress to the illegal acts of the administration is hardly surprising, it is nonetheless, from an historical standpoint, breathtaking.
Last December, it was revealed by the New York Times--after the newspaper had censored its own story for fully a year at the administration's request--that the National Security Agency (NSA) had secretly eavesdropped on thousands of individuals without first obtaining warrants.
The action was in direct violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to issue warrants for such domestic electronic surveillance. The court has approved virtually every government application for a surveillance warrant, rejecting only four out of nearly 19,000 as of the end of 2004.
Moreover, the law establishing the FISA court allows the government to begin surveillance without prior notification and receive a retroactive warrant. Congress lengthened the time period allowed under the law before the surveillance must be sanctioned by the court from 24 hours to 72 hours as part of the repressive legislation approved in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
However accommodating the law is to government demands for domestic spying, it explicitly makes it a criminal offense to carry out any such surveillance outside its provisions, which it states are the "exclusive means by which electronic surveillance... may be conducted [emphasis added]."
The Bush administration has brushed aside the law, claiming that the president is authorized to conduct such warrantless spying under his constitutional authority as commander in chief and under implicit authority granted him by Congress itself with its passage of a 2001 resolution authorizing the use of military force in response to the terrorist attacks of that year. The same rationale is used to justify the arrest and detention--without charges, legal counsel or trials--of those, citizens and non-citizens alike, declared by the president to be "enemy combatants," and to torture alleged terrorists.
That this rationale--steadfastly defended by the US Justice Department--is specious is not a debatable issue. The FISA statute explicitly covers wartime warrantless electronic surveillance, specifying that such action is allowed only in the first 15 days of a war. In any case, the "global war on terror" invoked by the Bush administration to justify its illegal actions has never been declared.
The administration's claim that Congress inferred the authorization of such spying with its authorization of military force--which nowhere mentions such surveillance--under conditions where a law enacted by Congress explicitly bars such methods represents a repudiation of all legal restraints on the power of the presidency.