Guten Morgen Mr. Bush - 500 Beiträge pro Seite (Seite 51)

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Laura Bush`s Annual Christmas Address

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December 22, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS | THE WHITE HOUSE
Bush`s New Problem: More Carnage in Iraq Could Eclipse His Ambitious Domestic Agenda
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 - The deadly attack on a United States military base in northern Iraq on Tuesday scrambled the Bush administration`s hopes of showing progress toward stability there, while making clear that the war is creating a nasty array of problems for President Bush as he gears up for an ambitious second term.

Despite weathering criticism of his Iraq policy during the presidential campaign, Mr. Bush is heading into his next four years in the White House facing a public that appears increasingly worried about the course of events in Iraq and wondering where the exit is.

And as he prepares to take the oath of office a second time and to focus more of his energy on a far-reaching domestic agenda, he is at risk of finding his presidency so consumed by Iraq for at least the next year that he could have trouble pressing ahead with big initiatives like the overhauling of Social Security. At the same time, Mr. Bush faces fundamental questions about his strategy for bringing stability to Iraq. How can the United States - with the help of Iraqi security forces whose performance has been uneven at best - assure the safety of Iraqis who go to the polls on Jan. 30 when it cannot keep its own troops safe on their own base?

And are Mr. Bush and his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, more vulnerable to criticism that they have failed to provide American forces with everything they need to take on a shadowy, fast-evolving enemy that, as the Tuesday attack showed, continues to display a notable degree of resilience?

The situation has left the White House sending two somewhat contradictory messages. One, alluded to by Mr. Bush at his news conference on Monday and stated explicitly by other administration officials on Tuesday, is that no one should expect either the violence to abate after the first round of elections on Jan. 30 or the United States to begin bringing troops home next year in substantial numbers.

"There should be no illusion," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Tuesday, "that suddenly right after the election the Iraqis are going to be able to take over their own security. Certainly, we`re going to be there through `05 in significant numbers."

The other message is that progress is being made in Iraq, that the insurgency will eventually be quelled and that there is no reason to change course.

"The idea of democracy taking hold in what was a place of tyranny and hatred and destruction is such a hopeful moment in the history of the world," Mr. Bush said Tuesday after visiting with wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "I`m confident democracy will prevail in Iraq."

But Mr. Bush also said it was "a time of sorrow and sadness," and after meeting with Mr. Bush in the Oval Office early on Tuesday afternoon, Kweisi Mfume, the outgoing president of the N.A.A.C.P., described the president to reporters as "obviously distraught" over the loss of life from the attack.

For a year, the administration has suggested that Iraq would move closer to stability as it reached one milestone after another: the capture of Saddam Hussein; the handover of sovereignty and the appointment of an interim government; the deployment of Iraqi security forces; the military campaign to expel the insurgents from strongholds like Falluja; and the first round of elections next month.

Yet most of those milestones have passed with little discernible improvement in the security situation. Now some analysts are concerned that the elections could make the political situation in Iraq even more unstable by producing an outcome in which the Sunni minority feels so marginalized by the Shiite majority that it fuels not just further violence against Americans and Iraqis working with them but also more intense sectarian strife or even civil war.

The elections on Jan. 30 will be sandwiched between two critically important moments for Mr. Bush: his second inaugural on Jan. 20 and the first State of the Union address of his second term, probably in the first week of February.

As a result, the degree to which the elections come off smoothly or not, and whether they move Iraq toward stability or even greater chaos, could well put an early stamp on Mr. Bush`s new term. And the elections and whatever violence surrounds them could compete with or overshadow his calls for action on changing Social Security, rewriting the tax code, revising the immigration laws and stiffening educational standards, among other domestic plans the White House intends to begin rolling out in January.

Supporters of Mr. Bush dismissed the idea that his Iraq policy was proving wrongheaded or that the difficulties in Iraq would torpedo the rest of the president`s agenda by sapping his political support.

"On Iraq, what we`ve learned is that Americans are capable of worrying about something and simultaneously supporting it," said David Frum, a former speechwriter for Mr. Bush. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Frum said, Mr. Bush understands the importance of leveling with the American people about the situation and making clear why it is important to see the job through.

But polls have shown for months that majorities or near-majorities of Americans think that invading Iraq was a mistake or not worth the cost in lives, money and prestige abroad.

"The big risk for the president is that if this continues to escalate, it could overtake much of what he wants to do," said Warren Rudman, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire, referring to the insurgency. "If this is in some way a precursor of an escalation into a more sophisticated attack by the guerilla insurgents, it would make members of Congress very uneasy and the American people very uneasy."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
New Papers Suggest Detainee Abuse Was Widespread

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 22, 2004; Page A01

The Bush administration is facing a wave of new allegations that the abuse of foreign detainees in U.S. military custody was more widespread, varied and grave in the past three years than the Defense Department has long maintained.

New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq.

In many of the newly disclosed cases, Army commanders chose noncriminal punishments for those involved in the abuse, or the investigations were so flawed that prosecutions could not go forward, the documents show. Human rights groups said yesterday that, as a result, the penalties imposed were too light to suit the offenses.

The complaints arose from several thousand new pages of internal reports, investigations and e-mails from different agencies, which, with other documents released in the past two weeks, paint a finer-grained picture of military abuse and criminal behavior at prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan than previously available.

The documents disclosed by a coalition of groups that had sued the government to obtain them make it clear that both regular and Special Forces soldiers took part in the abuse, and that the misconduct included shocking detainees with electric guns, shackling them without food and water, and wrapping a detainee in an Israeli flag.

The variety of the abuse and the fact that it occurred over a three-year period undermine the Pentagon`s past insistence -- arising out of the summertime scandal surrounding the mistreatment at Baghdad`s Abu Ghraib prison -- that the abuse occurred largely during a few months at that prison, and that it mostly involved detainee humiliation or intimidation rather than the deliberate infliction of pain.

After the latest revelations, including the disclosures that officials in other federal agencies had objected to these actions by soldiers -- to the point of urging, in some cases, war crimes prosecutions -- White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded yesterday with a promise that President Bush expects a full investigation and corrective actions "to make sure that abuse does not occur again."

The details of the abuse appeared to catch some administration officials by surprise, although five agencies for weeks have been culling releasable records from their files, under an agreement worked out by U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein. He was responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by five independent groups seeking anything pertinent to detainee deaths, abuse and transfers to other countries since Sept. 11, 2001.

McClellan said that he did not know whether the White House was informed about the incidents detailed in the documents released on Monday. These included the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the impersonation of FBI agents by military interrogators -- two of many practices that provoked concern among FBI agents stationed there.

"In terms of specifics, this information is becoming public, so we`re becoming aware of more information as it becomes public, as you are," McClellan said. He also said that he did not know whether FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has notified the Defense Department about his concerns but that the Pentagon takes abuse allegations "very seriously."

Amrit Singh -- a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the four groups that sued to obtain the documents -- said that she thinks the disclosure requirement will eventually encompass hundreds of thousands of pages of internal administration documents, although only 9,000 pages have been released so far. Yesterday, the judge told the CIA that it could not delay making its own disclosures until an internal probe of the abuse is completed, Singh said.

"What the documents show so far was that the abuse was widespread and systemic, that it was the result of decisions taken by high-ranking officials, and that the abuse took place within a culture of secrecy and neglect," Singh said.

Col. Joseph Curtin, the Army`s top spokesman, urged a different view of the documents released yesterday, all drawn from the Army`s Criminal Investigation Command. In detailing internal probes of 46 cases of misconduct, they show "that the Army does take seriously and investigates any allegation of detainee abuse," he said.

The new documents include several incidents of threatened executions of teenage and adult Iraqi detainees. In one instance, a soldier in a unit that lacked any training in interrogation -- but was nonetheless assigned to process and question detainees -- acknowledged forcing two men to their knees, placing bullets in their mouths, ordering them to close their eyes, and telling them they would be shot unless they answered questions about a grenade incident. He then took the bullets, and a colleague pretended to load them in the chamber of his M-16 rifle.

The documents indicate that the perpetrator, who was investigated on charges of assault and a "law of war violation," was given a nonjudicial punishment by his commander. Threatening detainees with physical harm to compel their testimony is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In a second case, Army investigators concluded that a sergeant committed offenses including assault, dereliction of duty and cruelty when he conducted "a mock execution of an Iraqi teenager" in front of the boy`s father and brother, who were suspected of looting an ammunition factory. Investigators also found that the actions were condoned by a lieutenant who conspired with the sergeant.

An investigative report also details an incident two days earlier, in which the lieutenant ordered a suspected looter to kneel, pointed a 9mm pistol at his head and then pulled the gun away just as he fired a shot. The outcome of both cases is unclear from the records released yesterday.

The documents also divulge a probe of the beatings of three mosque security guards in Baghdad in September 2003. After being arrested and cuffed during a search, the three Iraqis were kicked, stomped and dragged by a group of U.S. soldiers. Five soldiers were given reprimands and reductions in rank after being found guilty of maltreatment of prisoners, assault and other charges, the records show.

In another Baghdad case, a U.S. soldier was accused of trying to force an Iraqi civilian to hold a gun as a justification for killing him. The soldier punched the civilian in the face, held an M-16 rifle to his head and flicked the safety off to threaten him, according to the accounts of 19 witnesses. Another soldier eventually stepped in to protect the civilian, who had been hired by the U.S. Army to guard the Museum of Iraqi Military History, the records show.

Other documents describe the death in 2003 of detainee Abdul Kareem Abdureda Lafta, 44, in a U.S. Army jail in Mosul. He "appeared to be in good health" when taken into custody, and he quickly gained the attention of MPs by continually trying to remove the hood placed on his head and talking when guards told him to be silent, the documents say. One night, Lafta was put to bed with his hands tied behind him. Even so, one guard said he spent much of the night "constantly moving around on the ground" in his cell. In the morning, he was found dead.

A doctor who examined the body told investigators "he did not know what killed him." Another Army document says he was found to have a small laceration on his head. The investigators said "there is no documentation . . . explaining the lack of an autopsy."

In another case, Army investigators found probable cause to court-martial a soldier for shooting to death an Iraqi detainee, Obede Hethere Radad, without warning. But he was punished administratively and discharged.

Khalid Odah, the father of one Guantanamo detainee, said in a telephone interview from Kuwait yesterday that the new revelations make him worry even more about the fate of his son, Fawzi, who was detained by U.S. forces three years ago. "For a very long time, every day, we heard such news but nobody believed us," said Odah, head of the Kuwaiti Family Committee, a group of relatives of Guantanamo detainees. "Now it is coming from inside the government, from the FBI and others. . . . It is very frightening to my family and to other families of Kuwaiti detainees."

U.S. military officials have alleged in legal proceedings that Fawzi Odah is an admitted member of al Qaeda and had connections to the Taliban militia in Afghanistan. Khalid Odah says his son is innocent.

Staff writer John Mintz contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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December 21, 2004
U.S. Slips in Attracting the World`s Best Students
By SAM DILLON

American universities, which for half a century have attracted the world`s best and brightest students with little effort, are suddenly facing intense competition as higher education undergoes rapid globalization.

The European Union, moving methodically to compete with American universities, is streamlining the continent`s higher education system and offering American-style degree programs taught in English. Britain, Australia and New Zealand are aggressively recruiting foreign students, as are Asian centers like Taiwan and Hong Kong. And China, which has declared that transforming 100 universities into world-class research institutions is a national priority, is persuading top Chinese scholars to return home from American universities.

"What we`re starting to see in terms of international students now having options outside the U.S. for high-quality education is just the tip of the iceberg," said David G. Payne, an executive director of the Educational Testing Service, which administers several tests taken by foreign students to gain admission to American universities. "Other countries are just starting to expand their capacity for offering graduate education. In the future, foreign students will have far greater opportunities."

Foreign students contribute $13 billion to the American economy annually. But this year brought clear signs that the United States` overwhelming dominance of international higher education may be ending. In July, Mr. Payne briefed the National Academy of Sciences on a sharp plunge in the number of students from India and China who had taken the most recent administration of the Graduate Record Exam, a requirement for applying to most graduate schools; it had dropped by half.

Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined 28 percent this year. Actual foreign graduate student enrollments dropped 6 percent. Enrollments of all foreign students, in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral programs, fell for the first time in three decades in an annual census released this fall. Meanwhile, university enrollments have been surging in England, Germany and other countries.

Some of the American decline, experts agree, is due to post-Sept. 11 delays in processing student visas, which have discouraged thousands of students, not only from the Middle East but also from dozens of other nations, from enrolling in the United States. American educators and even some foreign ones say the visa difficulties are helping foreign schools increase their share of the market.

"International education is big business for all of the Anglophone countries, and the U.S. traditionally has dominated the market without having to try very hard," said Tim O`Brien, international development director at Nottingham Trent University in England. "Now Australia, the U.K., Ireland, New Zealand and Canada are competing for that dollar, and our lives have been made easier because of the difficulties that students are having getting into the U.S.

"International students say it`s not worth queuing up for two days outside the U.S. consulate in whatever country they are in to get a visa when they can go to the U.K. so much more easily."

American educators have been concerned since the fall of 2002, when large numbers of foreign students experienced delays in visa processing. But few noticed the rapid emergence of higher education as a global industry until quite recently.

"Many U.S. campuses have not yet geared up for the competition," said Peggy Blumenthal, a vice president at the Institute for International Education.

Still, Ms. Blumenthal said, it remains unclear whether the sudden decline in foreign enrollments is a one-time drop or the beginning of a long slide.

Not all educators are expressing concern.

Steven B. Sample, president of the University of Southern California - which last year had 6,647 foreign students, the most of any American university - said colleagues who lead other universities had expressed anxiety at professional meetings.

"But we compete no holds barred among ourselves for the best faculty, for students, for gifts and for grants, and that`s one of the reasons for our strength," Dr. Sample said. "Now we`ll compete with some overseas universities. Fine with me, bring `em on."

Certainly many American universities continue to be extraordinary global brand names. Shanghai Jiao Tong University has compiled an online academic ranking of 500 world universities, using criteria like the number of Nobel Prizes won by faculty members and academic articles published (ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/2004Main.htm). Of the top 20 on the list, 17 are American. Of the top 500, 170 are American.

During 2002, the most recent year for which comparable figures are available, some 586,000 foreign students were enrolled in United States universities, compared with about 270,000 in Britain, the world`s second-largest higher education destination, and 227,000 in Germany, the third-largest. Foreign enrollments increased by 15 percent that year in Britain, and in Germany by 10 percent.

The countries exporting the most students were China, South Korea and India, but the annual global migration to overseas universities involves two million students from many countries traveling in many directions. That number is exploding - by some estimates it will quadruple by 2025 - as economic growth produces millions of new middle-class students across Asia.

In October, the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, an economic forum for 30 leading industrial nations, took note of this global movement in a study. Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, an analyst at the organization`s headquarters in Paris and an author of the study, said that traditionally most countries, including the United States, had tried to attract foreign students as a way of disseminating their nation`s core values.

But three other strategies emerged in the 1990`s, Dr. Vincent-Lancrin said. Countries with aging populations like Canada and Germany, pursuing a "skilled migration" approach, have sought to recruit talented students in strategic disciplines and to encourage them to settle after graduation. Germany subsidizes foreign students so generously that their education is free.

Australia and New Zealand, pursuing a "revenue generating" approach, treat higher education as an industry, charging foreign students full tuition. They compete effectively in the world market because they offer quality education and the costs of attaining some degrees in those countries are lower than in the United States. Emerging countries like India, China and Singapore, pursuing a "capacity building" approach, view study abroad by thousands of their nation`s students as a way of training future professors and researchers for their own university systems, which are expanding rapidly, Dr. Vincent-Lancrin said.

In August a delegation of education officials from Singapore visited Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, at the Ann Arbor campus. They took over a conference room, set up computers and peppered her with questions about tuition policy, fund-raising, governance and research, Dr. Coleman recalled. They wanted to know how Michigan became a prominent university, and how it was run today.

"Eventually they`ll reap the benefits of this work," Dr. Coleman said. "Singapore will create world-class universities. Other countries are taking the same approach. We`re going to have enormous competition. We`d better be prepared for it."

The rapid changes in India and China have special importance. The number of Indian students in the United States has more than doubled in a decade, to 80,000, the largest representation of any country. The 62,000 students from China make up the second-largest group. Graduate students and degree holders from those countries play a critical role in American science, engineering and information technology research.

Some 28 percent fewer Indian students applied to attend American graduate schools this fall than last year, according to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools. This matched the overall decline for all foreign students.

Rabindranath Panda, the education consul at India`s consulate in New York, said that huge private investments in Indian higher education in recent years had greatly increased options at home for Indian students, and that those who wished to study abroad were increasingly looking at universities not only in the United States and Britain but also in France, Germany, Singapore and elsewhere.

Higher education is undergoing even more sweeping transformation in China. The number of students seeking a postsecondary degree is expected to rise to 16 million students by 2005 from 11 million in 2000 and to keep rising thereafter, according to a recent report by the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation. Even if only a small minority of those new students seek a foreign degree, they will enlarge their already important presence at hundreds of overseas universities.

But the new wave of Chinese students may not wash into the United States. Educators say applicants from China face more visa difficulties than applicants from any country outside the Middle East.

One reason, they say, appears to be that many Chinese students pursue the science disciplines that set off a screening process known as Visa Mantis, intended to prevent the transfer of sensitive technology. A Congressional study found that during a three-month period last year, more than half of all the Visa Mantis investigations worldwide involved Chinese students. The especially long visa delays experienced by Chinese students are a major irritant for many university presidents.

"Chinese students are getting heightened scrutiny," said the president of Princeton University, Shirley M. Tilghman. "I`ve asked many people for the rationale, but I`ve never gotten an answer that makes sense."

Chinese applications to American graduate schools fell 45 percent this year, while several European countries announced surges in Chinese enrollment.

"We had an especially large increase in Chinese students," said Martina Nibbeling-Wriessnig, a spokeswoman for the German Embassy in Washington.

The United States is also losing some Chinese scholars, partly because of China`s strategic decision over the last decade to channel special investments to 100 universities with a view to building them into world-class research giants capable of winning Nobel Prizes.

In October, Dr. Coleman of the University of Michigan visited Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which created the online university ranking system and has also built a vast new campus. Partly because Dr. Coleman is a biochemist, her hosts took her to visit their new pharmacy school. It had hired 16 professors, she said - all of them returned from American universities.

But not only Chinese universities are seeking to lure top faculty members from American campuses.

"Baseball`s World Series includes only American teams," said Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. "But higher education is truly a world series now, because we`re competing for students and faculty against universities all over the world."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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December 22, 2004
EDITORIAL
Grim Realities in Iraq

This has been a devastating week in Iraq and it`s still only Wednesday.

Yesterday, an explosion ripped through a dining tent at lunch hour on an American military base near Mosul, killing at least 24 people and injuring 57. The day before, President Bush finally acknowledged that many of the more than 100,000 Iraqi trainees Washington had been counting on to take over basic security tasks were far from being up to the job. And on Sunday, car-bomb attacks killed more than 60 people in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, while in Baghdad, unmasked assassins brazenly dragged three election officials out of their cars in full daylight and executed them on the spot.

This is not just pre-election mayhem. It is stark evidence that with a crucial election now less than six weeks away, America`s effort to bring into being a new Iraqi government representing all major population groups and capable of defending itself and its citizens still has a very long way to go. Some 21 months after the American invasion, United States military forces remain essentially alone in battling what seems to be a growing insurgency, with no clear prospect of decisive success any time in the foreseeable future.

Washington has no significant international military partners besides Britain, and no Iraqi military support it can count on. The election that once looked as if it might produce a government with nationwide legitimacy increasingly threatens to intensify divisions between the groups that are expected to participate enthusiastically - the Shiites and Kurds - and an estranged and embattled Sunni community, which at this point appears likely to stand aloof.

There may still be time for Washington to try to salvage the election, but that would require paying much more serious attention to legitimate Sunni grievances and showing an openness to postponing the election for several months, if that had a reasonable chance of attracting broader Sunni participation. So far, Mr. Bush has strongly resisted such an approach. As weeks go by without discernible progress, hopes for a decent outcome get progressively harder to sustain.

•

Right now, the only progress seems to lie in the willingness of the re-elected President Bush to face some hard truths:

One certainly involves Iraqi security forces, which have always been presented as the key to American withdrawal. For more than a year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials had been claiming that many tens of thousands of Iraqis were being trained to take over frontline security duties, allowing American forces first to pull back from major cities and then, at a later phase, come home. Last week, at a meeting with America`s two top military commanders responsible for Iraq, Mr. Bush got a candid evaluation of the actual combat readiness of these Iraqi trainees, who now officially number about 114,000. Mr. Bush was admirably blunt about it at his news conference on Monday, noting that while a few good generals and some good foot soldiers had been trained, "the whole command structure necessary to have a viable military is not in place."

We are glad to hear Mr. Bush acknowledge this sobering reality, but we are still waiting for him to explain who will have to fill in for these noncombat-ready Iraqis and for how long. Given the lack of other countries willing to put up their hands as volunteers, the only answer seems to be more American troops, and not just through the spring, as currently planned. Since the first days of the occupation, American troops have been too light on the ground in Iraq, allowing the looting and sabotage that soon turned into insurgency to get a costly head start.

And facing the need for an expanded American military presence means more than a simple reshuffling of deployments. If more troops in Iraq are not going to translate into a dangerously exhausted and overstretched Army, Marine Corps and National Guard, these forces need to be expanded through stepped-up recruitment. That means bigger spending on the least politically attractive part of the military budget, basic personnel salaries, and less for costly new weapons systems.

Another harsh reality that needs to be confronted head-on is the prospect for the Iraqi elections. The Jan. 30 elections were supposed to usher in a legitimate national government and a broadly representative assembly to draw up a constitution acceptable to all elements of Iraq`s fragmented population - secular and religious, Shiite and Sunni, Arab and Kurd. But things now appear headed toward a badly skewed result. Enthusiasm and participation seem high among Shiites and Kurds, who suffered greatly under Sunni minority rule and now thirst for self-government. But in predominantly Sunni areas, including Mosul, parts of Baghdad and most of central and western Iraq, there is a deep and growing alienation that threatens to depress electoral turnout and provides a large reservoir of support for the insurgency. Without an acceptable level of participation across Iraq, the elections will not be able to produce a legitimate government capable of standing on its own, mastering the insurgency and surviving without the indefinite presence of large numbers of American troops.

The timing of last month`s military assault on Falluja rested, in part, on the argument that Iraq`s Sunnis really wanted to participate in the election, but were being held back by intimidation from the insurgents. The causes of Sunni alienation from the current political process actually run far deeper, and affect large numbers of people who cannot be classified as Al Qaeda supporters, Islamic fundamentalists or sworn followers of Saddam Hussein. A broader feeling has begun to take root that Sunnis have no political, professional or personal future in the new Iraq being shaped by Washington and its Shiite and Kurdish allies.

This feeling grew out of such earlier American mistakes as the wholesale dismissal of the old, Sunni-led Iraqi national army and the blanket exclusion of even midlevel former Baathists from government jobs during the early months of the occupation. It has fed off the continuing failure to assure that authentic Sunni nationalist politicians had an adequate voice in the interim government and election preparations. A further level of resentment has been added by the physical destruction of homes, jobs and infrastructure produced by American counterinsurgency campaigns in densely populated Sunni towns like Falluja. A coalition of Sunni political leaders led by Adnan Pachachi, a respected moderate, has repeatedly called for postponing the January election for several months to encourage broader Sunni participation. His pleas need to be taken seriously, not brushed aside as they have been up till now by Baghdad and Washington.

Leaving Iraq`s Sunnis in such a sullen, resentful mood would undermine the creation of a new and stable Iraq and poison its relations with the rest of the Arab world, where Sunnis strongly predominate. Iraq`s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, somehow seems unable to recognize this. Instead of reinforcing him in his folly, the Bush administration should be actively encouraging him to think afresh. If postponing the election date can ensure more adequate Sunni participation, it is in everyone`s interest to do so.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Press Roundup for Wednesday 12/22

Josh White of the Washington Post reports that US soldiers at a base near Samarra routinely take mortar and machine gun fire, and that an incident similar to the luncheon massacre in Mosul could easily happen at other bases in the country.

Skyrocketing security costs have forced Contrack International, a major US contractor in Iraq, to pull out of that country. It had a $325 million contract to rebuild Iraq`s transportation system. This news is the best indicator yet that the insurgents are winning the Iraqi Guerrilla War of 2003- . The US military can theoretically go on taking its current level of casualties for some time to come, though it probably cannot maintain its current troops strength in Iraq. But if all the civilian companies doing reconstruction pull out, along with most of the NGO`s (non-governmental organizations), then it will be extremely difficult for the US to achieve the sort of reconstruction that might help Iraq turn a corner.

Az-Zaman: A cold wave has gripped Baghdad, leaving 16 children dead from exposure. Electricity has been unreliable recently because of sabotage, and there are heating fuel shortages for the same reason.

Vanessa Gezari has some further reflections on Sunni-Shiite relations in Iraq after the Najaf and Karbala bombings of this weekend. She is to be congratulated for seeking comment from experts like Abdulaziz Sachedina of the University of Virginia and Stephen Humphreys of the University of California, Santa Barbara. They know whereof they speak. The only dissent I would offer is that I don`t think the shrine city bombing were done by "Wahhabis." I think they were the work of Baathists, and I think most of the violence in Iraq has all along been by the Baathists, along with a few radical Sunni Arab groups.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the bombings in the shrine cities were condemned by President Ghazi al-Yawir and by the conservative Association of Muslim Scholars. The latter, Sunni clerics who are sometimes close to the guerrillas, expressed their profound pain at the injury dealt to the body of Iraq by these bombings at noble Najaf and Karbala. (That is, the Sunnis resorted to a nationalist language of soil and the national "body" to express their disapproval of the attacks on Shiite shrines).

Talib Ibrahim Dhahir, a member of the municipal governing council of Baqubah and a former nuclear scientist, was gunned down by unknown assailants on Tuesday.

Justin Raimondo has some interestng thoughts on the rift between the Neoconservatives and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But I would just add that the disgruntlement with Rumsfeld is broad and deep among Republican senators, as well.

Raimondo also has an update on the IraqTheModel website, and the persistent questions about who is backing it and why, with information about the resignation of one of the brothers from the blog, writing, "the act of some Americans that made me feel I`m on the wrong side here. I will expose these people in public very soon and I won`t lack the mean to do this, but I won`t do it here as this is not my blog."

The Guardian notes that the American Civil Liberties Union acquired documents about the treatment of Guantanamo Bay prisoners that suggest that torture was used, and that it was actually authorized by President Bush. The documents also reveal that one torture technique was to wrap a prisoner in an Israeli flag. I`m puzzled by that one (my readers, incidentally, allege that the New York Times omitted to mention this particular technique, which was reported by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post). My guess is that the prisoners` pictures were taken while wrapped in the Israeli flag, as a way of humiliating and possibly blackmailing them. You just have to scratch your head and wonder if the Bush administration is determined gradually to give supporting evidence for every single one of the anti-American stereotypes current in the Muslim world.

I suppose it doesn`t occur to the US interrogators that the Israeli flag has the Star of David on it, which is a religious symbol, and that they were desecrating the Jewish faith by this technique. If I were the Israelis, I`d complain loudly about this blasphemy.

posted by Juan @ [url12/22/2004 06:13:45 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/press-roundup-for-wednesday-1222-josh.html[/url]
Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Brooks on Moment of Hope

David Brooks has a glib op-ed today in the New York Times in which he celebrates a moment of hope in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He suggests that all the factors analysts have been complaining about-- the hegemony of the Likud in Israel, Ariel Sharon as PM, the re-election of George W. Bush, and the Iraq war, have ironically enough contributed to what he claims is an opening in the process. He gets a dig in at me, characterizing me as having said that the Iraq campaign was an elective war on behalf of Tel Aviv.

Brooks`s column makes no sense to me. First of all, the resumption of some sort of negotiations was made possible only by Yasser Arafat`s death, because Ariel Sharon hated Arafat, wanted to kill him, and refused to negotiate with him. Arafat was the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, however, and there was no one else to negotiate with. It seems to a lot of us that in the wasted past few years, Sharon has permanently spiked the possibility of there ever being a viable Palestinian state, and the Israeli colonization of the West Bank continues apace. Sharon`s so-called withdrawal from Gaza will mean nothing without a strong Palestinian Authority in the region-- otherwise the military occupation will continue de facto.

As for my views on the causation of the Iraq war, sure I think there were strong elements in the Bush administration who wanted the war for reasons mainly connected to what they thought of as Israel`s security interests. Anyone who has been reading me knows very well, however, that I think the war had many causes, not just one. That Brooks seems to want to say I was wrong is odd. Would he like to deny the allegation altogether?

Likewise, his assertion is illogical because there is no evidence that Iraq has had the slightest impact on the Israel/Palestine situation whatsoever. Brooks and others were wrong to think it would. So now he is just declaring that he was right all along without offering any causal argument, and blaming me for stating something that is pretty obvious.

Brooks at one point tried to deny that there were any Neoconservatives. Next he will be denying there was any Iraq war.

posted by Juan @ 12/21/2004 02:40:48 PM

Mosul Attack leaves 22 Dead, 51 Wounded

The Guardian reports that a rocket and mortar attack on a US military base has left nearly two dozen dead and over 50 wounded. The shells landed on a tented mess hall, wreaking havoc among US troops, Iraqi national guards, and civilians. The Guardian notes that US bases in Iraq regularly take mortar and rocket fire, but because it seldom hits anything or causes much damage. Here the guerrillas managed to hit a tent during mealtime. It seems likely to me that they had some inside information from some Iraqi employee at the base, such that they knew exactly when and where to strike for maximum effect.

This sort of incident underlines what I have been saying about the difficulty of holding elections on January 30. It is not that I endorse postponing them, since I do not believe the security situation will improve any time soon and I think the US has to make the majority Shiite community happy. But I can only imagine that if the guerrillas can do this sort of thing to a US military base, they can do it to polling stations. If that happens, turnout could be low, bringing into question the legitimacy of the process. And since the elected parliament is actually a constitutional assembly, if it is elected on a low turnout, the constitution it drafts may not be seen as legitimate, either.

Meanwhile, Iran`s Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei blamed the United States and Israel for the bombings in Karbala and Najaf. This outrageous charge is extremely dangerous and is a form of hate speech. Khamenei said he feared the US was trying to manipulate the forthcoming elections by keeping Iraqi Shiites off balance. As is often the case with Khamenei, his reasoning makes no sense at all. It is sad that a major country like Iran has such a demagogue as virtual clerical dictator. The good news is that he is not respected by most Shiites, either in Iran or in Iraq, and the Iraqis are unlikely to pay any attention at all to his bizarre outburst. Israel isn`t blowing up things in Iraq, and has no motive to do so. Baathists and Sunni fundamentalists are.

posted by Juan @ 12/21/2004 01:09:21 PM

Poll Shows American Public Wising Up

A new CNN poll shows that the views expressed here at Informed Comment on most issues related to Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld have become mainstream in the American public. A majority of Americans thinks Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should resign. I called for his resignation after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke last spring. Although some senators are saying he should remain in office because a change of leadership at the Pentagon now would be disruptive, I would argue that Rumsfeld has so consistently made the worst possible decision in Iraq that getting him out of the Department of Defense may well be a prerequisite for beginning to fix the problems. Rumsfeld appointed Douglas Feith his undersecretary for policy, and allowed Feith to set up the Office of Special Plans, which cherry-picked intelligence and forged a false case for war in Iraq. Rumsfeld over-ruled his officer corps by sending a tiny force of only 100,000 troops to Iraq, ensuring that they could not keep order in the aftermath. Rumsfeld was the one who tried to hand Iraq over to corrupt financier Ahmad Chalabi. Rumsfeld allowed the looting that began the deterioration of security after the war. Rumsfeld dissolved the Iraqi army, putting US troops on the front lines of the guerrilla war. Rumsfeld didn`t order as much armor for US troop vehicles as he could have, exposing thousands to serious injury from roadside bombs. Rumsfeld didn`t even bother to personally sign the letters of condolence to the families of deceased troops killed in Iraq, in some large part as a result of his own flawed policies. The majority of the American people is right that Rumsfeld must go (and his deputies with him).

The poll found that nearly half of Americans understood that things have gotten worse in Iraq in the past year, and the fools who think the situation has improved have been reduced to a mere fifth of the public (these are apparently the same persons who tend to be picked to answer questions on American comedian Jay Leno`s "Jay-walking" segment, and who also do not know who Dwight Eisenhower was). That 37 percent think things are no worse now than a year ago is disturbing, since they are in fact much, much worse in most ways, but at least they understand the lack of progress.

Some 41% understand that the forthcoming election in and of itself will not lead to a stable government. The vast majority realize that the Bush administration has left us stuck in Iraq, with no early prospect of an exit for US troops.

(I know it isn`t Tuesday for most of my readers, but it is for me. Be back soon).

posted by Juan @ [url12/21/2004 01:08:53 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/poll-shows-american-public-wising-up.html[/url]

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Danziger(NYT) diese Woche!

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Latest Fatality: Dec 21, 2004
Letzte Meldungen:
http://icasualties.org/oif/


Wednesday, December 22, 2004
War News for Wednesday, December 22, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Nineteen US soldiers and seven contractors killed, at least 60 wounded in attack on Camp Marez southwest of Mosul.


Camp Marez: For days all over this barren base, red ribbons, artificial Christmas trees and cutouts of smiling Santas have sprouted like tiny oases among the dust-covered Humvees and drab concrete bomb shelters.

Now, as soldiers wait anxiously for the Internet servers to go back on so they can assure loved ones they`re sound if not safe, Christmas looms more as a hurdle than a holiday.

With one cruel blow, the insurgents who prowl outside the perimeter of this godforsaken place hijacked a rare chance for true celebration and set it on a collision course with yet another round of tearful eulogies, another set of gut-wrenching final roll calls.


Fallujah: What the images of Phantom Fury did not convey is that this assault was the largest concentration of heavy armor in one place, since the fall of Berlin. This was the first time since World War II that "an American armored task force" has been turned "loose in a city with no restrictions".

The assault has left as many as 10,000 civilian dead--perhaps much much more . The Red Cross/Red Crescent estimate was upwards of 6000 as of November 25th. Till date no formal Red Cross/Red Crescent operation has been allowed in the city.

Many thanks to alert reader ClonedPoster for finding this story.


Camp Marez: The dining hall, a large tent which was shielded by towering concrete walls but had no protected roof, should have been replaced by a fortified building in time for Christmas.

The BBC`s James Reynolds, who was embedded with US troops at the base last month, says the dining hall has always been seen as vulnerable. A US army colonel had told him he feared what would happen if insurgents managed to fire rockets into it.


Fallujah: For example, the military unit I was with, I mean, the operation in Fallujah involved largely Marines, but also some army elements. I was with one of those elements. The way they proceeded through the city, given that there was booby-traps, improvised explosive devices, riddling the streets everywhere. Entire houses were rigged to blow. The way they proceeded was what they call “Reconnaissance by Fire.” If you’re going to go down a street first you scour it for any potential danger. How do you do that? You do it with a 25mm cannon on an armoured Bradley fighting vehicle. Or you do it with one 20mm tank round. Just blow up everything that looks vaguely suspicious. Then if someone shoots at you from a building, or there’s an explosion near a vehicle, don’t mess with it. Don’t go into the building looking for the guy… just level the building. And then go through the rubble afterwards.

This is from an interview with Michael Ware, the Baghdad Bureau Chief for Time Magazine. It’s an eye opener. Thanks to alert reader Zig for the catch.


Camp Marez: As of yesterday, it was unclear what caused the mess-tent explosion.

Mortar and rocket attacks, though frequent, are notoriously inaccurate.

They also are hard to stop, since they often are launched by insurgents who never stay in one place for long and operate in the thick of civilian populations, according to soldiers who have served at the base.

Another possibility is that an explosive device was somehow set off inside the base, which also is used by Iraqi troops.

Throughout the past year, the reliability of Iraqi forces has been a frequent source of concern for U.S. commanders in the Mosul area.


Fallujah: A lot of the time the houses were severely damaged in that process because one of the cardinal rules of the American occupation of Iraq is called “force protection”. The whole idea is that you limit the number of casualties that you take and the number of casualties that you make is immaterial.

I think what you’ll find the assault on Fallujah did was broaden the insurrection, not necessarily in terms of getting people who lived in other places to become more angry about the occupation, I don’t think that’s possible at the moment - there’s a level of disagreement with the occupation that cannot be improved upon - but what it did was disperse a lot of people who were actively involved in the insurgency to other places and I think that as we’ve seen recently the number of incidents as we progress towards the elections of which of course the assault on Fallujah was the start of the pacification process for those elections. What has happened is that the number of incidents has risen dramatically as a result of displacing the insurgents from Fallujah into other parts of the country as far north as Mosul, which is some 4 hours drive away.

Another excellent interview with an embedded reporter. Thanks to alert reader sonofhades for finding it.


Fort Lewis: A pall seemed to descend, like the gray, drizzling rain, over this Army post, home to 6,700 soldiers deployed to Iraq, as the wait began yesterday to identify those killed and wounded in the most deadly attack of the war for U.S. troops.

"It doesn`t hurt any more or less than any other time of the year," Lt. Col. Bill Costello, the post`s spokesman, said yesterday of the Christmastime attack on a tent full of troops and civilian workers eating lunch in Mosul, which is temporary home to thousands of Fort Lewis soldiers.

And a Merry Christmas to you, Lt. Col. Bill Costello, and all those whom you love.


Somewhere in the Green Zone: On the day of a deadly attack against US troops, Iraq’s finance minister said he saw signs of improvement in his country’s security.

Adil Abdel-Mahdi, a leading Shiite politician, said the provisional Iraqi government was trying to improve security for foreign investors and workers.

He said conditions are ”much better than before” as a result of the US-led mission last month to drive insurgents out of the Sunni-dominated city of Fallujah.


Iraq: Just before the November election, the British medical journal The Lancet released the results of an on-the-ground survey that produced an extremely rough estimate of as many as 100,000 Iraqis killed since the beginning of the Iraq war, mostly by U.S. military action. In the U.S. press, it was a two- or three-day story, much of that coverage devoted to skepticism about the researchers` methodology. In the Texas press, the estimate didn`t merit even that much coverage – no need to debunk the study if you avoid all mention of it. Nothing much has changed since Nov. 3 – the matter of Iraqi deaths, except insofar as they can be directly blamed on insurgents, is presumed to be of little U.S. public interest.


Iraq: Lack of security and fear of kidnapping make Iraqi women prisoners in their own homes. They witness the looting of their country by Halliburton, Bechtel, US NGOs, missionaries, mercenaries and local subcontractors, while they are denied clean water and electricity. In the land of oil, they have to queue five hours a day to get kerosene or petrol. Acute malnutrition has doubled among children. Unemployment at 70% is exacerbating poverty, prostitution, backstreet abortion and honour killing. Corruption and nepotism are rampant in the interim government. Al-Naqib, minister of interior admitted that he had appointed 49 of his relatives to high-ranking jobs, but only because they were qualified.

Tony Blair, acknowledged yesterday in Baghdad that violence would continue both before and after the January 30 elections, but added: "On the other hand we will have a very clear expression of democratic will." Does he not know that "democracy" is what Iraqi women use nowadays to frighten their naughty children, by shouting: "Quiet, or I`ll call democracy."


American Moral Leadership

Urgent report: The FBI memos were made public by the ACLU on Monday. One heavily redacted June 25 FBI memo, titled "URGENT REPORT" to the FBI director, provided details from someone "who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees" in Iraq.

"He described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations," the document stated. The memo also mentioned "cover-up of these abuses."


More horror stories: In July, Army criminal investigators were reviewing "the alleged rape of a juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison." It was not clear whether the incident was related to a previous report of a boy who was raped by a contractor.

Other agents gave more details of alleged abuses.

In a June instance, an agent from the Washington field office reported that an Abu Ghraib detainee complained he was cuffed and placed into an uncomfortable physical position that the military called "the Scorpion" hold. Then, the prisoner told the FBI, he was doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.


Good News

Hostages released: A shadowy Iraqi group has released two French news reporters, who have spent almost four months in captivity.

France reacted with joy Tuesday at the news that reporters Christian Chesnot and George Malbrunot had finally been released.


A new strategy: An activist group is hoping to get a resolution on Town Meeting Day ballots that calls on the state to recall Vermont National Guard troops from Iraq.

The premise of the resolution is that the war in Iraq is unjustified and illegal. It asks the state to pursue two avenues to recall Vermont Guard troops already deployed.

It calls for Vermont`s congressional delegation to urge congress to return power over the National Guard to the individual states the Guard was designed to protect.

It also asks the Legislature to form a committee to investigate how the Guard`s deployment has affected the state`s readiness for emergencies at home.

But the primary intent of the resolution is to foster dialogue and expose what organizers say is an illegal war.


Commentary

Comment: The Sabbath gasbags, as The Nation`s Calvin Trillin calls our Sunday TV news commentators, distinguished themselves yet again. They`re trying to gang up on Donald Rumsfeld on the theory that the entire Iraq war would have worked out just dandy if it hadn`t been for Rumsfeld`s mistakes.

For those now waxing indignant about Rumsfeld and the whole situation concerning armor, I remind you that when "60 Minutes" carried exactly this story in October, as did other news outlets, the right wing promptly pounced on it as further evidence of supposed liberal bias in the media.


Opinion: With a few keystrokes, you can print out the Pentagon`s list of military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Like the crosses in Flanders fields, the names stretch out row on row, 16 pages of tiny type, from Abad, Roberto, to Zurheide, Robert Paul Jr.

Nowhere in the rows upon rows of names is there anyone with the title "ambassador" or "general" or "director." And yet last week, President George W. Bush chose to honor Ambassador Paul Bremer, retired Gen. Tommy Franks, and former CIA Director George Tenet each with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their contributions to the Iraq war effort.

So desperate is the president to paint Iraq as a success - a "catastrophic success," as he puts it - that he shamelessly debases not only words, not only the Medal of Freedom, but also the final sacrifice made by everyone on the list from Abad to Zurheide.

Those guys all got medals, too. Posthumously. No $4 million book deals for them. No $25,000 speaking fees. Their families got death benefits worth about $12,000. Plus a free flag, neatly folded. And the thanks of a grateful nation whose president has now given its highest civilian honor to Bremer, Tenet and Franks.


Editorial: The fact that terrorists can strike with devastating effect on the mess tent of an American military base at lunchtime is a sign of just how bad things are in parts of Iraq. If U.S. forces, who were supposed to have broken the back of the resistance in the battle of Fallujah, cannot secure their own quarters, how can they promise Iraqis security for 9,000 polling places in next month`s election?

The interim Iraqi government, held in place by the U.S. military, says the insurgents are determined to plunge the country into civil war before the Jan. 30 elections. Leaders of the decidedly undemocratic Arab world must be secretly pleased at the bad model on display in Iraq, where the prospect for meaningful voting in less than six weeks seems fainter with each new atrocity. A civil war may not happen, but, at this grim point, democracy doesn`t seem like much of a bet, either.


Casualty Reports

Local story: Baton Rouge, LA, Marine killed in Al Anbar province

Local story: Georgia Marine killed in Fallujah

Local story: Two South Carolina National Guardsmen killed in helicopter crash in Mosul

Local story: League City, TX, soldier killed in accident in Kuwait while beginning his third (involuntary) tour in Iraq


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Rentenversicherung: Man soll nicht reparieren, was nicht kaputt ist
von Mark Weisbrot
ZNet Kommentar 21.12.2004
Vor vier Jahren schrieb ich zusammen mit Dean Baker ein Buch: ‘Social Security: The Phony Crisis’ (University of Chicago Press, 2000). Darin legen wir dar, daß es keinen Grund gibt - weder ökonomischer, noch finanzieller, noch versicherungsstatistischer oder sonstiger Natur -, sich über die Zukunft der amerikanischen Rentenversicherung Sorgen zu machen. Die Vorstellung, unsere Rentenversicherung gerate in Schwierigkeiten, sobald die Babyboomer in Rente gehen, war nichts als ein modernes Märchen, ist es immer noch. Unter anderem rezensierte The Economist unser Buch - ein konservatives britisches Magazin. Der Economist teilte unsere Meinung. Praktisch niemand hatte die Traute, in Zweifel zu ziehen, was wir geschrieben hatten, wie auch, schließlich arbeiteten wir mit Zahlen, die alle anderen auch verwendeten - einschließlich George W. Bushs Wahlkampfkampagne - Zahlen, die direkt aus dem jährlichen Bericht des Rentenkuratoriums stammen. Wir hofften, unser Buch werde mit diesem Blödsinn - “reparieren” der Rentenversicherung - aufräumen. In den letzten vier Jahren gab es tatsächlich ein paar Fortschritte. So wurde in einem Editorial Board der New York Times im März diesen Jahres zum erstenmal festgestellt, daß “jene, die sich sorgen, es gäbe keine Rentenversicherung mehr, wenn sie in Rente gehen, sich schlicht im Irrtum befinden”. Noch vor vier Jahren war laut mehrerer Umfragen eine Mehrheit dafür, die Rentenversicherung teilzuprivatisieren. Zum Teil das Ergebnis einer aggressiven Kampagne rechter Thinktanks und Politiker - unterstützt von Wallstreet-Firmen, die sich durch die Privatisierung Gewinne in Höhe von mehreren 10 Milliarden Dollar erhofften. Diese Leute überzeugten weite Teile der Öffentlichkeit einerseits davon, daß sie nicht mehr von ihren Rentenversicherungsbeiträgen profitieren würden und andererseits davon, daß sie mit der Börse mehr aus ihrem Geld machen könnten.

In unserem Buch zeigen wir, daß auch diese zweite Behauptung falsch ist. Mit Hilfe der Arhythmie weisen wir nach - was niemand zuvor getan hat -, daß damals die Börsenpreise, infolge der inflationären Aktienblase, aller Logik nach unvereinbar waren mit den (in Aussicht gestellten) Wachstumsraten bei Profit und Wirtschaft. Die Börsenblase platzte prompt, wie von uns prophezeit. Und mit diesem Knall schnurrte auch die Unterstützung für die Privatisierung der Rentensysteme zusammen. Aber das Bush-Team setzt sich nach wie vor für deren Privatisierung ein. Der Vorschlag des Teams birgt eine Menge Fallstricke: Unser Staatsdefizit, das bereits jetzt (prozentual zur Wirtschaft) beinahe Rekordniveau erreicht hat, würde weiter anwachsen; die Verwaltungskosten der Rentenversicherung stiegen enorm, Kosten, die in Zukunft von den Leistungen abgezogen würden; wer künftig in Rente geht, wäre den Risiken einer labilen Börse ausgesetzt - einem Aktienmarkt, der nach historischem Maßstab nach wie vor überbewertet ist, was das Preis-Gewinn-Verhältnis angeht. Der Vorschlag des Bush-Teams unterminiert zudem die politische Unterstützung für das größte Anti-Armuts-Programm der USA - indem er künftige Rentenbezieher in zwei Lager spaltet: Da wären zum einen die eher wohlhabenden Rentner, die ihre Sozialversicherungsrente größtenteils durch privatisierte Konten erwirtschafteten und andererseits der große Rest. Hierin liegt wahrscheinlich auch das Hauptziel der Privatisierer. Aber soziale Absicherung basiert nunmal nicht auf Rentenkonten sondern auf einem Rentenversicherungssystem. Rentenversicherung - das ist eine gesellschaftliche Pflicht, von Generation zu Generation. Wir alle sind Einzahler und Begünstigte zugleich - können wir doch nie wissen, was uns im Alter erwartet. Zusätzlich im Programm: Versicherungsleistungen im Falle der Behinderung und Leistungen für Hinterbliebene. Jene, die an den Grundsatz “jeder für sich allein” glauben und an das Gesetz des Dschungels konnten mit der Vorstellung “wir sitzen alle im gleichen Boot”, auf der die Sozialversicherung beruht, noch nie etwas anfangen. Unser Rentenversicherungssystem stand in seiner Geschichte selten so gesund da wie heute. Um Engpässe, die sich in den nächsten 75 Jahren ergeben könnten, auszugleichen, wäre eine Summe nötig, die unter den von uns in den 50gern, 60gern, 70gern oder 80gern aufgewendeten Summen läge - jeweils auf die Dekade bezogen. Alles, was wir jetzt tun müssen, um unser Rentenversicherungssystem zu retten, ist, es vor den Privatisierern zu retten.

Wer sind die Leute, die die Rente kürzen wollen?

Manchmal lese ich eine Nachricht und muß laut lachen. Hier ein gutes Beispiel: Unter der Überschrift ‘Zum Thema Rentenversicherung’ schrieb die New York Times letzte Woche: “45 Prozent glauben, der Vorschlag, es den Leuten zu erlauben, ihre Rentenbeiträge in private Konten zu investieren, sei eine schlechte Idee; 49 Prozent halten dies für eine gute Idee”. Kapieren Sie? In der oben zitierten Umfrage von NYT und CBS wurden die Leute nur gefragt, ob sie es gut finden, über die Verwendung ihrer Abgaben mitzuentscheiden. Kein Wunder, daß die Hälfte ja sagte. Was die Umfrager bei der Formulierung ihrer Frage wohl versehentlich vergaßen, war, die Kehrseite der Medaille zu erwähnen: tiefe Einschnitte in die Rente. So läuft das. Laut ‘Reform Plan 2` der bewußt irreführend ‘Präsidentenkommission zur Stärkung der Rentenversicherung’ benannten Kommission, liefe die Teilprivatisierung der Rente für die meisten Amerikaner auf beträchtliche Einbußen bei den Leistungen hinaus.

Nehmen wir einen 20jährigen Amerikaner / eine 20jährige Amerikanerin, der/die gerade zu arbeiten anfängt. Gemäß ‘Reform Plan 2` würde er/sie 34% seiner/ihrer zu erwartenden Rente einbüßen. Bezogen auf die Rente während der gesamten Lebenszeit wären das fast $134 000. Im Schnitt hätte diese(r) 20jährige noch die Chance, sich rund $47 000 via individuelles Konto zu sichern - vorausgesetzt, die Börse stürzt nicht genau dann ab, wenn er/sie in Rente geht, wie das 2000 bis 2002 der Fall war. Hier eine etwas präzisere Fragestellung für die nächste Umfrage: Sind Sie dafür, daß Ihre Rente aus der Sozialversicherung um 34% gekürzt wird, vorausgesetzt, Sie bekommen dafür die Möglichkeit, einen kleinen Teil via Privatkonto zurückzuerlangen? Das wäre die Situation für im Arbeitprozeß stehende junge Menschen. Je älter man ist, desto geringer wären die Verluste. Dennoch, für die überwiegende Mehrzahl der Amerika liefe der Plan unterm Strich auf einen Verlust hinaus. Was glauben Sie, wieviele Menschen würden so einem Deal zustimmen? Genau diesen Deal scheint Präsident Bush aber vorschlagen zu wollen. Seine Kommission - in der es von Befürwortern der Privatisierung wimmelt, was für Gremien dieser Art unüblich ist, -, hat insgesamt drei Pläne erarbeitet. Noch hat Bush sich nicht explizit für einen entschieden. Doch kurz nach seiner Wiederwahl am 2. November deutete er an, daß es ihm um Plan 2 zu tun ist.

Hier eine Anmerkung für Journalisten, die zum Thema berichten: Stellt die Schlagzeile in den Mittelpunkt: Massive Kürzungen zur Schaffung privater Konten. Welchen Zweck hat das alles? Die Leute sollen einen Teil ihrer Sozialversicherungsabgaben in Aktienfonds investieren. Schon heute existieren zwar eine Reihe von Möglichkeiten zur Abgabenbefreiung der Einnahmen, um sie am Aktienmarkt zu investieren - individuelle Rentenkonten oder die 401-Konten. Weniger als 5% der abhängig Beschäftigten nutzen diese Möglichkeiten allerdings voll. Wäre eine gute Idee von der Regierung, dafür zu sorgen, daß mehr Menschen in den Genuß von Rentensparkonten kommen bzw. billiger. Dazu braucht man jedoch nicht die Sozialversicherung zu plündern und die Rente zu kürzen. Und es besteht auch nicht die Dringlichkeit, die Rentenversicherung in naher Zukunft zu “reparieren”. Glaubt man den Zahlen, auf die alle zurückgreifen - auch die Kommission des Präsidenten - ist unsere Sozialversicherung in der Lage, die in Aussicht gestellten Renten noch 38 Jahre zu zahlen, ohne daß reformiert werden muß. Das überparteiliche Haushaltsbüro des Kongresses hatte entsprechende Schätzungen kürzlich sogar auf 48 Jahre korrigiert. Welchen Maßstab man auch zugrundelegt: Unsere Rentenversicherung steht besser da als in den meisten Perioden ihrer 68jährigen Geschichte. Engpässe, die vielleicht in 40 oder 50 Jahren auftreten, sind kaum ein Problem und werden leichter zu beheben sein als in der Vergangenheit, als uns wesentlich weniger Einkommen zur Verfügung stand. Dennoch haben die sogenannten Rentenversicherungs-”Reformer” die vergangenen 15 Jahre dazu genutzt, einer Mehrheit der Bevölkerung einzutrichtern, unsere Rentenversicherung sei gefährdet. Und heute treten sie mit einem Plan auf, der auf Leistungskürzungen hinausläuft, der unser ohnehin aufgeblähtes Staatsdefizit um unzählige Hundertmilliarden vergrößern würde und die Verwaltungskosten für die Rentenversicherung mehr als verzehnfachen. Warum?

Mark Weisbrot ist Ko-Direktor des ‘Center for Economic and Policy Research’ in Washington (www.cepr.net). Zusammen mit Dean Baker hat er das Buch verfaßt: ‘Social Security: The Phony Crisis’ (2000, University of Chicago Press)

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MOVIES
Giving them a sick feeling
Drug firms are on the defense as filmmaker Michael Moore plans to dissect their industry.
By Elaine Dutka
Times Staff Writer

Dec 22 2004

America`s pharmaceutical industry is putting out an advisory about the latest potential threat to its health: Michael Moore.

Moore, the filmmaker whose targets have included General Motors ("Roger & Me"), the gun lobby (the Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine") and President Bush ("Fahrenheit 9/11") has now set his sights on the healthcare industry, including insurance companies, HMOs, the Food and Drug Administration — and drug companies.

At least six of the nation`s largest firms have already issued internal notices to their workforces, preparing them for potential ambushes.

"We ran a story in our online newspaper saying Moore is embarking on a documentary — and if you see a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, you`ll know who it is," said Stephen Lederer, a spokesman for Pfizer Global Research and Development.

In September and October, GlaxoSmithKline, the second-largest in retail sales, as well as AstraZeneca and Wyeth, sent out Moore alerts, instructing employees that questions posed by the media or filmmakers should be handled by corporate communications. Heavyweights Sanofi-Synthelabo and Aventis Pharmaceuticals each sent out similar memos before their recent merger. Merck & Co., Abbott Laboratories, Eli Lilly & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries send periodic messages about dealing with the press but haven`t singled out Moore by name. Johnson & Johnson declined to comment.

Moore`s project is only the latest bit of bad news for the embattled industry. Popular — and lucrative — drugs such as Vioxx, Celebrex and Aleve have been linked to cardiovascular problems, and the possibility of lawsuits is looming. Canada is undercutting U.S. drug prices, and health budgets are being slashed. And then there`s increased scrutiny by the FDA, whose oversight of the drug industry and its relationship to it is raising many questions.

"We have an image problem — not only with Michael Moore, but with the general public," said M.J. Fingland, senior director of communications for the Washington, D.C.-based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. "We`re criticized on the Hill and in the press — put in the category of the tobacco industry, even though we save lives."

The industry, Fingland said, has made great strides in the last three years — ever since a new ethics policy was implemented in 2001. Drawn up with the help of the American Medical Assn. and other medical specialty groups, it restricted the types of gifts given to doctors, for example, setting a $100 ceiling on each. Although pharmaceutical companies can still sponsor meetings, they no longer have free rein to treat doctors to five-star dinners or pick up their hotel tabs.

"Giveaways, lavish trips are a thing of the past," Fingland said. "We`ve cleaned up the business considerably."

Despite the improvement, pharmaceutical executives are bracing for the worst.

"Moore`s past work has been marked by negativity, so we can only assume it won`t be a fair and balanced portrayal," said Rachel Bloom, executive director of corporate communications for the Wilmington, Del.-based AstraZeneca. "His movies resemble docudramas more than documentaries."

Rumors are already flying within the industry about Moore`s moviemaking tactics. Moore, it is said, has hired actors to portray pharmaceutical salesmen who offer gifts to doctors who promote their products. There`s also word that he`s offered physicians $50,000 apiece to install secret cameras in their offices in an effort to document alleged corruption.

In September, employees said that Moore was shoving a microphone at people at GlaxoSmithKline, Bloom notes, even though he was in town only for a radio appearance.

"We have six business centers nationwide, all of which report `sightings,` " Bloom said. "Michael Moore is becoming an urban legend."

Tentatively titled "Sicko," Moore`s film will probably be released in the first half of 2006, sometime between the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. No deal has yet been reached, but an announcement is expected after the new year. There`s interest in the industry, he says, on the part of some of the major studios and not just their specialty divisions.

Reached at his home in Michigan, the director declined to say whether he`s hired actors to portray pharmaceutical salesmen and denied paying doctors to help him install secret cameras. ("I didn`t need to. So many doctors have offered to help, for free, in an effort to expose the system.") He does admit to hanging around hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, including two that have not issued internal alerts.

It`s getting harder and harder to find corporate executives, however, who are willing to sit down for interviews, Moore said.

Moore decided to make a film about healthcare because it`s "a hot-button issue with the average American — the domestic issue of the day," he said. "Being screwed by your HMO and ill-served by pharmaceutical companies is the shared American experience. The system, inferior to that of much poorer nations, benefits the few at the expense of the many."

Tackling the health industry first occurred to the documentarian after he shot a segment for his now-defunct TV show, "The Awful Truth," about a man fighting his insurance company to pay for a kidney and pancreas transplant. He said the viewer response was enormous — as was audience reaction to a derogatory line about HMOs in the Jack Nicholson-Helen Hunt movie, "As Good As It Gets." There was a raw nerve, he ultimately decided, that wasn`t being addressed.

Last summer, the Endeavor agency, which represents Moore, tested the Hollywood waters — sending out a six-page outline of "Sicko" to a host of independent producers, independent film companies and the major studios. The movie, according to the treatment, would end with Moore sailing to Cuba with ailing Americans to take advantage of that country`s free healthcare. That, he says, was only a joke made on a late-night talk show.

According to the summary, human interest stories about victims of the system will be interspersed with interviews. He will dig up conflict-of-interest concerns aimed at members of Congress overseeing Medicare and will look at politicians who accept campaign contributions from a host of insurance companies, as well as concerns about the "merger mania" in the healthcare industry.

Nancy Pekarek, vice president of corporate media relations for British firm GlaxoSmithKline, said employees are uneasy about an assault.

"We`ve been getting voicemail messages," she said. "This is their career, after all, and it`s no fun to be targeted. The problem is that Moore`s film [isn`t likely to] reflect the stringent standards of today."

The movie, Moore said, is only in its early stages "and already people are freaky-deaky."

While "Sicko" is coming to life, "Fahrenheit" hasn`t been laid to rest. Beginning on Inauguration Day, Moore will be documenting the activities of the Bush administration for "Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2 ."

"The word is out to whistle-blowers, in networks and corporations, that Bush has his sequel — a second term," Moore said. "And one bad sequel deserves a good one. What form it takes depends on the `improvisation` of my lead actor. I`m more than happy to share residuals with him if he`d sit down with me for 10 minutes."



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Dec 23, 2004
Asia Times Online, 4305 Far East Finance Centre, 16 Harcourt Rd, Central, Hong Kong

Feared group behind Mosul carnage
By B Raman

At least fourteen American troops and several others were killed on Tuesday in an attack on an improvised dining hall of a US military base at Mosul in northern Iraq. An organization called Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah (JAAS) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

While JAAS has projected the attack as a suicide bombing, thereby giving the impression that it has been able to penetrate the US military base, local US Army spokesmen have described it as a mortar attack, similar to the mortar attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad, which one witnesses frequently.

JAAS, which came to notice for the first time in February after a major terrorist strike in the Kurdish areas, has claimed responsibility for many killings of kidnapped hostages, including 12 Nepalis, and a number of daring attacks - not only in and around Mosul, but also in different areas of the Sunni triangle. The incidents outside Mosul show that it has a wide reach in the Sunni-majority areas of Iraq.

It advocates hardline fundamentalism, similar to that of the Afghan Taliban. It describes its objectives as not only the defeat of the US-led occupation troops and the liberation of Iraq from their subjugation, but also the establishment of orthodox Islamic rule in Iraq after its liberation. It says that those Iraqis who had willingly sacrificed their lives in the jihad against the occupiers would have died in vain if a secular government was to be restored in Iraq after the defeat of the occupying forces.

A statement of December 6 attributed to JAAS said:

It is known that jihad in Iraq has become the obligatory required duty of every Muslim after the infidel enemy fell upon the land of Islam. It was the followers of the Prophet`s Sunnah and Jammah, the people of unification and following of ancestors, who raised the blessed banner of jihad and acted in groups, each in their area but spontaneously, receiving the directions and orders for their jihad from the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Noble Prophet. They included clerics, sheikhs, and military fighters.

The task is great and the situation is momentous. It concerns the nation`s fate and does not terminate by the end of the occupation. The aim does not end with their defeat, but with the upholding of Allah`s religion and the application of the Sharia of Allah to rule this Islamic land. What is the use of shedding Muslim mujahideens` blood to throw out the forces of occupation if, after that, the fruits are enjoyed by a secular Iraqi or a puppet agent of the Americans working to fulfill their plans and programs? Then, we return to the control of a puppet government that rules with the laws of infidels in the name of Islam and is, in fact, controlled by the Jews and the Christians.

A faithful does not get bitten twice. Because of this, a group of resistance fighters and knowledgeable people, who have the political and military savvy and who have the record in managing the Islamic struggle against the enemies of Islam, have brought together a number of divided groups and platoons of resistance that operated in the field from the north to the south to make up a huge army that comes under a unified command. A command that will establish a locally devised unimported practical plan based on their knowledge of the battlefield and on the basis of the Sharia in the Koran and the Sunnah. We called it the Ansar al-Sunnah Army. We call on our brethren in faith and jihad to come together under the banner of this army to fulfill the hope of an Islamic nation that honors Islam and Muslims. Allah`s hand is with the group; the devil is in the company of the single. The wolf attacks the straggler sheep.

Its projection of itself as "a group of resistance fighters and knowledgeable people, who have the political and military savvy and who have the record in managing the Islamic struggle against the enemies of Islam", is significant. This seeks to show that it is a mixed group of local resistance fighters and others who had participated in jihad elsewhere. However, it also projects itself as an indigenous organization carrying out a jihad against the occupation troops on the basis of a "locally devised unimported practical plan".

JAAS`s statements generally refer to one Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan bin-Mahmud as its Amir. Not much is known about him except that he is an Arab who used to be a member of the Ansar al-Islam (Defenders of Islam) until October last year. It is said that after he broke away from the organization he formed JAAS. The reasons for the split are not known.

Before their invasion of Iraq last year, the Americans, without credible evidence, had projected Ansar al-Islam, an anti-US group operating in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, as the local branch of al-Qaeda. Some reports also projected it as being aided by Iran, again without any credible evidence.

On February 1, 105 persons were killed when an Arab and a Kurd carried out simultaneous twin suicide bombings directed respectively at the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, both in the Kurdish city of Arbil. This was the terrorist strike for which the Ansar al-Sunnah had first claimed responsibility. Hawlani, a Kurdish newspaper, had identified at that time Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan bin-Mahmud as the Amir of the organization.

This is apparently his assumed name; his real name is not known. The newspaper described him as the brother of one Abdullah al-Shami, an Ansar al-Islam leader, who, according to it, was killed last year while fighting against the PUK near the Iranian border. Kurdish sources describe bin-Mahmud as a Jordanian, like the infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and not an Iraqi Arab, and as a close associate of Osama bin Laden. He is assisted by one Abdullah Shafi, who is also projected by Kurdish sources as an al-Qaeda operative, who had lived for some time in Afghanistan.

# After February, the following are some of the strikes for which JAAS has claimed responsibility: December 5: Machine-gun attack in Tikrit, killing 17 Iraqi civilians working for the US military.
# December 1: Kidnapping and killing of three Iraqis working for the US Marine Corps.
# November 25: A mortar attack on Baghdad`s Green Zone that killed four Gurkha security guards and 12 others.
# November 20: The killing of two hostages identified as members of a Kurdish political group in Mosul.
# November 4: Beheading of a captured major of the new Iraqi army raised by the Americans.
# October 28: Kidnapping and killing of 11 Iraqi soldiers south of Baghdad.
# October 18: Killing of nine Iraqi policemen returning after training in Jordan.
# August 31: Kidnapping and killing of 12 Nepalese construction workers.

According to knowledgeable Iraqi sources, after the defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War of 1991, a group of fundamentalist Sunni clerics had tried to organize a Salafi movement in Iraq for the overthrow of Saddam Hussain`s Ba`athist regime with the aim of setting up an Islamic state. On coming to know of it, Saddam crushed their movement and jailed some leaders, while others managed to escape to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan. Among the leaders of this Salafi movement were Omar Hussein Hadid, reportedly a former electrician turned mullah; Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi; Sheikh Zafir al-Ubaidi; Moyaed Ahmed Yasseen, reportedly arrested by the Iraqi army on November 14; and Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan bin-Mahmud. These sources claim these Salafi elements are in the forefront of the anti-US insurgency.

B Raman is additional secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, government of India, New Delhi, and currently director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and distinguished fellow and convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-mail [e-mail].

(Copyright 2004 B Raman.)

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When it comes to giving foreign aid, the United States is the stingiest country in the Group of Seven industrialized nations.
December 23, 2004
EDITORIAL
America, the Indifferent

It was with great fanfare that the United States and 188 other countries signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a manifesto to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and disease among the one billion people in the world who subsist on barely anything. The project set a deadline of 2015 to achieve its goals. Chief among them was the goal for developed countries, like America, Britain and France, to work toward giving 0.7 percent of their national incomes for development aid for poor countries.

Almost a third of the way into the program, the latest available figures show that the percentage of United States income going to poor countries remains near rock bottom: 0.14 percent. Britain is at 0.34 percent, and France at 0.41 percent. (Norway and Sweden, to no one`s surprise, are already exceeding the goal, at 0.92 percent and 0.79 percent.)

And we learned this week that in the last two months, the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs aimed at helping hungry nations become self-sufficient, and it has told charities like Save the Children and Catholic Relief Services that it won`t honor earlier promises. Instead, administration officials said that most of the country`s emergency food aid would go to places where there were immediate crises.

Something`s not right here. The United States is the world`s richest nation. Washington is quick to say that it contributes more money to foreign aid than any other country. But no one is impressed when a billionaire writes a $50 check for a needy family. The test is the percentage of national income we give to the poor, and on that basis this country is the stingiest in the Group of Seven industrialized nations.

The administration has cited the federal budget deficit as the reason for its cutback in donations to help the hungry feed themselves. In fact, the amount involved is a pittance within the federal budget when compared with our $412 billion deficit, which has been fueled by war and tax cuts. The administration can conjure up $87 billion for the fighting in Iraq, but can it really not come up with more than $15.6 billion - our overall spending on development assistance in 2002 - to help stop an 8-year-old AIDS orphan in Cameroon from drinking sewer water or to buy a mosquito net for an infant in Sierra Leone?

There is a very real belief abroad that the United States, which gave 2 percent of its national income to rebuild Europe after World War II, now engages with the rest of the world only when it perceives that its own immediate interests are at stake. If that is unfair, it`s certainly true that American attention is mainly drawn to international hot spots. After the Sept. 11 bombings, Washington ratcheted up aid to Pakistan to help fight the war on terror. Just last week, it began talks aimed at contributing more aid to the Palestinians to encourage them to stop launching suicide bombers at Israel.

Here`s a novel idea: how about giving aid before the explosion, not just after?

At the Monterey summit meeting on poverty in 2002, President Bush announced the Millennium Challenge Account, which was supposed to increase the United States` assistance to poor countries that are committed to policies promoting development. Mr. Bush said his government would donate $1.7 billion the first year, $3.3 billion the second and $5 billion the third. That $5 billion amount would have been just 0.04 percent of America`s national income, but the administration still failed to match its promise with action.

Back in Washington and away from the spotlight of the summit meeting, the administration didn`t even ask Congress for the full $1.7 billion the first year; it asked for $1.3 billion, which Congress cut to $1 billion. The next year, the administration asked for $2.5 billion and got $1.5 billion.

Worst of all, the account has yet to disperse a single dollar, while every year in Africa, one in 16 pregnant women still die in childbirth, 2.2 million die of AIDS, and 2 million children die from malaria.

Jeffrey Sachs, the economist appointed by Kofi Annan to direct the Millennium Project, puts the gap between what America is capable of doing and what it actually does into stark relief.

The government spends $450 billion annually on the military, and $15 billion on development help for poor countries, a 30-to-1 ratio that, as Mr. Sachs puts it, shows how the nation has become "all war and no peace in our foreign policy." Next month, he will present his report on how America and the world can actually cut global poverty in half by 2015. He says that if the Millennium Project has any chance of success, America must lead the donors.

Washington has to step up to the plate soon. At the risk of mixing metaphors, it is nowhere even near the table now, and the world knows it.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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December 23, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Worth a Thousand Words
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There has been so much violence in Iraq that it`s become hard to distinguish one senseless act from another. But there was a picture that ran on the front page of this newspaper on Monday that really got to me. It showed several Iraqi gunmen, in broad daylight and without masks, murdering two Iraqi election workers. The murder scene was a busy street in the heart of Baghdad. The two election workers had been dragged from their car into the middle of the street. They looked young, the sort of young people you`d see doing election canvassing in America or Ukraine or El Salvador.

One was kneeling with his arms behind his back, waiting to be shot in the head. Another was lying on his side. The gunman had either just pumped a bullet into him or was about to. I first saw the picture on the Internet, and I did something I`ve never done before - I blew it up so it covered my whole screen. I wanted to look at it more closely. You don`t often get to see the face of pure evil.

There is much to dislike about this war in Iraq, but there is no denying the stakes. And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who - for the first time ever in their region - are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.
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In downtown Baghdad, dozens of gunmen carried out a brazen ambush on a car, pulling out three election officials
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Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.

As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It`s time we called them by their real names.

However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.

Indeed, they haven`t even bothered to tell us otherwise. They have counted on the fact that the Bush administration is so hated around the world that any opponents will be seen as having justice on their side. Well, they do not. They are murdering Iraqis every day for the sole purpose of preventing them from exercising that thing so many on the political left and so many Europeans have demanded for the Palestinians: "the right of self-determination."

What is terrifying is that the noble sacrifice of our soldiers, while never in vain, may not be enough. We may actually lose in Iraq. The vitally important may turn out to be the effectively impossible.

We may lose because of the defiantly wrong way that Donald Rumsfeld has managed this war and the cynical manner in which Dick Cheney, George Bush and - with some honorable exceptions - the whole Republican right have tolerated it. Many conservatives would rather fail in Iraq than give liberals the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Rumsfeld sacked. We may lose because our Arab allies won`t lift a finger to support an election in Iraq - either because they fear they`ll be next to face such pressures, or because the thought of democratically elected Shiites holding power in a country once led by Sunnis is anathema to them.

We may lose because most Europeans, having been made stupid by their own weakness, would rather see America fail in Iraq than lift a finger for free and fair elections there.

As is so often the case, the statesman who framed the stakes best is the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Count me a "Blair Democrat." Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq this week, said: "Whatever people`s feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror. On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want to have the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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December 23, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Christmas Eve of Destruction
By MAUREEN DOWD

In Iraq, as Yogi Berra would say, the future ain`t what it used to be.

Now that the election`s over, our leaders think it`s safe to experiment with a little candor.

President Bush has finally acknowledged that the Iraqis can`t hack it as far as securing their own country, which means, of course, that America has no exit strategy for its troops, who will soon number 150,000.

News organizations led with the story, even though the president was only saying something that everybody has known to be true for a year. The White House`s policy on Iraq has gone from a total charade to a limited modified hangout. Mr. Bush is conceding the obvious, that the Iraqi security forces aren`t perfect, so he doesn`t have to concede the truth: that Iraq is now so dire no one knows how or when we can get out.

If this fiasco ever made sense to anybody, it doesn`t any more.

John McCain, who lent his considerable credibility to Mr. Bush during the campaign and vouched for the president and his war, now concedes that he has no confidence in Donald Rumsfeld.

And Rummy admitted yesterday that his feelings got hurt when people accused him of being insensitive to the fact that he arrogantly sent his troops into a sinkhole of carnage - a vicious, persistent insurgency - without the proper armor, equipment, backup or preparation.

The subdued defense chief further admitted that despite all the American kids who gave their lives in Mosul on the cusp of Christmas, battling an enemy they can`t see in a war fought over weapons that didn`t exist, we`re not heading toward the democratic halcyon Mr. Bush promised.

"I think looking for a peaceful Iraq after the elections would be a mistake," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

His disgraceful admission that his condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq were signed by machine - "I have directed that in the future I sign each letter," he said in a Strangelovian statement - is redolent of the myopia that has led to the dystopia.

The Bushies are betting a lot on the January election, even though a Shiite-dominated government will further alienate the Sunnis - and even though Iraq may be run by an Iranian-influenced ayatollah. That would mean that Iraq would have a leadership legitimized by us to hate us.

International election observers say it`s too dangerous to actually come in and monitor the vote in person; they`re going to "assess" the vote from the safety of Amman, Jordan. Isn`t that like refereeing a football game while sitting in a downtown bar?

The administration hopes that once the Iraqis understand they have their own government, that will be a turning point and they will realize their country is worth fighting for. But this is the latest in a long list of turning points that turn out to be cul-de-sacs.

From the capture of Saddam to the departure of Paul Bremer and the assault on Falluja, there have been many false horizons for peace.

The U.S. military can`t even protect our troops when they`re eating lunch in a supposedly secure space - even after the Mosul base commanders had been warned of a "Beirut-style" attack three weeks before - because the Iraqi security forces and support staff have been infiltrated by insurgency spies.

Each milestone, each thing that is supposed to enable us to get some traction and change the basic dynamic in Iraq, comes and goes without the security getting any better. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that a major U.S. contractor, Contrack International Inc., had dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq, "raising new worries about the country`s growing violence and its effect on reconstruction."

The Bush crowd thought it could get in, get out, scare the Iranians and Syrians, and remove the bulk of our forces within several months.

But now we`re in, and it`s the allies, contractors and election watchdogs who want out.

Aside from his scintilla of candor, Mr. Bush is still not leveling with us. As he said at his press conference on Monday, "the enemies of freedom" know that "a democratic Iraq will be a decisive blow to their ambitions because free people will never choose to live in tyranny."

They may choose to live in a theocracy, though. Americans did.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Mosul Paralyzed as House to House Searching Continues
10 Die in Samarra, Mahmudiyah Violence

Az-Zaman: Schools, offices and shops were closed in Mosul, a city of over a million, on Wednesday as US troops conducted house to house searches in the southern and western areas of the city for the guerrillas who planned the bombing of the mess hall at the nearby US base on Tuesday.

It now appears that the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber who got inside the tent rather than by incoming mortar shells or rockets. Credit for the bombing was claimed by the radical Ansar al-Sunnah group, a small, largely Kurdish group based in northern Iraq.

Meanwhile, a large explosion in the Najjar District of Mosul shook the whole city on Wednesday.

Az-Zaman also reported the assassination of another member of the local governing council in Baqubah, Yusuf Abd al-Raziq, along with a police lieutenant.

Over 10 Iraqis were killed on Wednesday in clashes and explosions in Samarra (just north of Baghdad) and in Mahmudiyah (in Babil province south of the capital). The US has been fighting Sunni Arab guerrillas in Babil province to stop their attacks on Shiite locals and pilgrims, an action warmly supported by Iraqi vice president Ibrahim Jaafari and other Shiite leaders.

In Mamoun district, west of Baghdad, guerrillas hit a police station with a rocket, killing one and wounding two.

Ma`d Fayyad of Ash-Sharq al-Awsat interviews interim Iraqi education minister, Dr. Sami al-Muzaffir. Dr. al-Muzaffir frankly expressed his regret at leaving his professorial post at Baghdad University to become minister of education. He said that 80% of Iraqi schools have been damaged in the war, though many had now been repaired, and new ones were being built. There were plans to build 4500 schools, with World Bank, Kuwaiti and other grants, though great obstacles stood in the way of getting to work on them soon. He said there were over 6 million students in Iraq and 370,000 teachers, a very good ratio of 1 to 19, with many of the teachers having MA degrees. He admitted, however, that the distribution of the teachers was highly uneven, with some schools having far too few. He said that thousands of Baathist school teachers have now been rehired, and that many teachers formerly excluded from teaching by the Baath have also been hired. Altogehter 17,000 teachers have been returned to the classroom. In many instances, he made their rehiring dependent on their accepting a posting in a school that needed teachers. With World Bank help, 550 new textbooks have been printed in Iraq, and 50 outside.

Iran has closed its borders with Iraq and has forbidden Iranians from going as pilgrims to the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, because of the poor security situation. (Az-Zaman says there was some sort of firefight in Najaf on Wednesday).

AP reports that the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt warned against the erection of a sectarian state in Iraq. Al-Zaman, however, reports the statements of Jordanian foreign minister Hani al-Mulqi differently. He spoke, not against sectarianism, but against "political Islam" (al-Islam as-Siyasi). Obviously, he meant the Khomeinist variety. But it is interesting to see the foreign minister of an important Arab country denouncing "political Islam," all the same. He added, "We must safeguard to Iraq`s Arab identity, since its Arabness unites Sunnis and Shiites." He is thus opposing Arab nationalism to political Islam, and opting for Arab nationalism. (One problem with this way of thinking is that the Kurds are sore over attempts to "Arabize" them, and old-style Arab nationalism distinctly lacked any appreciation for multiculturalism). I think al-Mulqi`s formulation is naive. Baathism is gone, and whatever comes after it in Iraq will have to recognize the political rights of the Shiites and Kurds. Arab nationalism functioned latently as a vehicle of Sunni Arab superiority, which is just not going to continue. I think a subtext here may also be that he is coding Shiites as somehow Iranian and not truly "Arab," which is a mistake Sunnis often make about Iraqi Shiites.

I don`t often agree with Patrick Buchanan, but in this article on Rumsfeld and the Neoconservatives, he largely nails it. The one thing I object to in what he says is that he seems to me to let Rumsfeld completely off the hook, blaming everything on his Neoconservative appointees.

posted by Juan @ 12/23/2004 06:30:19 AM

Going to War with the Clothing We Have

The Civil Air Patrol at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany is making a plea for help for wounded US soldiers sent there. I quote the original letter below in full. Note that getting things all the way to Ramstein requires more postage than the APO address might suggest. I know the first reaction of most people when they read this message will be to be angry at political figures. But first send money, then be mad. By the way, this sort of treatment of US troops is common, even though they are all that stand between us and forces such as al-Qaeda. The grunts who do the heavy lifting aren`t actually paid anything. The allowance given them to move from one base to another often doesn`t cover their expenses. The Bush administration is even trying to take away Vets` lifetime health benefits. Tens of thousands of badly wounded US veterans are likely to be produced by the current round of wars, and some proportion of them will end up homeless.



From: Lori Noyes
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 12:28 AM
Subject: Request for Help for our wounded troops at LRMC

Dear CAP Friends:

I am writing is to tell you about a project the Ramstein Cadet Squadron at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, is starting. The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC) here in Germany got an influx of about 500 wounded troops from Iraq last week and more arrive almost daily. They arrive straight from the battlefield, with only the torn, dirty, bloody clothes on their back. They have no clothes, underwear, or toiletry items. The hospital provides them with only a cotton gown or pajamas, robe, and disposable slippers. Some stay only a few days before being sent to hospitals stateside, while others are here up to several weeks. The military gives them a $250 voucher to buy clothing and toiletries at the BX, but many are not ambulatory, and those who are have to wait for a bus to get down to the BX on Ramstein 7 miles away. The BX runs out of the clothing and it takes weeks for more to come in. Those who can go to the BX still need something to wear to get there!

The cadets are collecting new clothing and toiletries to that they can take to the wounded at LRMC. Below is a list of items the wounded need. It is cold here in Germany and warm items are needed. Items need not be name brands . . .

For males - all sizes, but mostly medium and large


briefs

boxer shorts

undershirts or T-shirts

white crew sox

cotton turtleneck shirts

flannel shirts

sweatshirts (crew or zip-up hooded)

sweat pants

inexpensive athletic shoes

knit caps

knit gloves


For females - all sizes, but mostly medium and large

cotton briefs

cotton T-shirts

cotton turtleneck shirts

flannel shirts

bras - mostly sizes 34, 36, 38 with cup sizes B and C

white crew sox

sweatshirts (crew or zip-up hooded)

sweat pants

inexpensive athletic shoes

knit caps

knit gloves


Toiletry articles -

disposable razors

shaving cream - regular and/or travel size

deodorant - regular and/or travel size

tooth brushes

tooth paste - regular and/or travel size

nail clippers

combs

hair brushes

The hospital could also use new or used video tapes or DVDs of movies for the patients to watch. Comedies or light drama are best. Please avoid movies about war or those with excessive violence.

If your squadron would like to help, we would greatly appreciate it, no matter what the quantity. Every little bit helps.

If you wish to send money, make your check out to the Ramstein Cadet Squadron and put "Help for LRMC" on the memo line. We will use the money to purchase toiletry items and movies. But American-sized clothing listed below is what is mostly needed, which the BX is currently out of.


Send your donations to:

Lt Col Lori Noyes
PSC 2 Box 6037
APO AE 09012

or

Ramstein Cadet Squadron NHQ-OS-119
Unit 3395
APO AE 09094


We can get items to the hospital faster if they come to my mailing address, but feel free to send them to the squadron address.

Feel free to pass the word along to other CAP units in your wing. Thank you for your support of our troops.


In service,


Lori L. Noyes, Lt Col, CAP

Deputy Commander

Ramstein Cadet Squadron




For those who want to help the victims of bombings such as those at Najaf and Karbala recently, contributions can be sent to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (click on "Iraq Humanitarian Crisis" at "I would like my contribution to go to . . .).

posted by Juan @ 12/23/2004 06:10:28 AM

Iraq Digital Photo Archive at Washington Post

The Washington Post online is setting up what is essentially a digital photograph archive for the US soldiers in Iraq, called "Duty in Iraq." This archive could end up being of great historical importance, and I hope readers will be generous with their photos.

Another interesting use of photographs for commentary on the various Middle East crises is Doublequotes, which does something interesting today with the Saudi and Israeli flags, issues of sacredness, and the torture techniques at Gitmo.

posted by Juan @ 12/23/2004 06:02:12 AM

Racism and Orientalism in the Israeli Academy

I can`t see anything but racism in the discourse of either side in this court case in Haifa, which is considering whether a Palestinian group in the city has affinities to Hamas.

"The Arab mentality is made of "a sense of being a victim," "pathological anti-Semitism," and "a tendency to live in a world of illusions," said Prof. Rafi Israeli, a lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at Hebrew University, on the witness stand Wednesday, adding that the Arabs neglect sanitation in their communities. "Most of the Arab villages are dirtier, physically - it`s a fact," he said . . . During cross-examination Wednesday, Israeli was asked to respond to questions on a number of issues concerning his viewpoint on the Arabs in Israel, Islam in general, and the sketch he offered of the nature of "the Arab mentality." The cross-examination, handled by attorneys Avigdor Feldman and Riad Anis, focused on the opinion Israeli wrote for the prosecution and, primarily, on quotes from a book he published in 2002 in which he describes Israel`s Arabs as a fifth column "that sucks on the udders of the country." . . . Wednesday in the witness box, Israeli reiterated that the Arabs were "a burden on the state."



The leader of the group against which Israeli was testifying called him a "worm of his people" and a "Nazi."

I was just trying to imagine a US court case against a member of an American racial minority, in which the witness for the prosecution was a professor from Harvard. Let`s say he alleged that:

*The mentality of X is characterized by the "sense of being a victim"
*and "pathological dislike of outsiders"
*and "a tendency to live in a world of illusions,"
*and who then alleged that X are unsanitary
*and "their neighborhoods are dirtier, that`s a fact" than WASP neighborhoods.
*And then the good professor alleges that they are parasites on America

I can`t imagine a US court judge allowing this sort of testimony, not against an individual but against an entire ethnic group (and allowing it to be termed "expert testimoney"!) Well, of course such things happened in the Jim Crow South, but is that really the sort of society Israelis want for their future?

You can see why the Likudniks have been after me lately, since most of them privately share Professor Israeli`s views of the Arabs, and what better way to forestall the charge of racism on their part than to attempt to create the impression that their critic is the racist for daring to question them on this?

The far rightwing militant settlers in Gaza and the West Bank are engaging in all sorts of theatrics to keep their stolen land. That they would have the bad taste to wear orange stars of David so as to compare themselves to the victims of the Holocaust is not surprising. Mordechai Kedar, a brave man, dared actually say it: ` "But Mordechai Kedar, a senior research associate at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said “there are lunatics in the settlements who would act with no restrictions. … Lunatics don’t always obey orders and act even against their own interests.” He said that many of the settlers “serve in the army and have access to weapons, and I’m afraid that some people will not hesitate to use them against the police and army that come to evacuate them.” ` It should be remembered that most of the settlers also believe it is all right to expropriate land from those fantasizing, dirty, xenophobic, paranoid Arabs of whom Dr. Israeli spoke. And that the extremist Israeli colonialists are supported at least indirectly by US taxpayer dollars to make enemies for the US in the Muslim world.

posted by Juan @ [url12/23/2004 06:00:51 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/racism-and-orientalism-in-israeli.html[/url]

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US contractor quits Iraq as violence threatens elections
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

23 December 2004

A leading American contractor has pulled out of a major Iraqi reconstruction project, the latest sign of how the ever-increasing violence in Iraq threatens to overwhelm America`s plans to democratise and rebuild the country.

The news emerged less than 24 hours after the devastating explosion at the US military base near Mosul in which 22 people were killed, including 14 soldiers and four contractors, which has sent shock-waves through the United States.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that after investigations into Tuesday`s blast in a mess tent at Forward Operating Base Marez, evidence pointed to it being an inside job. "It looks like it was an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker," General Myers said. Officials initially suspected a rocket or mortar strike had been launched by insurgents outside the base.

The Pentagon finding tallies with the claim of an Islamic radical group, the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, that the attack was an act of "martyrdom". ABC Television News reported that investigators had discovered remains of a torso and a backpack that could have belonged to the person who detonated the bomb, as well as shrapnel of a type found in other suicide bombings.

The full impact of the attack began to sink in yesterday as television showed the first sombre pictures of some of the dozens of Mosul wounded being carried off a military transport plane at the US Air Force base at Ramstein, Germany. Eight of the injured are said to be in critical condition, raising fears that the death toll may rise further.

The official response here is that the US will not be cowed into postponing next month`s scheduled elections ­ still less into a premature exit from Iraq. But the incident, the deadliest single strike at a US facility during the 20-month occupation, is bound to increase doubts about the entire Iraq mission. Even before the attack, an unprecedented 56 per cent of Americans felt the invasion had been a mistake, a poll this week found.

Now even sharper questions are being posed. How, The New York Times asked yesterday, "can the United States ­ with the help of Iraqi security forces whose performance has been uneven at best ­ assure the safety of Iraqis who go to the polls on January 30 when it cannot keep its own troops safe on their own base?"

Meanwhile a big US contractor has pulled out of the $20bn (£12bn) reconstruction effort. According to The Los Angeles Times, Contrack International, which heads a partnership that won a $325m contract, one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded this year, has stopped work on the project because of "prohibitive" security costs.

The deal is the largest so far in Iraq to fall victim to the insurgency. The fear is that other companies may follow Contrack`s example, or decline to tender for work, further imperilling the prospects for reconstruction.

For Mr Bush ­ described by one visitor to the Oval Office as "distraught" by the carnage ­ the onrush of events could not happen at a worse time. At his press conference a day before the attack, he admitted the insurgency was "having an effect", but vowed the elections would go ahead on schedule.

Now, the attack could further undermine support for Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, widely blamed for not sending enough troops to Iraq, and for not ensuring adequate protection for those who are there. Even worse, the President`s ambitious domestic agenda could be at risk if the Iraq crisis spirals out of control.

The Pentagon says it expected attacks on both US troops and Iraqi officials working with Americans in the run-up to the elections. But the attack in Mosul has nonetheless come as a dreadful shock, made even worse amid the festivities of Christmas. Some American media have suggested it could be a watershed in the unhappy history of post-Saddam Iraq.


23 December 2004 15:51


©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/204702_thomas22.html

Iraqis hate U.S. policies, not freedom

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Is there a religious crusader element in the armed struggle now under way in Iraq, as some Islamists believe?

As long as such suspicions prevail, the United States is bound to face zealous opposition in the Middle East where Muslim clerics have political clout.

The Bush team would rather have us believe that U.S. involvement in Iraq is part of the "global war on terrorism" inspired by the Sept. 11 attacks, skipping past the inconvenient fact that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks but is now a seething hotbed of anti-American violence.

It`s interesting that President Bush and his team never call the insurgents "Iraqis." Instead, in the White House dictionary, they are "terrorists" and "Saddam loyalists."

A senior administration official -- who asked not to be identified -- said Bush`s claim that the insurgents "hate freedom is clearly based on their actions ... the killing of civilians, attempts to disrupt free elections."

As for U.S.-inflicted civilian casualties, he said the White House had no figures but that the Pentagon had a policy of seeking to avoid them in the conflict.

The war`s effect on friends and enemies was studied by the Defense Science Board on Strategic Communications, a 40-member task force made up of diplomatic, military, academic and business experts, which advises the Pentagon on policy matters related to defense.

Last September the panel issued a devastating report saying that "American efforts have not only failed" in the war of ideas or the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, "they may have achieved the opposite of what they intended."

The task force is independent and does not necessarily represent official Pentagon policy.

The panel`s report said strategic communication is "a vital component of U.S. national security and must be transformed to win the war on terrorism."

"American direct intervention in the Muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature of, and support for, radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single digits in some Arab societies," the panel said.

Sidney Blumenthal, adviser to former President Clinton, noted in The Guardian on Dec. 2 that the 102-page report was not made public in the presidential campaign but instead was "silently slipped onto a Pentagon Web site on Thanksgiving eve." He said the report was written for internal consumption only.

A Pentagon spokesman said the White House was aware of the report.

"Muslims do not hate our freedoms, but rather they hate our policies," the report said

Among the policies that Muslims resent, it added, are what they see as "one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights" and long-standing support for what Muslims "collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states."

Furthermore, the advisory group said when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, it is seen as "no more than self-serving hypocrisy" in the United States` national interest and "patronizing ... at the expense of Muslim self-determination."

The administration got it all wrong, the report indicated, since the Arabs were not yearning to be liberated except from the authoritarian regimes that the United States is supporting.

Unfortunately, the task force said the United States has a "fundamental problem of credibility" in the Arab world. As a consequence, whatever Americans say and do gives the opposition ammunition.

"Simply there is none," the report said referring to U.S. credibility and added the "United States is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims."

It said Bush has played into the hands of the radical Jihadists by trying to tie the attacks on the World Trade Center to Iraq.

It`s silly for Bush to keep saying "they hate freedom," referring to the insurgents in Iraq. It makes me think he`s looking for a new rationale for the war, his earlier reasons having been discredited.

The reality is that the Iraqis hate the conquest and occupation of their country -- just as any people with pride in the world would.

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: [e-mail]. Copyright 2004 Hearst Newspapers.

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Latest Fatality: Dec 23, 2004
Military Fatalities: Total: 1471 , US: 1321 , Dez.04: 64
Letzte Meldungen:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Das Original

[Punk24]

@ Joerver: herzlichen Glückwunsch zu den 25.000

Donnerstag, 23. Dezember 2004
400 Mio. Dollar verlangt
Auschwitzopfer verklagen Bush

Im Verfahren um Millionenklagen von Auschwitzopfern gegen George W. Bush soll der US-Präsident vor Gericht Stellung nehmen. Eine entsprechende Aufforderung habe das Bundesbezirksgericht New York den Anwälten der Opfer zugestellt, teilte der Düsseldorfer Opfer-Anwalt Peter Wolz mit.

Auschwitzopfer hatten Mitte Oktober den US-Präsidenten auf Zahlung von 400 Mio. US-Dollar verklagt. Das Gericht New York räumte George W. Bush eine 20-tägige Frist ein.

Kläger ist die internationale Projektgruppe Auschwitz-Sammelklagen (IPAS). Ihrer Ansicht nach beruht das geerbte Vermögen Bushs zum Teil aus Gewinnen aus NS-Sklavenarbeit, die dessen Großvater Prescott Bush durch Geschäfte mit den Nazis im Zweiten Weltkrieg gemacht haben soll. Der Miteigentümer einer Stahlfirma habe so auch von der Sklavenarbeit im Vernichtungslager Auschwitz profitiert, erläuterte Wolz.

"Besonders wegen der viel diskutierten Immunität amtierender Präsidenten verblüfft die Entscheidung des Gerichts, eine Stellungnahme zu den Klagevorwürfen von George W. Bush zu fordern", sagte Wolz. Um die Immunität des Präsidenten aufzuheben, hatten die Holocaust-Opfer im Oktober gegen George W. Bush erfolglos ein Amtsenthebungsverfahren beim US-Senat beantragt.

Vor drei Jahren hatte die von Wolz vertretene IPAS bereits die US-Regierung verklagt und 40 Mtd. Dollar (30,8 Mrd. Euro) Entschädigung für die Auschwitz-Opfer gefordert. Ihrer Ansicht nach hätten die USA 1944 den Tod von über 400.000 ungarischen Juden verhindern können, wenn das Militär die Zufahrtswege und Eisenbahnbrücken zu dem Lager bombardiert hätte. Das Bundesbezirksgericht Washington hatte sich damals als nicht zuständig erklärt und auf die staatliche Souveränität bei militärischen Entscheidungen verwiesen.


Quelle: www.n-tv.de

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Bush Monkey Picture Shown on Giant NY Billboard

Tue Dec 21, 6:53 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A portrait of President Bush using monkeys to form his image that was banished from a New York art show last week amid charges of censorship was projected on a giant billboard in Manhattan on Tuesday.
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A portrait of President George W. Bush using monkeys
to form his image that was banished from a New York art show
last week amid charges of censorship was projected
on a giant billboard in Manhattan on December 21, 2004.
`Bush Monkeys,` a small acrylic on canvas by
Chris Savido, created the stir last week at the
Chelsea Market public space, leading the market`s
managers to close down the 60-piece show. The image
is seen on an electronic billboard near the entrance
to New York`s Holland Tunnel, December 22.
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"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir last week at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market`s managers to close down the 60-piece show.

Animal Magazine, a quarterly arts publication that had organized the month-long show, said anonymous donors had paid for the picture to be posted on a giant digital billboard over the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, used by thousands of commuters traveling between Manhattan and New Jersey.

The original picture will be auctioned on eBay, with part of the proceeds donated to parents of U.S. soldiers wishing to supply their sons and daughters with body armor in Iraq .

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came under fire from soldiers in Kuwait earlier this month who complained that they had to use scrap metal to armor their vehicles.

"Many of my friends are over in Iraq," Savido said in a statement.
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Painter Christopher Savido poses with his work `Bush Monkeys,`
a portrait of President Bush using monkeys to form the image, at
a New York gallery December 13, 2004.
The portrait, which was banished from the show
last week amid charges of censorship, was projected
on a giant billboard over the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, used by
thousands of commuters traveling
between Manhattan and New Jersey, December 21, 2004.
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The painting offers a likeness of Bush but the image is made up of monkeys swimming in a marsh. It was originally priced at $3,500 in the show`s catalog.

Organizers expect more than 400,000 drivers to see the billboard each day for the next month.

Slideshow

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Published on Thursday, December 23, 2004 by the Washington Post
War Crimes
Editorial


THANKS TO a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA -- truths the Bush administration implacably has refused to acknowledge. Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq`s Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration`s whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.

Though they represent only part of the record that lies in government files, the documents show that the abuse of prisoners was already occurring at Guantanamo in 2002 and continued in Iraq even after the outcry over the Abu Ghraib photographs. FBI agents reported in internal e-mails and memos about systematic abuses by military interrogators at the base in Cuba, including beatings, chokings, prolonged sleep deprivation and humiliations such as being wrapped in an Israeli flag. "On a couple of occasions I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water," an unidentified FBI agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004. "Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more." Two defense intelligence officials reported seeing prisoners severely beaten in Baghdad by members of a special operations unit, Task Force 6-26, in June. When they protested they were threatened and pictures they took were confiscated.

Other documents detail abuses by Marines in Iraq, including mock executions and the torture of detainees by burning and electric shock. Several dozen detainees have died in U.S. custody. In many cases, Army investigations of these crimes were shockingly shoddy: Officials lost records, failed to conduct autopsies after suspicious deaths and allowed evidence to be contaminated. Soldiers found to have committed war crimes were excused with noncriminal punishments. The summary of one suspicious death of a detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison reads: "No crime scene exam was conducted, no autopsy conducted, no copy of medical file obtained for investigation because copy machine broken in medical office."

Some of the abuses can be attributed to lack of discipline in some military units -- though the broad extent of the problem suggests, at best, that senior commanders made little effort to prevent or control wrongdoing. But the documents also confirm that interrogators at Guantanamo believed they were following orders from Mr. Rumsfeld. One FBI agent reported on May 10 about a conversation he had with Guantanamo`s commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who defended the use of interrogation techniques the FBI regarded as illegal on the grounds that the military "has their marching orders from the Sec Def." Gen. Miller has testified under oath that dogs were never used to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo, as authorized by Mr. Rumsfeld in December 2002; the FBI papers show otherwise.

The Bush administration refused to release these records to the human rights groups under the Freedom of Information Act until it was ordered to do so by a judge. Now it has responded to their publication with bland promises by spokesmen that any wrongdoing will be investigated. The record of the past few months suggests that the administration will neither hold any senior official accountable nor change the policies that have produced this shameful record. Congress, too, has abdicated its responsibility under its Republican leadership: It has been nearly four months since the last hearing on prisoner abuse. Perhaps intervention by the courts will eventually stem the violations of human rights that appear to be ongoing in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan. For now the appalling truth is that there has been no remedy for the documented torture and killing of foreign prisoners by this American government.

© Copyright 2004 Washington Post Company

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THE ROVING EYE
First we vote, then we kick you out
By Pepe Escobar

No matter what the spin from Time magazine`s "man of the year", US President George W Bush, or defense chief Donald Rumsfeld, there`s one overarching question facing the 83 entities - nine coalition lists, 47 political parties and 27 individuals, totaling more than 5,000 candidates - now competing for the 275 seats in Iraq`s interim parliament and that will be entitled to write the next Iraqi constitution. The absolute majority of Iraqis want the Americans out of their country as soon as possible. But how?

The United Iraqi Alliance - the Shi`ite, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani-supervised electoral list (228 candidates) - has a detailed, 23-point platform. According to its main negotiator, Hussein Shahristani, the platform insists on the "sovereignty, unity and Islamic identity" of Iraq, and most crucially includes a plan with a precise date for the end of the military occupation. Whether the Americans will accept the plan (neo-conservative dreams for the Middle East collapsing in the sand), or whether this will be enough to placate Sunni anger, no one yet knows. The powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars is maintaining its boycott of the elections. But a few Sunni formations are running, such as the Islamic Party, an offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood (275 candidates); the independent democrats of former ambassador Adnan Pachachi (70 candidates); and the Democratic National Party of Nassir Chaderchi (12 candidates).

"Unity" for the moment is a chimera, even within Shi`ite ranks. With firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his movement, the Sadrists, off the electoral list, the question now is to what extent the Shi`ites will be able to monopolize the critical mass as the foremost channel of expression for the disenfranchised. The Sadrists won`t be part of the next elected, interim parliament. This means they will be free to constantly keep the Sistani-endorsed congressmen in check as far as their crucial point - kicking the Americans out - is concerned.

Asia Times Online sources in Baghdad confirm that moderate Iraqis - Sunni, Shi`ite, Kurds, Christians - fear above all the "Lebanization" of Iraq. The risk of post-election civil war is immense - as attested by the proliferation of mono-ethnic and mono-confessional electoral lists, or the recent bombings outside the holy Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala. Neo-Ba`athists active in the Sunni resistance will never accept a United Iraqi Alliance victory. So there`s a straight confluence between the strategy of the neo-Ba`athists and the radical Islamists of Tawhid wa Jihad, Jordanian-born extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi`s movement, helped by up to 2,000 Salafi jihadis from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Kuwait.

Washington will keep trying in the next few weeks to push Syria up against a wall - even if Damascus has nothing to do with Iraqi insurgents. Two Syrian clerics are being strictly monitored: Imam Abdul Aziz al-Khatib, from the al-Darwishiya Mosque in Damascus, and Imam Abu al-Daaqaa, of the Aleppo Mosque. Syria remains the main jihadi transit point into Iraq for two reasons: as long as one is a national from an Arab League country, it`s easy to get a temporary resident visa; and for the Syrians, it would be next to impossible to survey their long desert borders with Iraq in the midst of widespread corruption among border officials.

Washington`s accusations that Iran is interfering in Iraqi politics are also baseless. A Shi`ite-dominated Iraq will inevitably entertain good relations with Iran - but that does not mean it will be subordinated to Tehran, as Iraqi nationalism plays a much stronger role than confessionalism, the religious school one follows. There`s an insistent rumor in Baghdad about the only possibility for preventing a Shi`ite-dominated government in Iraq: it would be a coup d`etat concocted by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his coterie of co-opted neo-Ba`athists, backed by the US military, who would then have to face Shi`ite guerrillas. The neo-cons, in this case, would have their pliable "Saddam without a mustache" - as Allawi has been referred to in Baghdad since he took power last June. But obviously this scenario, from Bush`s "spreading freedom" point of view, is out of the question.

January 30, 2005, the day slated for Iraqi elections to be held, could be the thunder and lightning announcing the start of the Iraqi Civil War. Or, as many Iraqis convey in their prayers to Allah, it could lead to an elected Shi`ite-dominated government - but Iraqi nationalist nevertheless - convincing moderate Sunnis that their political commitment to the end of the occupation is more effective than a guerrilla strategy.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Die Auswahl von Bushs Horrorkabinett bei der Richterauswahl.
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December 24, 2004
Bush Tries Again on Court Choices Stalled in Senate
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - President Bush said Thursday that when the new Congress convenes next month he will renominate 12 candidates to the federal appeals courts who were denied confirmation in his first term. In doing so, he signaled his willingness to begin what is expected to be another bitter fight with Senate Democrats over what they assert are his efforts to shift the courts in a markedly more conservative direction.

"The president nominated highly qualified individuals to the federal courts during his first term, but the Senate failed to vote on many nominations," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said in a statement announcing Mr. Bush`s intentions to move aggressively on the issue in his second term.

Although the announcement appears at odds with Mr. Bush`s post-election remarks that he would reach out to opponents, it is in line with what had been a principal campaign theme for him and Vice President Dick Cheney, namely that Mr. Bush would battle Democratic opposition to his judicial choices.

The White House statement, which also called for the renomination of eight candidates for the federal district courts, quickly produced expressions of dismay from Senate Democrats, who said Mr. Bush was not seeking any compromise with them in hopes of improving relations on the issue of judges.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been a leader in opposing many of Mr. Bush`s judicial nominees, said: "In this opening shot, the White House is making it clear that they are not interested in bipartisanship when it comes to nominating judges. This starts to poison the well when everyone on our side was hoping to make a new start."

But the most notable reaction came from Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican who is expected to become the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter, who was re-elected in November and seems to have survived a challenge from some conservative Republicans who had opposed his ascension to the chairmanship, suggested that he was also troubled by Mr. Bush`s announcement.

"It has been my hope that we might be able to approach this whole issue with some cooler perspective," he said in an interview. "I would have preferred to have some time in the 109th Congress to improve the climate to avoid judicial gridlock and future filibusters."

Mr. Specter, who said he had been talking to both Republicans and Democrats in order to improve the chances for compromise, said it might now be "difficult to change the atmosphere with the submission of these names." But he said the president was, in any case, entitled to do as he had done and that as chairman he would "play the cards that are dealt," in trying to get Mr. Bush`s nominees confirmed.

The eight candidates for the federal district courts were less controversial than the appeals court nominees, but were also not voted on in the current Congress.

When Mr. Bush sends the 20 names to the new Senate next month, however, there will be at least two factors that will be different from the current situation. Democrats blocked 10 of his appeals court nominees by filibuster. But the Republicans have increased their majority in the Senate from 51 to 55, making it more feasible to acquire the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster, which is the threat of extended debate. In addition, the newly renominated candidates will come before the Senate at a time when all sides are staking out their political stances in anticipation of an early vacancy on the Supreme Court and an ensuing battle over whoever is nominated to fill it.

Among the candidates the president said on Thursday he would renominate is William J. Haynes IV, the Pentagon`s general counsel, who has been deeply embroiled in controversy over memorandums he wrote or supervised that secretly authorized harsh treatment, even torture, for detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq. Mr. Haynes`s nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va., was suspended when the issue erupted and he was asked by the Judiciary Committee to provide material about his role in the issue and failed to do so.

Other candidates Mr. Bush said would be renominated who had been blocked by Democrats include Priscilla R. Owen of Texas, William H. Pryor Jr. of Alabama and Janice Rogers Brown of California.

Of the 45 appeals court candidates whose nominations went to the Senate floor, the Democrats blocked 10 by filibuster in Mr. Bush`s first term, including those three. Others were delayed in committee.

Although the Republicans held a slim majority with 51 votes, they needed Democrats to join them to break the filibuster. But they never succeeded in getting more than three or four. Now, with 55 seats, Republicans are hoping to be able to entice enough moderate and conservative Democrats to reach 60 and foil any filibuster efforts.

Democrats had argued that they were justified in going to such extraordinary lengths as a filibuster because the Republicans had refused a hearing to a large number of President Bill Clinton`s judicial choices, effectively keeping the seats vacant for a Republican president to fill.

Of the 12 appeals court candidates to be renominated, a handful had been blocked less for ideological reasons than for political ones. Four nominees from Michigan were blocked over a dispute between the state`s two Democratic senators and the White House.

Justice Owen of the Texas Supreme Court was filibustered four times. At the center of the debate were her strong anti-abortion legal views, notably in her largely unsuccessful efforts to make it difficult for teenagers to obtain abortions without parental consent.

In one case, another justice on the court at the time, Alberto R. Gonzales, now the White House counsel, wrote that her reading of the law represented "an unconscionable act of judicial activism."

Mr. Pryor, who was named to the appeals court by Mr. Bush during a Congressional recess, thereby sidestepping the Senate, is a former Alabama attorney general. He was known during his tenure in Alabama as an outspoken opponent of legalized abortion and an advocate of a greater role for religion in government. His work as a judge has been largely unnoticed, but he did provide a critical vote upholding Florida`s law against adoption by gay couples.

Justice Brown of the California Supreme Court was opposed for her stark opinion upholding the state`s referendum against affirmative action and her vivid speeches criticizing the growth of government.

Some of her colleagues wrote that she had gone too far and used needlessly scathing language to extend the anti-affirmative action proposition`s reach.

William G. Myers III, nominated for the Ninth Circuit, was opposed because his critics said he could not be fair on environmental cases, citing his long career as a lobbyist for the ranching and mining industries.

In his statement Thursday, Mr. McClellan said, "The Senate has a constitutional obligation to vote up or down on a president`s judicial nominees." That assertion, however, has been at the center of a debate in which Democrats have disputed Republican claims that filibusters may not be used for judicial nominations.

Nan Aron, the president of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal group that monitors judicial nominations, said that Mr. McClellan`s statement appeared to be an effort to ease the way for Republicans to undertake what is sometimes called "the nuclear option" - having the presiding officer of the Senate declare filibusters out of order. Democrats say they would have no choice but to challenge that and bring business to a halt.

C. Boyden Gray, the chairman of the Committee for Justice, a group that supports the president`s judicial nominees, said Mr. Bush`s announcement showed that "the president is determined to stick with his approach." Mr. Gray said that after viewing the election results, "hopefully the Democrats will allow an up or down vote on these nominees."

Mr. Bush had offered the prospect of renomination to all of those who had not been confirmed, officials said. Two of those apparently declined: Carolyn B. Kuhl, nominated to a seat on the Ninth Circuit, based in California, and Claude Allen, nominated to a seat on the Fourth Circuit in Richmond.

In addition, Charles J. Pickering, Mr. Bush`s other recess appointment, chose to retire this month rather than be renominated.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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December 24, 2004
Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul
By JAMES DAO, FORD FESSENDEN
and TOM ZELLER Jr.

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Dec. 22 - William Shambora, 53, is the kind of diligent voter who once assumed that his ballot always counted. He got a rude awakening this year.

Mr. Shambora, an economics professor at Ohio University, moved during the summer but failed to notify the Athens County Board of Elections until the day before the presidential election. An official told him to use a provisional ballot.

But under Ohio law, provisional ballots are valid only when cast from a voter`s correct precinct. Mr. Shambora was given a ballot for the wrong precinct, a fact he did not learn until after the election. Two weeks later, the board discarded his vote, adding him to a list of more than 300 provisional ballots that were rejected in that heavily Democratic county.

"It seems like such a confused system," said Mr. Shambora, a John Kerry supporter who blames himself for the mistake. "Maybe if enough people`s votes had counted, the election might have turned out differently."

From seven-hour lines that drove voters away to malfunctioning machines to poorly trained poll workers who directed people to the wrong polling places to uneven policies about the use of provisional ballots, Ohio has become this year`s example for every ailment in the United States` electoral process.

With a state recount expected to be completed next week, few experts think the problems were enough to overturn President Bush`s victory here. And many of the shortcomings have plagued elections for decades.

But with the 36-day Florida recount of 2000 proving that every vote counts and with the two major parties near parity, the electoral system is being scrutinized more closely than ever. Election lawyers and academics say Ohio is providing a roadmap to a second generation of issues about the way the nation votes.

Congressional passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 - which mandated the provisional ballot as a failsafe and provided states money to update voting technology - was considered a landmark overhaul that would help prevent another Florida.

But an array of voting rights groups contend that Ohio has underscored shortcomings in the law, including one of its centerpieces, the provisional ballot. Now those groups are pushing for a re-examination not only of the law, but also of other voting issues, including the role of partisan secretaries of state in overseeing elections, electronic voting and the elimination of the Electoral College.

"We`re in an environment where people believe that even the tiniest number of votes can have a huge impact," said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for voting information.

Ohio is emblematic of that attitude.

In the two weeks since Mr. Bush was certified the winner here by 118,000 votes out of 5.7 million cast, watchdog groups have filed lawsuits contesting the outcome and questioning the counting of provisional ballots. The state has nearly completed a recount, at the request of the Green and Independent Parties. Liberal Democrats have demanded investigations into whether there was voter fraud, tampering and intimidation in urban districts.

"This has fundamentally shocked people`s sense of whether any election can be accurately counted," said Daniel Hoffheimer, counsel to Mr. Kerry`s Ohio campaign.

It is far from clear that Republicans in Congress will have any appetite to revisit voting issues, and many Republicans here argue that the system suffered only minor glitches, even with high voter turnout. "There are no error-free elections," said Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican whom Democrats have accused of worsening the state`s voting problems in the way he interpreted state law.

But Mr. Blackwell acknowledged that the election spotlighted the state`s outdated voting system, with 68 of 88 counties still relying on punch cards. In an interview, he called for updating voting machines, and also for early voting, multiple-day voting and other changes that he said would shorten lines and encourage people to vote.

"I don`t think it`s wrong to have high expectations," he said.

Certainly there were problems on Election Day.

In Franklin County, a computing error initially awarded nearly 4,000 extra votes to President Bush. In Mahoning County, improperly calibrated touch screens resulted in an unknown number of votes incorrectly going to President Bush before the problem was caught.

And most recently, election challengers in various Ohio counties have said that the tabulators used to count punch cards may have been tampered with before the recount.

But experts in election law say little clear evidence of fraud has emerged. Democratic officials have joined Republicans in arguing that any conspiracy to deny Mr. Kerry votes would have required Democratic complicity, because each of Ohio`s 88 county election boards has two Democrats and two Republicans.

Yet there were widespread problems, many of which point to defects in the election rules, experts say.

"I think the problems weren`t sufficient to cast doubt on the results," said Edward B. Foley, director of the Election Law Program at Ohio State University`s law school. "But I do think there were more problems than usual in Ohio."

Provisional ballots are a prime example. In 2002, Congress authorized using the ballots in federal elections for voters whose names do not appear on registration rolls. The ballots are sealed and held until after an election, so a voter`s eligibility can be checked. Valid ballots are then counted, others discarded.

But Congress largely left it to the states to promulgate rules for provisional ballots, resulting in a hodgepodge of policies. In Ohio, Mr. Blackwell, who was co-chairman of Mr. Bush`s state campaign, ruled that provisional ballots would be counted only when cast from a voter`s proper precinct. (At least 26 other states followed the same practice.) Democrats challenged the ruling, but a federal court upheld Mr. Blackwell.

Rules for reviewing provisional ballots also vary widely within the state. Some counties checked voter registration records dating back several years to validate ballots; others searched only recent records. Cuyahoga County, a Democratic bastion that includes Cleveland, did not check older records, and its rejection rate for provisional ballots was about 35 percent. The state average was 23 percent.

Mr. Blackwell says that despite the complaints, Ohio had one of the country`s highest acceptance rates for provisional ballots: 77 percent of its 155,000 provisional ballots were counted, the highest in a 16-state survey by Electionline.org. Illinois and Pennsylvania, which went for Mr. Kerry, accepted only about half of their provisional ballots.

Perhaps the most visible of Ohio`s problems were its long lines. Christopher McQuoid reached his polling place in Columbus at 4:30 p.m., congratulating himself for beating the after-work rush. By 7:30, he was getting impatient. And when he finally voted at 9:30, there were 150 people in line behind him.

"I was lucky," said Mr. McQuoid, a radio announcer. "I had the day off."

But how many people decided not to vote because of long lines, and was it enough to make a difference? No one has been able to say with authority. Much attention has focused on whether elections officials served one constituency better than another.

Among the 464 complaints about long lines in Ohio collected by the Election Protection Coalition, a loose alliance of voting rights advocates and legal organizations, nearly 400 came from Columbus and Cleveland, where a huge proportion of the state`s Democratic voters live.

"It`s possible that it made a difference in the outcome but unlikely," said Dan Tokaji, an assistant professor of law at Ohio State, where academics plan a voter survey to test whether large numbers were discouraged.

In Columbus, Franklin County election officials reduced the number of electronic voting machines assigned to downtown precincts and added them in the suburbs. They used a formula based not on the number of registered voters, but on past turnout in each precinct and on the number of so-called active voters - a smaller universe.

By contrast, the state`s most populous county, Cuyahoga, allocated machines based on the total number of voters, a move that the county`s election director, Michael Vu, said helped stave off even bigger lines.

In the Columbus area, the result was that suburban precincts that supported Mr. Bush tended to have more machines per registered voter than center-city precincts that supported Mr. Kerry - 4.6 machines per 1,000 voters in Mr. Bush`s 50 strongest precincts, compared with 3.9 in Mr. Kerry`s 50 best. Mr. McQuoid`s precinct, a Kerry stronghold, lost one of the four machines it had in 2000, despite an increase in registration.

"Somebody came up with a very sophisticated plan for machine distribution which, either by accident or design, greatly enhanced the president," said Robert Fitrakis of Columbus, who is part of a group that has contested the election results in court.

Matthew Damschroder, a Republican who is the director of elections in Franklin County, said the urban precincts lost machines because many of their voters had not voted recently and because those precincts historically had had low turnout.

Indeed, election results show that a much higher suburban turnout on Nov. 2 meant that machines in Bush areas were more heavily used on average, although whether that was because their voters were less easily discouraged by long lines or simply more efficient in voting is unclear.

"Most of the precincts that stayed open late because of long lines were in the suburbs," said William Anthony Jr., a Democrat who is chairman of the Franklin County election board.

Another area of contention is the large number of ballots - 96,000 by recent counts - that registered no vote for president. Known as "residual" or "lost" votes, they involve cases where no candidate for president appeared to have been selected or where multiple candidates were chosen, rendering the ballot invalid for that race.

The problem was pronounced in minority areas, typically Kerry strongholds. In Cleveland ZIP codes where at least 85 percent of the population is black, precinct results show that one in 31 ballots registered no vote for president, more than twice the rate of largely white ZIP codes, where one in 75 registered no vote for president.

Experts say punch cards contributed to the problem, because the ballots, which require voters to punch a hole through a heavy-stock paper, are prone to partial perforations, or the buildup of chads. Election officials say that nearly 77,000 of the 96,000 residual ballots in Ohio were punch cards.

But Mr. Foley, the election expert at Ohio State, noted that some people consciously withhold their votes for president and that 77,000 residual punch cards is in keeping with failure rates for punch cards nationwide.

Mr. Blackwell said Ohio`s residual votes actually declined this year from 2000. Of the 4.8 million votes cast in 2000, about 90,000 - 1.9 percent - registered no vote for president. This year, 96,000 of 5.7 million votes cast - 1.7 percent - did so.

Mr. Blackwell favors changing to a system that uses an optical scanner to read a paper ballot, which, he said, meets federal requirements, is less expensive than other machines and can handle more voters. But he said groups who say that just about every electronic voting system can be hacked are not helping things.

"There is still evidence out there that we need to transform the machinery," he said. "But it will be harder to do now."

When the recount is completed next week, no one expects the questions about the election to die, with several groups poised to challenge the recount.

"I think the majority of Democrats feel that the election was more or less accurate," said Dan Trevas, the spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party. "But others are suspicious. Irregularities that are normally overlooked have become the focal point of attention this year. I just can`t see those people walking away satisfied."

James Dao reportedfrom Columbus for this article, Ford Fessenden from New York and Tom Zeller Jr. from Cleveland.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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December 24, 2004
Democrat Wins by 130 in Latest Washington Count
By SARAH KERSHAW

SEATTLE, Dec. 23 - With all the votes tallied after a recount in the roller coaster race for governor, Christine O. Gregoire, the Democrat who trailed in the campaign and in a previous recount, won by 130 votes as battered Republicans demanded more vote counting and vowed to use every legal weapon to reverse the extraordinary turnaround.

The Republican candidate, Dino Rossi, 45, won the Nov. 2 election in the initial count by 261 votes and a machine recount by 42 votes. But a statewide hand recount completed Thursday gave Ms. Gregoire, 57, a microscopic but notable lead out of the 2.9 million votes cast, according to official results released Thursday. Newly counted ballots from King County, a heavily Democratic area that includes Seattle, turned the 10-vote lead Ms. Gregoire held before the latest official results into a commanding but narrow edge.

"This is the biggest display of democracy that I have ever seen," Ms. Gregoire, the state attorney general, said at a televised news conference Thursday evening at the State Capitol in Olympia, which was ringed by Republican protestors shouting "count all the votes!"

"The election is over," she said. "I hope we can move forward, unite our state and address the problems we are facing."

But an end was anything but certain, as Republicans made it clear that they did not consider the results a legitimate victory for Ms. Gregoire and said they were already considering contesting the election.

Mr. Rossi, in a written statement issued Thursday night, said, "I know many Washingtonians are hoping this will end soon, but I`m also sure that people across this state want a clean election and a legitimate governor-elect. At this point, we have neither."

Taking a page from their counterparts in Florida in 2000, state Republicans quickly alleged that the votes of soldiers stationed overseas were among hundreds of rejected votes for Mr. Rossi, a former state senator, and should now be counted.

They argued that since the State Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed erroneously rejected and newly discovered votes in King County to be counted, the rejected ballots of soldiers who may have missed deadlines because of their duties should be re-examined as well.

"If you can change the rules for the chairman of the King County Council," said Chris Vance, chairman of the state Republican Party, referring to Larry Phillips, a Democratic councilman whose vote was among the 735 ballots reviewed in King County on Thursday, "then you can change the rules for a marine wounded in Falluja."

Mr. Vance said one of the rejected votes for Mr. Rossi was cast by a marine wounded in Falluja whose absentee ballot was received late.

Republicans said they knew of the soldiers` uncounted ballots by hearing from their families that ballots were either not received by them on time or did not make it back to Washington in time from overseas.

Still, Democrats were claiming victory and not hiding their delight.

"We believe that Chris Gregoire is going to be the next governor," said Kirstin Brost, spokeswoman for the Washington State Democratic Party. "We believe she is the governor-elect, and we are looking forward to her taking office."

Republican officials, accompanied by five veterans waving American flags, went into a meeting of the King County Canvassing Board on Thursday and lobbied the board to consider almost 100 rejected ballots for Mr. Rossi in King County.

The board refused to review those votes and 100 others submitted by the Democrats, but Republicans fanned out across the state Thursday lobbying dozens of counties to go back and consider previously rejected ballots. With the election results now certified by all 39 counties and no more recounts legally allowed, legal experts and officials with the Washington secretary of state`s office said state election law would not permit the counties to reconsider any ballots now. But Republicans were steadfast on Thursday and pointed to Thurston County, which had reviewed and counted one ballot after certifying results, saying that action allowed them to ask the other counties to do the same.

In a statement issued Thursday evening Mr. Vance said that several counties agreed on Thursday to "seriously consider" re-examining votes and that he had asked for a delay in the final certification. "We believe Dino Rossi is the legitimate governor-elect of the State of Washington," he said. "And we will continue fighting to protect his election."

Thurston County officials said they had interpreted state election law to mean that they could re-evaluate votes until the secretary of state certified the results submitted by the counties; the results of the recount completed on Thursday are expected to be certified on Dec. 30.

But others, including officials in the secretary of state`s office, said the law made it clear that all ballots must be reviewed and counted before a county certifies its results.

The secretary of state, Sam Reed, a Republican, told county auditors on Thursday that counting ballots could not continue after the results were certified and that any challenges should be pursued through the courts, officials in his office said. With King County`s election results announced on Thursday, all 39 counties have now certified their results.

"In our viewpoint, we have elected a governor," said Trova Hutchins, a spokeswoman for Mr. Reed.

Meanwhile, Republicans said they were also weighing other legal options, which could include contesting the election in court, asking the United States Supreme Court to review the decision on the King County ballots made by the State Supreme Court or asking the State Legislature to order a whole new vote.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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December 23, 2004
Q&A: Iraq, Iran, and Islam
http://www.cfr.org/background/iraq_islam.php
From the Council on Foreign Relations, December 23, 2004

What role will Islam play in Iraq after the elections?

It`s unclear. The Shiite political coalition expected to win a majority of seats in the January 30 elections is dominated by religious parties seeking an Iraqi constitution that respects and acknowledges sharia, the body of Islamic law. The combination of a Shiite-controlled government and a sharia-based constitution, some analysts fear, could lead to a government similar to the theocracy in neighboring Iran. Others say Iraq`s recent history of secularism, combined with its Shiites` deep nationalist sentiments and tradition of moderate Islam, will lead to a government that is both Islamic and democratic. In such an arrangement, clerics would exercise authority through the mosques, but wouldn`t run government ministries.

What will determine the extent to which Islam is incorporated into legal and governmental agencies?

There are many open questions that make predicting the future role of Islam in Iraq difficult. They include:

* The influence of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq`s most influential Shiite cleric and the organizer of the Shiite electoral coalition.
* The extent of power religious Shiites wield in the transitional National Assembly to be elected January 30.
* Internal Shiite political and ideological divisions.
* Iran`s influence on Iraqi elections and political parties.
* Interpretation of Islamic law by leading Iraqi Shiites.

What is Ayatollah Sistani`s view?

Sistani, Iraq`s most influential political figure, has said no law in Iraq should conflict with Islamic principles, and Islam should be recognized in law as the religion of the majority of Iraqis. He has also spoken in favor of elections, freedom of religion, and other civil liberties, and has not called for an official governmental role for clerics. He has issued a fatwa, or religious order, instructing all Iraqis to vote. A six-man committee organized by Sistani put together the unified Shiite slate, uniting 23 fractious political parties in a single coalition.

How do Sistani`s views differ from religious practice in Iran?

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, was the innovator of a Shiite political theory called veliyat-i-faqih, or rule by Islamic jurist. This theory backed the idea that governments with authority over Shiites should be run by clerics in accordance with Islamic law. A longer-established Shiite position--often called quietism--holds that clerics shouldn`t get involved in day-to-day political affairs and instead should serve as an authority independent from the state. Sistani, though Iranian-born, has long favored the quietist, or moderate, tradition. This is why he does not support a formal role in the government for clerics.

Has Sistani acted as a quietist since the fall of Saddam Hussein?

No, many experts say. Sistani has been deeply involved in politics since Saddam Hussein`s ouster, even though he has held no government position. He may well continue to exercise a de facto veto over the future government by virtue of his religious authority, experts say. "It`s not an accurate analysis to say he stays out of politics. If that were true, he would have stayed completely out of forming a candidates list," says Kenneth Katzman, senior Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service, Congress` nonpartisan research arm. "If anything, he`s been more involved in politics than anyone in Iraq right now," Katzman says.

How much power will religious Shiites have in the national assembly?

That depends on the margin of victory for the Shiite coalition in the January 30 election. The coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, is expected to win some 60 percent of the assembly seats, roughly proportional to the percentage of the Iraqi population that is Shiite. Some 50 percent of the coalition`s candidates are reportedly affiliated with religious Shiite parties. Other candidates include Sunnis, Kurds, and secular Shiites. The Sistani list could win by an even broader margin if Arab Sunnis--some 20 percent of the population--stay away from the polls because of the ongoing insurgency in many Sunni areas. Kurds, some 15 percent to 20 percent of Iraqis, are also expected to make a strong showing in the vote. More than 200 political parties are competing in the elections, including Shiite, Sunni, Kurd, Turkmen, secular, and Western-oriented parties.

How are the elections organized?

The rules of the January vote to elect a 275-member transitional National Assembly require that all Iraqis choose from a single national ballot, instead of voting for legislators to represent their local districts, as in the U.S. voting system. The ballot will contain approximately 100 slates, or lists of candidates. Each voter will choose one slate, and each slate will receive National Assembly seats according to the percentage of the nationwide vote it wins. Candidates will be awarded assembly seats according to their position on the list, with those at the top seated first.

Who are the most important figures on the Shiite slate?

* Abdul Aziz al-Hakim: The top candidate on the list is Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a well-organized Islamic party with extensive ties to Iran. Hakim ran SCIRI`s armed wing, the Iran-trained Badr Brigades, until the assassination of his brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, in August 2003. The Hakims are a prominent Shiite clerical family. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is a possible choice for president or prime minister of the new government, but he may decide to remain as a legislator in the assembly. "I think his preference may be to rule from behind the throne," Katzman says.
* Ibrahim al-Jaafari: Jaafari, second on the Shiite slate, is the leader of the Da`wa, or Islamic Call, Party, a once-secretive Iraqi Islamist movement that resisted Saddam Hussein`s rule and was brutally repressed. Jaafari is a physician from Mosul and a vice president of the interim Iraqi government. He is another possible candidate for president or prime minister.
* Hussein Shahrastani: Shahrastani, seventh on the unified slate, is a relatively secular Shiite who was U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi`s first choice for prime minister of the Iraqi interim government. A former nuclear scientist who was jailed by Saddam Hussein in 1979, Sharastani was educated in Canada and is married to a Canadian. He served on the committee that organized the unified Shiite list and is another possible candidate for prime minister, experts say.

What is SCIRI`s position on religious rule in Iraq?

It`s unclear, though it has a history of backing clerical rule. The party was founded in Iran by Iraqi exiles in 1982, and Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim was a proponent of the Khomeinist concept of veliat-i-faqih, experts say. However, in the months before his death, Ayatollah Hakim moderated his descriptions of Iraq`s future government. "We don`t want an extremist brand of Islam," he told thousands of supporters in an open-air stadium in Basra on May 10, 2003. "We want an Islam that is compatible with independence, justice, and freedom."

What has Abdul Aziz al-Hakim said about his political views?

Relatively little. He largely chooses to remain out of the spotlight, and does not have a post in the interim government. At his brother`s funeral, he announced that he opposes the occupation and blamed coalition forces for failing to prevent his brother`s death. Hakim has also recently offered to supply some 100,000 armed men loyal to SCIRI to help secure the election. (The Badr Brigade entered Iraq with some 10,000 fighters in March 2003, and subsequently changed its name to the Badr Organization for Development and Reconstruction. It pledged to disarm in June 2004, but press reports indicate at least some members have retained their weapons). When he discusses his religious views, Hakim strikes a moderate tone. "As regards the government that we want, we don`t want an Islamic government. We want a constitutional government that preserves the rights of everybody and a government that believes in the public rights; a government that works for the interest of the Iraqi people, and believes that the people are the source to derive all the important decisions that concern the future of the Iraqi people," he said through an interpreter in a December 2003 interview with PBS`s "Frontline". Some experts, however, say that SCIRI is more stridently religious than its public statements indicate. "Their rhetoric has been moderate--they don`t want to alarm anyone. But their whole outlook is very much inspired by Khomeini and the Islamic revolution," Katzman says.

What is Da`wa`s view of the future role of religion in Iraq?

It`s also unclear. While Da`wa received Iranian support in the Saddam Hussein era, unlike SCIRI, it has never advocated direct clerical control of the government. Instead, it supported a more nuanced form of control in which clerics would oversee legislation and ensure that it conformed to Islamic norms, experts say. Da`wa has split into five groups, making its current position even more difficult to decipher. But while some branches of Da`wa appear close to the Iranians, some experts consider Jaafari a centrist. "He has been somewhat more moderate; he`s not going to take orders from Iran," Katzman says.

How might Shiites use their post-election influence?

Experts disagree about what Iraqi Shiite parties will do if they win a majority of seats in the 275-member assembly. Noah Feldman, an associate professor of law at New York University who advised the U.S.-led occupation government in 2003 on the writing of the Iraqi interim constitution, expects that the new government`s first act will be to formalize a sharia-based family court system to adjudicate divorces, inheritance, and other personal matters for Sunnis and Shiites; a civil law court would handle such issues for other Iraqis. Shiite Islamists passed such a law through the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) last year, but it was later overturned. Others say the new government will move slowly and focus its energies on the debate over the new constitution, which the assembly is charged with drafting by September 2005 to replace the interim constitution.

What does the interim constitution say about Islam?

The interim constitution--which will remain in place until a permanent constitution is ratified and new elections held--enshrines Islam as Iraq`s official religion but also guarantees the freedom to practice other faiths. In a March 2003 compromise between Shiite religious conservatives and more secular council members, sharia was defined as "a source" of legislation but not the primary source. Religious conservatives--including SCIRI and Da`wa representatives--agreed to this clause after adding an additional sentence that says no legislation can infringe upon the "universally agreed upon tenets of Islam." This debate will likely be revisited in constitutional discussions, with the religious Shiites in a better negotiating position as a result of their expected electoral strength.

Will Sistani exert control over all the Shiite Islamists after the election?

Experts are unsure. The major Shiite parties were barely able to cobble together their unified political coalition under Sistani`s guidance. Some experts say this unity could collapse in post-election bickering.

How strong is Iranian influence on Iraqi Shiites?

There are extensive connections between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, experts say. Many persecuted Shiites became exiles in Iran during the era of Saddam Hussein, and, while there, built families and friendships. Iraqi and Iranian clerics have often studied with the same scholars and in the same schools. "A skein of relationships was built up in this way that you cannot just erase," says Shaul Bakhash, a professor of history and expert on Iran at George Mason University. "The idea that Iran can be excluded from Iraq is very unrealistic. The ties are extensive and of a subtle kind."

Have Iraqi parties received funding from Iran?

Though the details are unclear, many Shiite religious parties, including SCIRI, Da`wa, and the organization of Muqtada al-Sadr--the radical cleric whose followers battled U.S. forces in April and August of 2004--are believed to receive Iranian funds, experts say. The money is largely channeled through religious networks of schools, soup kitchens, and other forms of public assistance to Iraqi Shiites. "They [the Iranians] use their money cleverly, so it makes their aid more effective," Bakash says. Even larger amounts of money raised worldwide, however, likely go to the hawza, the centralized network of schools and institutions run by Sistani, generally considered the globe`s highest-ranking Shiite cleric. All Muslims are required to donate a share of their income to charities and religious institutions.

What factors limit Iran`s influence?

Iraqi Shiites have a distinct sense of their Arab heritage, an important difference between them and the ethnically Persian Iranians, experts say. Shiites in Iraq fought with Iraq in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and resented wartime accusations that they were secretly allied with Tehran. In addition, Iraqi Shiites are unlikely to take orders from Iran or any other nation, Bakhash says. Some experts predict, in fact, the Shiite slate may be hurt politically by the perception that it is too close to Iran. "It`s one thing to accept help from the Iranians, and it`s another thing entirely to accept a very big role for the Iranians once you can run things in your own country. I don`t think that [Iranian control of Iraqi Shiite affairs] is a foregone conclusion," says Marina Ottaway, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

What is Iran`s goal?

To increase its influence in Iraq, experts say. "This is a great opportunity for Iran. It doesn`t mean Iran runs the [Shiite] parties, but it means that if they win, cooperation between Iran and Iraq will be much greater," Bakhash says. "Iran wants SCIRI and Da`wa to prosper," says Katzman. "It gives Iran strategic depth in the region."

--by Sharon Otterman, staff writer, cfr.org

Copyright 2004

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Latest Fatality: Dec 23, 2004
Military Fatalities: Total: 1474 , US: 1324 , Dez.04:67

Neuste Meldungen:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Record snowfall buries parts of Midwest and South, hampering holiday travel and last-minute shopping.

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Auch Heiligabend wird weiter gestorben.

Friday, December 24, 2004
War News for Friday, December 24, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Three US Marines killed fighting in al-Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded by roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Heavy fighting resumes in Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi civilians killed in Baghdad mortar attack.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, one wounded in Baghdad mortar attack.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman assassinated near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi killed by IED in Basra.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents attack two police stations in Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Tribal chief assassinated, ING soldier killed by roadside bomb in two incidents near Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: Oil pipeline sabotaged near Beiji.

Bring ‘em on: Three ING soldiers killed by suicide bomber near Latifiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis killed in RPG attack on fuel tanker near Mahmoudiyah.

One US Marine killed in vehicle accident in al-Anbar province.

Al-Anbar police chief resigns, Ramadi “effectively” under insurgent control.

Mosul. “Insurgents have been able to ‘operate at will’ in Mosul, where 22 people died in a bomb attack this week, because the US forces and the Iraqi authorities have failed to tackle them, an intelligence assessment by senior US officials in northern Iraq concludes. The report, seen by the Guardian yesterday, was drafted before this week`s suicide attack on the mess tent at Camp Merez.”

Fallujah. “Families of US troops killed in the offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah are to travel to Jordan next week with 600,000 dollars worth of humanitarian aid for refugees of the attack. The November assault on Fallujah left 71 US military dead, according to the families, and the Iraqi government said more than 2,000 Iraqis were killed. ‘This delegation is a way for me to express my sympathy and support for the Iraqi people,’ said Rosa Suarez of Escondido in California.”

The American media. “I was watching an American TV channel yesterday, while a discussion was on about the killings in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq, in which several Americans were killed in recent days. I was amazed that the analysts who participated in the discussion were talking without having any knowledge about the ground realities in Iraq. Then, what’s the analysis, after all?”

Hungary completes troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Progress report. “Energy shortages of every stripe bedevil this country, which sits atop the world`s second-largest petroleum reserves. Electricity shuts off for whole days. Prices of scarce cooking fuel have risen nine-fold. And gas lines this month reached new lengths, creating yet another venue for violence. At least two men have been killed in Baghdad over places in line or allegations of watering down the goods.”

Rummy’s Army. “Members of a second National Guard unit that prepared for duty in Iraq at the Army`s Fort Bliss compound have come forward with allegations that they were not adequately trained. The soldiers said in interviews, e-mails and official documents that they were sent to war earlier this year with chronic illness, broken guns and trucks with blown transmissions. The unit`s M-60 machine guns reportedly were in such bad condition when the soldiers deployed in February that one sergeant -- in a section of a post-training summary sent to his commanders that was titled ‘gun maintenance’ -- wrote: ‘Perhaps we should throw stones?’ … The document in which the sergeant summarized his unit`s training is known as an After-Action Review -- or AAR -- and is fairly common in the military. This one was widely disseminated among Company F soldiers, five of whom said it accurately outlined concerns shared by the entire unit. The soldiers said the document was sent to commanders at Fort Bliss and the Pentagon.”

Commentary

Editorial: “Thanks to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA -- truths the Bush administration implacably has refused to acknowledge. Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq`s Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration`s whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.” This WaPo editorial is entitled “War Crimes.”

Editorial: “If Bush is determined to see U.S. military personnel is sufficiently equipped, that priority must be tied to ensuring the Jan. 30 election goes on. Rumsfeld has become a liability in that effort. He should either resign or be fired.”

Analysis: “The culture of lies that Rumsfeld has developed in the Dept of Defense reflects his belief that the people should be left in the dark when it comes to matters of state. (Choreographed incidents, like the Jessica Lynch story or the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Fidros Square, fall under the psy-ops rubric) It’s not difficult to find proof that the Pentagon is intentionally lying to the public. An article by Mark Mazzetti of the LA Times states that, ‘the decision by commanders in Iraq in mid-September to combine public affairs, psychological operations and information operations into a "strategic communications" office.’ Psy-ops and information operations? In other words, the military has integrated public affairs (PA) which includes the daily briefings from Iraq, with information operations (IO).”

Analysis: “While insurgents in Iraq have placed informants inside the Iraqi government, the U.S. and Iraqi militaries, coalition contractors, and international news organizations, the United States is having serious intelligence problems in Iraq, according to sources inside and outside the U.S. government. The CIA and the U.S. military were slow to start creating intelligence networks in Iraq and have had trouble developing informants because of death threats to Iraqis and their families should they get involved, the sources said.”

Opinion: “When you ask these soldiers what they`re fighting for, they don`t give very complicated answers. Some mention Iraqis they`ve met and say they want to give them a chance to rebuild the country. Others talk about the ‘bad guys’ who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi troops. A few are openly skeptical about the war. Among troops in Baghdad in July, bootleg copies of Michael Moore`s antiwar film, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ were making the rounds. But the most common sentiment you hear, which is probably the core motivation for soldiers in every war, is that they`re fighting for their buddies so they`ll all get through alive.”

Opinion: “Archbishop Romero was murdered on March 24, 1980, because he chose to stand with El Salvador`s poor against a repressive regime. ‘Brothers, you came from our own people,’ Romero told soldiers in El Salvador`s army. ‘You are killing your own brothers. . . . In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: Stop the repression.’ How many among the cardinals and bishops and pastors and preachers and televangelists who now enjoy favor in high places would have the courage to do what Archbishop Romero did? In fairness, how many of the rest of us would? Isn`t that a question of values?”

Opinion: “We have completely lost our way with this fiasco in Iraq. The president seems almost perversely out of touch. ‘The idea of democracy taking hold in what was a place of tyranny and hatred and destruction is such a hopeful moment in the history of the world,’ he said this week. The truth, of course, is that we can`t even secure the road to the Baghdad airport, or protect our own troops lining up for lunch inside a military compound. The coming elections are a slapstick version of democracy. International observers won`t even go to Iraq to monitor the elections because it`s too dangerous. They`ll be watching, as if through binoculars, from Jordan.”

Terrorism 101, from dKos. Alert reader pedro provided this link in yesterday`s comments.

Casualty Reports

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Virginia Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Louisiana soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: West Virginia soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Mississippi sailor killed in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois Marine dies in Iraq.

Local story: Six Maine Guardsmen wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Oregon soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Oregon contractor killed in Iraq.

Local story: Alabama contractor killed in Iraq.

Local story: Texas contractor killed in Iraq.

Local story: Two Filipino contractors wounded in Iraq.



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Amazon.com Is For Republicans
Attention, liberal shoppers! Next year, screw those GOP-supportin` companies, and try buying blue
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Do you care much that greasy ol` Pizza Hut gave tens of thousands in PAC money to the GOP last year? How about the fact that Taco Bell stopped pumping out their happily toxic semirancid meatlike substances just long enough to write a fat check to the conservative Right? Isn`t that weirdly fascinating, in a depressing and indigestible sort of way?

Does it matter a whit that, say, Fruit of the Loom underwear gave nearly 100 percent of its corporate donations to tighty-whitey-wearing Republicans, nearly every one of whom I`m guessing wouldn`t know appetizing undergarments from a flap of burlap and some string?

Do you think maybe it should? Matter, that is?

This is what happened: there was this list, see, a long and rather surprising list of major consumer corporations in America, and it detailed just how much money each company forked over to the respective political parties last year in political-action-committee (PAC) donations.

Stop yawning. It gets better.

And the list was a bit revelatory and interesting, as such lists are often wont to be, and the companies` fiscal behavior might even surprise you a little, might even take you aback and make you reconsider your consumerist options, especially the part about how Amazon.com gave 60 percent of their donations to the GOP and except maybe for the part about how Coors Brewing gave almost every penny of their donations to Republicans in a concerted effort to, presumably, stop them icky Colorado gays from getting married and keep women in their place, all while furthering the cause of skanky undrinkable pisswater beer made for red-blooded Americans who lack taste buds and hope.

And this list, it recently winged its way around the Net and landed in a million liberal e-mail boxes and it became an instant mini sensation, and then did what any good electronic sensation does: it spawned a Web site.

And the site, called buyblue.org (along with its more detailed but less intuitively named counterpart, choosetheblue.com), spawned a mini movement and the mini movement spawned this very column and now you are right now encouraged to go see for yourself and discover the moderately shocking truths regarding which big shiny companies suck up to the happy sneering homophobic enviro-slappin` warmongering Repubs and which give thousands to the whiny limping kick-us-when-we`re-down Demos.

And then what? Just what are you supposed to do with this information? Well, like any good American living in a gutted economy that`s trillions in debt, all while a massive bogus unwinnable war is being waged by the most irresponsible cadre of pseudo-leaders this nation has ever known, you go shopping.

But maybe, just maybe, you shift your choices just a little. Maybe you change where your weakened and abused dollar goes as it slowly dawns on you that you might not be as powerless as you might`ve thought.

And maybe you recognize that if there`s one thing that corporations absolutely goddamn never fail to respond to in a million years, it`s the bottom line, consumer satisfaction, the almighty but increasingly limp dollar. You think?

Because I don`t care how shriveled the souls of a given company`s GOP-lovin` board of directors are, if they see profits dropping because all the shoppers in the huge and culturally potent blue cities -- the shoppers, in other words, who don`t live in the red welfare states and hence who actually have a shred of disposable income and maybe a modicum of concern and integrity regarding who profits when they spend it -- if they notice that those shoppers are suddenly skipping nasty little Circuit City (98 percent to Repubs) and instead buy their compressed-plastic Japanese-made landfill-ready electronics at monstrous Price Club (98 percent to Dems), well, it sends them a message.

And the message is, in a calm and respectful nutshell, "Bite me."

Because this is what I get asked all the time: What can I do? How can I possibly help stop the ominous onslaught of born-again right-wing hypocrisy and fear and the Parents Television Council and all the bogus Texas machismo now flooding the nation like a bad country song? Here is part of your answer.

And no, it ain`t exactly like marching in the streets and it ain`t exactly as helpful as shifting your lifestyle over to organic foods and sustainable living and to buying local and supporting hybrid this and recyclable that, all while cranking your alt-spiritual vibration and having spectacular and deeply nonconservative sex.

But it`s something. It`s a start, a baby step. It is about getting informed, just a little, and realizing that you are, in fact, the fuel for America`s economic engine, and if you decide to get yourself into massive credit card debt at the right kind of stores instead of those whose executives apparently believe that God really does hate gays and trees and women and the poor and anyone who wears a turban or speaks French, well, maybe it will make you feel just slightly more aligned and maybe it can make a tiny bit of difference and Goddess knows a difference is so desperately needed right now you can`t even believe it.

What can you do? You can skip the Marriott or the Holiday Inn (76 and 73 percent to the GOP respectively), and stay at the lib-friendly Hyatt. Skip Yahoo.com (58 percent to the GOP -- what the hell?) and head over to Google, which gave 100 percent (!) of their donations to the Dems (side note: Google rules).

What else? Toss American and Continental, fly JetBlue. Join NetFlix. Screw Repub-lovin` Wal-Mart and K-Mart (and, if you`re reading this column, chances are you need no prompting from me to avoid those epic karmic wastelands) and head over to the giant vortex of consumer madness known as Bed Bath & Beyond, which gave 93 percent to the Dems. I know. I hate that store, too. But now you get to hate them a little less.

Another amazing example? Starbucks. And as much as I despise their ruthless march into funky neighborhoods and strip malls across the nation, the coffee monolith does indeed have truly fabulous employee benefits and incredible customer service, and now you learn that they gave 100 percent of their donations, every single frothy frappaccinoed dime, to the Democrats. It`s true. So leave that hideous Folgers and the Sanka swill to jittery BushCo. Go get yourself a peppermint mocha and feel good about it.

As for Amazon, well, it is a bit distressing for many of us who love that bulbous megastore and who shop there all the time to discover that they gave so much to Repubs, which is just odd and a bit inexplicable, especially given how they`re based in hugely liberal Seattle and geeky CEO Jeff Bezos seemed at one time to be reasonably attuned and quirky and progressive, except maybe he`s not.

Maybe he`s just another hollow profiteer who supports war and disses foreigners and thinks gays are, you know, icky. But then again, Amazon did give 40 percent to Democrats. So it`s a close call. After all, the venerable and terminally annoying Barnes & Noble gave 98 percent to the Dems, and I can`t stand Barnes & Noble. But now, like Starbucks, I hate them a little less. And now maybe I`ll just skip Amazon and buy my next gift copy of "The Surrender" or "What`s the Matter with Kansas?" or "The Book of Bunny Suicides" from B&N instead.


Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

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Der (H)armageddon hat schon begonnen!
Voranmeldungen zur Rapture werden an den bekannten Vorverkaufstellen angenommen.
Bitte die Anmeldebedingungen beachten!
"Eine Welt ist genug, wir brauchen keine Zweite!"

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Die Geschichte gehört den Siegern
Der Tod Yasser Arafats im Spiegel der US-Medien
von Noam Chomsky
Al-Ahram / ZNet 18.11.2004
Der Tod Yasser Arafats zeigt in mehrfacher Hinsicht, wie wichtig es ist, die Definitionsmacht über die Geschichte zu besitzen, und nach welchen Prinzipien diese Geschichte geschrieben wird.

Dabei ist das fundamentale Prinzip, dass “wir gut sind” – wobei “wir” der Staat sind, dem wir dienen – und dass alles, was “wir” tun, den höch­sten Prinzipien gehorcht, auch wenn es dabei in der Praxis manchmal zu Irrtümern kommen kann. Eine typi­sche Illustration für diese Einstel­lung ist die retrospek­tive Haltung der extremsten Vertre­ter des US-amerikanischen Links­liberalismus zum Viet­namkrieg, der laut ihrer patriotisch an­gepassten Version mit „stümper­haf­ten Versuchen, Gutes zu tun“, be­gann, sich aber schließlich 1969 laut dem Vorzeigeliberalen der New York Times Anthony Lewis in ein „Desaster“ verwandelt hatte – 1969, als sogar die Geschäftswelt sich von diesem Krieg distanziert hatte, weil er zu teuer wurde, und als 70 Prozent der Bevölkerung ihn als „von Grund auf falsch und unmoralisch“ und nicht lediglich als „Fehler“ betrachteten; 1969, sieben Jahre nach Beginn des von Kennedy eingeleiteten Angriffs auf Südvietnam, zwei Jahre, nachdem der angesehenste Vietnamspezialist und Militärhistoriker Bernard Fall gewarnt hatte, „Vietnam als kulturelles und historisches Gebilde“ stehe „vor der Auslöschung, ... da die Landgebiete unter den Schlägen der größten Militärmaschinerie, die je gegen ein Gebiet dieser Größe in Gang gesetzt wurde, buchstäblich zu Grunde gehen“; 1969, zur Zeit einiger der grausamsten Aktionen staatlichen Terrors während einem der größten Verbrechen in der zweiten Hälfte des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, Aktionen, unter denen John F. Kerrys Schnellbootoperationen im bereits durch Sättigungsbombardements, chemische Kriegführung und organisierten Massenmord in Trümmer gelegten Süden Vietnams noch zu den weniger schlimmen gehörten. Trotz all dieser Fakten trägt die patriotisch revidierte Version der Geschichte den Sieg davon. Expertenrunden grübeln ernsthaft über die Gründe für die „Besessenheit Amerikas von Vietnam“ im Präsidentschaftswahlkampf 2004, in dem der Vietnamkrieg in Wirklichkeit nie zu Sprache kam – wobei ich natürlich von dem tatsächlichen Krieg spreche, nicht von dem für die Geschichte zurechtfrisierten schönen Bild davon.

Dem erwähnten fundamentalen Prinzip entsprechen noch einige andere. Das erste besagt, dass auch die von uns unterstützten Staaten im Kern gut sind, wenn auch nicht so gut wie „wir“: Soweit sie den Forderungen der USA gehorchen, werden sie von „vernünftigen Pragmatikern“ regiert. Ein weiteres Prinzip besagt, dass unsere Feinde von Grund auf böse sind – wie böse genau hängt davon ab, wie intensiv wir sie gerade angreifen oder Pläne schmieden, dies zu tun. Der Status solcher Staaten kann sich nach diesen Richtlinien sehr rasch ändern. So waren die Vertreter der gegenwärtigen US-Regierung und ihre unmittelbaren Mentoren unter Reagan und Bush I durchaus angetan von Saddam Hussein und unterstützten ihn, so lange er lediglich Kurden vergaste, Dissidenten folterte und einen schiitischen Aufstand niederschlug, durch den er schon 1991 beinahe gestürzt worden wäre – denn damit trug er zur „Stabilität“, lies: zu „unserer“ Vorherrschaft bei, also auch, wie ganz offen erklärt wurde, zu den Geschäften der US-Exportfirmen. Aber dieselben Verbrechen verwandelten sich in den Beweis abscheulicher Bösartigkeit, als „wir“ die Zeit gekommen sahen, im Namen Gottes den Irak zu überfallen und dort ein Regime zu etablieren, das man als „Demokratie“ bezeichnen wird, so lange es uns gehorcht und so zur „Stabilität“ beiträgt.

Diese Prinzipien sind simpel und für jeden, dem Karriere und Ansehen das Wichtigste sind verständlich. Die Konsistenz, mit der sie zur Anwendung kommen, ist hervorragend dokumentiert. In totalitären Gesellschaften und Militärdiktaturen ist nichts anderes zu erwarten, in freien Gesellschaften, in denen man sich kaum auf Furcht als Motiv berufen kann, ist dies jedoch ein höchst bemerkenswertes Phänomen.

Der Tod Arafats ist nur ein weiterer Fall unter zahllosen anderen. Ich werde mich hier auf die einflussreichste Zeitung der Welt, die New York Times (NYT) und den Boston Globe (BG) der vielleicht mehr als die anderen lokalen Zeitungen der USA die Meinung der gebildeten liberalen Elite widerspiegelt, beschränken.

Die Titelkolumne der NYT vom 12. November beginnt mit einer Darstellung Arafats als „Symbol der Hoffnung der Palästinenser auf einen lebensfähigen, unabhängigen Staat und zugleich das wichtigste Hindernis seiner Realisierung“. Weiter wird erklärt, Arafat habe leider nie das Niveau des ägyptischen Präsidenten Sadat erreicht, der laut dem israelischen Philosophen und Ex-Regierungsmitglied Shlomo Avineri (in der NYT vom 13. November) „durch einen Friedensvertrag mit Israel den Sinai zurückgewann“, da er fähig gewesen sei, „auf die Israelis zuzugehen und ihre Ängste und Hoffnungen anzusprechen“.

Man könnte sich vielleicht wichtigere Hindernisse für die Realisierung eines palästinensischen Staates vorstellen, aber diese können aufgrund der skizzierten Prinzipien ebenso wenig diskutiert werden wie die Wahrheit über Sadat, die zumindest Avineri bestens kennt. Ich möchte im folgenden einige dieser Hindernisse ansprechen.

Seit die Durchsetzung palästinensischer Rechte im Rahmen eines palästinensischen Staates Mitte der siebziger Jahre auf die internationale Tagesordnung trat, ist die Regierung der USA eindeutig immer „das wichtigste Hindernis“ für die Entstehung eines solchen Staates gewesen, und die NYT kann in dieser Hinsicht getrost Anspruch auf den zweiten Platz erheben. Das wurde spätestens 1976 klar, als Syrien im UN-Sicherheitsrat eine Resolution einbrachte, die eine Zweistaatenlösung für den Nahostkonflikt forderte. Die Resolution enthielt die wesentlichen Passagen der UN-Reso­lution 242 aus dem Jahr 1967, die allen Beteiligten zufolge die Grundlage jeder Regelung sein muss. Sie gestand Israel sämtliche internationalen staatlichen Rechte zu und sah die Etablierung eines palästinensischen Staates in den 1967 von Israel eroberten Gebieten vor. Die USA blockierten die Resolution durch ihr Veto, während sie von den führenden arabischen Staaten unterstützt wurde. Arafats PLO verurteilte „die Tyrannei des Vetos“; einige andere Staaten enthielten sich aufgrund technischer Details.

Damals hatte sich bereits ein internationaler Konsens zugunsten einer Zweistaatenlösung auf dieser Grundlage herausgebildet, der ausschließlich von den USA blockiert und von Israel zurückgewiesen wurde. Dasselbe Bild wie 1976 zeigte sich auch in den folgenden Jahren, nicht nur im UN-Sicherheitsrat, sondern auch in der Vollversammlung, die regelmäßig mit Mehrheiten wie 150 zu 2 ähnliche Resolutionen verabschiedete (wobei es den USA hin und wieder gelang, einen weiteren ihrer Klientenstaaten auf ihre Seite zu bringen). Zudem blockierten die USA ähnliche Initiativen aus Europa und seitens der arabischen Staaten.

Unterdessen weigerte sich die NYT hartnäckig, die Tatsache zu berichten, dass Arafat in den achtziger Jahre immer wieder Verhandlungen forderte, die jedoch von Israel abgelehnt wurden. Im Gegensatz zur NYT berichtete die israelische Presse an prominenter Stelle über Arafats Forderung nach direkten Verhandlungen mit Israel, die von Shimon Peres mit der Begründung, Arafats PLO könne „kein Verhandlungspartner sein“, zurückgewiesen wurden. Kurz darauf schrieb der NYT-Jerusalemkorrespondent und Pulitzerpreisträger Thomas Friedman, der mit Sicherheit die Berichte in der hebräischen Berichte lesen konnte, Artikel, in denen er die frustrierende Situation der israelischen Friedenskräfte aufgrund „der Abwesenheit jeglichen Verhandlungspartners“ beklagte. Er berichtete über Shimon Peres’ Beschwerde über das Fehlen einer „Friedensbewegung in der arabischen Bevölkerung, wie wir sie in der jüdischen Bevölkerung haben“ und seine erneute Erklärung, solange die PLO „eine gewalttätige Organisation bleibt und sich weigert, zu verhandeln“, könne sie nicht an Verhandlungen beteiligt werden. Diese Verlautbarungen Friedmans kamen kurz nach einem weiteren Verhandlungsangebot Arafats, das von der NYT unterschlagen worden war hatte, und beinahe drei Jahre, nachdem die israelische Regierung Arafats Angebot von Verhandlungen mit dem Ziel gegenseitiger Anerkennung abgelehnt hatte. Peres dagegen wird von ihm in Einklang mit den Leitlinien korrekter Berichterstattung als „vernünftiger Pragmatiker“ bezeichnet.

In den neunziger Jahren änderte sich die Situation insofern, als die Clinton-Administration sämtliche UN-Resolutionen für „obsolet und anachronistisch“ erklärte und ihre eigene Form der Ablehnung einer diplomatischen Lösung entwickelte. Bis heute stehen die USA mit ihrer Blockadepolitik in dieser Hinsicht allein da. Eines der letzten Beispiele hierfür war die Präsentation der Genfer Friedensinitiative im Dezember 2002, die wie übliche außerordentlich breite internationale Unterstützung bekam, mit der üblichen Ausnahme: „Auffälligerweise war die US-Regierung nicht unter den Regierungen, die eine Unterstützungsbotschaft sandten“, berichtete die NYT in einem abfälligen Artikel vom 2. Dezember 2002.

Dies ist nur ein kleiner Ausschnitt aus einer diplomatischen Bilanz, die so einheitlich und dramatisch deutlich ist, dass sie unmöglich zu übersehen ist – es sei denn, man hält sich konsequent an die geschichtliche Version jener, die die Geschichte als ihr Eigentum betrachten.

Wenden wir uns dem zweiten Beispiel zu: Sadats Annäherung an Israel, wodurch er 1979 die Sinai-Halbinsel für Ägypten zurückgewann, eine Lehre für den üblen Schurken Arafat. In der inakzeptablen Welt der realen Geschichte bot Sadat Israel schon im Februar 1971 ganz entsprechend der damaligen offiziellen US-Politik, die einen Rückzug Israels aus dem Sinai forderte, einen umfassenden Friedensvertrag an, der den Palästinensern nicht mehr als ein paar leere Gesten machte. Jordanien machte daraufhin ähnliche Angebote. Israel erkannte, dass es einen umfassenden Frieden haben konnte, aber die sozialdemokratische Regierung Golda Meirs entschied sich dafür, die Angebote abzulehnen und statt dessen eine Politik der Expansion zu betreiben. Dies betraf vor allem den Nordosten des Sinai, wo Israel Tausende von Beduinen in die Wüste trieb und ihre Dörfer, Moscheen, Friedhöfe und Häuser zerstörte, um die rein jüdische Stadt Yamit zu gründen.

Wie immer war die entscheidende Frage die Reaktion der USA. Dabei setzte sich in den internen Debatten der US-Regierung Henry Kissinger mit seiner Politik des „Patt“ durch, die Verhandlungen ablehnte und statt dessen auf Gewalt setzte. Die USA wiesen Sadats Versuche, eine diplomatische Lösung zu erreichen ab oder ignorierten sie, während sie Israels Ablehnungs- und Expansionspolitik unterstützten. Dies führte schließlich zum Krieg von 1973, der Israel und wahrscheinlich die gesamte Welt an den Rand der Katastrophe brachte: In den USA kam es während des Kriegs zum Atomalarm. Unterdessen hatte selbst Kissinger eingesehen, dass Ägypten nicht als ohnmächtiger Zwerg abgetan werden konnte, und er begann mit seiner „Pendeldiplomatie“, die schließlich zu den Treffen in Camp David führte, bei denen die USA und Israel Sadats Angebot von 1971 akzeptierten – aber zu Bedingungen, die vom Standpunkt der USA aus wesentlich schlechter waren. Damals hatte sich bereits ein internationaler Konsens für die Anerkennung der nationalen Rechte der Palästinenser herausgebildet, und dementsprechend forderte Sadat auch einen palästinensischen Staat, was jedoch für die USA und Israel nicht in Frage kam.

In der offiziellen, von den Medienkommentaren nachgebeteten Version der Eigentümer der Geschichte waren diese Ereignisse ein Triumph für die USA und der Beweis, dass die Araber ihre Ziele erreichen könnten, wenn sie sich bloß dazu durchringen könnten, sich unserer Präferenz für Frieden und Diplomatie anzuschließen. In der tatsächlichen Geschichte war der angebliche Triumph ein Desaster, und die Ereignisse demonstrierten, dass die USA sich ausschließlich der Gewalt beugten. Die Weigerung der USA, nach diplomatischen Lösungen zu suchen, führte zu einem furchtbaren und sehr gefährlichen Krieg und vielen Jahren unnötigen Leids mit bis heute nachwirkenden schlimmen Folgen.

Der Militärkommandeur der besetzten Gebiete von 1967 bis 1969, General Shlomo Gazit, schreibt in seinen Memoiren, die sozialdemokratische Regierung Israels trage aufgrund ihrer von Washington unterstützten Weigerung, die Vorschläge aus dem Militär und den Nachrichtendiensten zur Zulassen irgendeiner Form von Selbstverwaltung und vielleicht sogar begrenzter politischer Aktivitäten in den besetzten Gebieten zu berücksichtigen, und durch ihr Bestehen auf „gravierenden Grenzveränderungen“ erhebliche Mitverantwortung für den späteren Aufstieg der fanatischen Siedlerbewegung Gush Emunim sowie den Widerstand der Palästinenser, der sich lange später, nach vielen Jahren der Brutalität, des Staatsterrors und der kontinuierlichen Übernahme wertvoller palästinensischer Ländereien und Ressourcen in der ersten Intifada entwickelte.

Der ausführliche Nachruf der NYT-Nahostspezialistin, Judith Miller, vom 11. November 2004 ist im selben Tenor gehalten wie der Titelkommentar. Miller zufolge „lehnte Arafat bis 1988 die Anerkennung Israels immer wieder ab und bestand statt dessen auf bewaffnetem Kampf und Terror. Für den diplomatischen Weg entschied er sich erst nach seinem Schulterschluss mit dem irakischen Präsidenten Saddam Hussein während des Kriegs am Persischen Golf von 1991.“

Damit gibt Miller die offizielle Geschichtsversion akkurat wieder. In Wirklichkeit bot Arafat wiederholt Verhandlungen mit dem Ziel gegenseitiger Anerkennung an, während Israel – besonders die gemäßigten „Pragmatiker“ – dies mit Unterstützung Washingtons rundweg ablehnte. 1989 bestätigte die israelische Koalitionsregierung Shamir-Peres mit ihrem Friedensplan den überparteilichen Konsens. Dessen wichtigstes Prinzip lautete, es könne keinen „weiteren palästinensischen Staat“ zwischen Jordanien und Israel geben, da ja Jordanien bereits ein „palästinensischer Staat“ sei. Das zweite Prinzip besagte, das Schicksal der besetzten Gebiete müsse „entsprechend den grundlegenden Leitlinien der israelischen Regierung“ geregelt werden. Dieser Plan wurde von den USA vorbehaltlos akzeptiert und verwandelte sich so in den von Außenminister James Baker verkündeten „Baker-Plan“ vom Dezember 1989. Ganz im Gegensatz zu Millers Darstellung und der offiziellen Geschichtsversion war es die US-Regierung, die erst nach dem Golfkrieg bereit war, Verhandlungen in Betracht zu ziehen, da man in Washington erkannte, dass die USA nun einseitig ihre eigene Lösung durchsetzen können würden.

Die USA beriefen die Madrider Konferenz ein, an der als Feigenblatt auch eine russische Delegation teilnahm. Dies führte dann tatsächlich zu Verhandlungen mit einer authentischen palästinensischen Delegation, die von Haider Abdel Shafi, einem aufrichtigen Nationalisten und dem wahrscheinlich angesehensten politischen Führer in den besetzten Gebieten geleitet wurde. Aber die Verhandlungen fuhren sich bald fest, weil Abdel Shafi Israels von Washington unterstützte Politik des fortgesetzten Raubs wichtiger Teile der besetzten Gebiete durch Siedlungs- und Infrastrukturprogramme ablehnte. Dabei hat selbst der US-Richter am Weltgerichtshof, der als einziger gegen die kürzliche Entscheidung des Gerichts stimmte, mit die israelische Mauer zur Zerteilung des Westjordanlands verurteilt wird, anerkannt, das diese Programme samt und sonders illegal waren. Unterdessen fielen die „Tunis-Palästinenser“ den palästinensischen Unterhändlern in Madrid in den Rücken und schlossen mit dem „Oslo-Abkommen“, das im September 1993 mit großem Getöse auf dem Rasen des Weißen Hauses gefeiert wurde, einen separaten Handel ab.

Es war von vornherein klar, dass das Abkommen Verrat an den palästinensischen Interessen war. Das einzige schriftliche Dokument – die so genannte „Prinzipienerklärung“ (PE) – legte fest, dass das Endergebnis der Verhandlungen ausschließlich auf der UN-Resolution 242 von 1967 basieren würde, womit das wichtigste diplomatische Thema seit Mitte der siebziger Jahre, nämlich die nationalen Rechte der Palästinenser auf dem Weg einer Zweistaatenlösung, ignoriert wurde. Mit der UN-Resolution 242 als Grundlage des gesamten Dokuments steht das Endresultat der Verhandlungen bereits fest, denn in dieser Resolution ist von den Rechten der Palästinenser keine Rede. Nicht erwähnt in der PE werden die zahlreichen UN-Resolutionen, die entsprechend dem seit seiner Herausbildung in den siebziger Jahren von den USA blockierten internationalen Konsens neben den Rechten Israels auch die Rechte der Palästinenser erwähnen. Aus dem Wortlaut des Abkommens ging klar hervor, dass es ein Mandat für die Fortsetzung der israelischen Siedlungsprogramme darstellte, und die damalige politische Führung Israels (Yitzhak Rabin und Shimon Peres) gab sich auch keine Mühe, das zu verheimlichen. Aus diesem Grund lehnte Abdel Shafi eine Teilnahme an den Feiern ab. Wie Rabin erläuterte, dachte man Arafat die Rolle des Polizisten Israels in den besetzten Gebieten zu. Solange er diese Aufgabe erfüllte, galt er als Pragmatiker und genoss die Unterstützung der USA und Israels, während die Korruption, Gewalttätigkeit und Unterdrückung unter seinem Regime ignoriert wurden. Erst als er die Bevölkerung nicht mehr unter Kontrolle halten konnte, weil Israel den Palästinensern immer mehr Land und Ressourcen wegnahm, verwandelte er sich wie schon so viele andere vor ihm in einen üblen Schurken und ein Friedenshindernis.

In den neunziger Jahren ging es auf dieselbe Art weiter. Die Ziele der israelischen „Gemäßigten“ – oder „Tauben“ – finden sich in einer 1998 erschienenen akademischen Studie von Shlomo Ben-Ami, der zwei Jahre später Ehud Baraks Chefunterhändler in Camp David werden sollte: Der „Osloer Friedensprozess“ sollte zu einer „permanenten neokolonialen Abhängigkeit“ in den besetzen Gebieten führen, bei der den Palästinensern ein gewisses Maß an örtlicher Autonomie zugestanden werden sollte. Unterdessen setzte Israel seine Politik der Besiedlung und Integration der besetzten Gebiete mit voller Unterstützung der USA ungebremst fort. Im letzten Jahr der Amtszeit Clintons (und Baraks) erreichte sie ihren absoluten Höhepunkt, wodurch die Hoffnung auf eine diplomatische Lösung weiter schwand.

Miller hingegen hält sich an die offizielle Version, nach der „die PLO im November 1988 nach erheblichem Druck seitens der USA der UN-Resolution zustimmte, die die Anerkennung Israels und eine Distanzierung vom Terrorismus enthielt“. In der wirklichen Geschichte hatte sich Washington im November 1988 mit seiner Weigerung, zuzugeben, dass Arafat eine diplomatische Lösung anstrebte, bereits international zum Gespött gemacht. Vor diesem Hintergrund fand sich die Reagan-Administration widerstrebend zur Anerkennung der offensichtlichen Realität bereit und musste sich anderen Mitteln zuwenden, um eine diplomatische Lösung zu sabotieren. Die USA begannen auf niedriger Ebene Verhandlungen mit der PLO, aber wie der israelische Ministerpräsident Rabin führenden Mitgliedern der israelischen Friedensorganisation Peace Now versicherte, hatten diese Verhandlungen keine Bedeutung und wurden nur geführt, um Israel mehr Zeit für „harten militärischen und wirtschaftlichen Druck“ geben, wodurch die Palästinenser „am Ende gebrochen werden“ und die Bedingungen Israels annehmen würden.

Dieser Tenor zieht sich durch Millers gesamten Nachruf, bis hin zum üblichen Finale: In Camp David „verwarf“ Arafat das großzügige Friedensangebot von Clinton und Barak, und selbst danach weigerte er sich, wie Barak die Clinton-„Parameter“ von Dezember 2000 zu akzeptieren, womit er endgültig bewies, dass er unverbesserlich auf Gewalt besteht – ein deprimierender Befund, mit dem die friedliebenden Staaten USA und Israel irgendwie zu leben lernen müssen.

In der wirklichen Geschichte teilten die Vorschläge von Camp David das Westjordanland in praktisch vollständig voneinander getrennte Kantone, und kein palästinensischer Führer hätte sie akzeptieren können. Das wird schon durch einen Blick auf die Karten klar, die ja leicht zugänglich waren, allerdings nicht in der New York Times und offenbar auch nicht im Rest der US-Mainstreampresse – vielleicht aus genau diesem Grund. Nach dem Zusammenbruch der Camp-David-Verhandlungen erkannte Clinton, dass Arafats Vorbehalte durchaus begründet waren. Das zeigte sich nicht zuletzt an den berühmten „Parametern“, die zwar vage formuliert waren, aber einer möglichen Lösung viel näher kamen – womit sie die Version vom unnachgiebigen und sturen Arafat unterminieren, aber das ist ja nur der logische Schluss und von daher für die offizielle Geschichtsschreibung inakzeptabel. In einer Rede vor dem Israeli Policy Forum gab Clinton am 7. Januar 2001 seine eigene Version von der Reaktion auf seine „Parameter“: „Sowohl Ministerpräsident Barak als auch Vorsitzender Arafat haben diese Parameter jetzt als Basis für weitere Bemühungen akzeptiert. Beide haben einige Vorbehalte zum Ausdruck gebracht.“

Über Aussagen wie diese kann man sich aus so obskuren Quellen wie der angesehenen, von der Harvard University und dem Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) herausgegebenen Zeitschrift International Security (Herbst 2003) informieren, die überdies zu dem Schluss kommt, dass “die palästinensische Version der Ereignisse von 2000/2001 wesentlich zutreffender ist als die israelische Version” – das heißt, die Version der USA und der New York Times.

Danach nutzten hochrangige israelisch-palästinensische Unterhändler die Clinton-Parameter als „Basis für weitere Bemühungen“ und diskutierten im Lauf gemeinsamer Treffen im Januar 2001 in Taba ihre „Vorbehalte“. Daraus ging ein vorläufiges Abkommen hervor, das einigen der palästinensischen Bedenken entgegenkam – eine weitere Tatsache, die die offizielle Version der Geschichte untergräbt. Damit waren noch nicht alle Probleme gelöst, aber die Taba-Abkommen kamen einer möglichen Einigung weitaus näher als alle vorhergehenden Bemühungen. Diese Verhandlungen wurden dann von Barak abgebrochen, so dass wir nicht wissen, wozu sie hätten führen können. Ein detaillierter Bericht des EU-Gesandten Miguel Moratinos wurde von beiden Seiten als zutreffend akzeptiert, und wurde in den israelischen Medien an prominenter stelle behandelt. Ich bezweifle jedoch, dass er in den Mainstreammedien der USA überhaupt erwähnt worden ist.

Millers Version in der NYT basiert auf einem viel gelobten Buch von Clintons Nahostbeauftragtem und -unterhändler, Dennis Ross. Dabei muss jedem Journalisten klar sein, dass eine derartige Quelle schon wegen ihres Ursprungs zwangsläufig sehr suspekt ist. Und in der Tat zeigt schon eine flüchtige Lektüre, dass die Schilderung von Ross ganz und gar unzuverlässig ist. Die 800 Seiten seines Berichts bestehen größtenteils aus Lobpreisungen für Clinton (und für seine eigene Tätigkeit). Diese basieren praktisch nie auf überprüfbaren Quellen, sondern statt dessen auf angeblichen „Zitaten“ von ihm selbst oder anderen Verhandlungsteilnehmern, die ganz intim mit Vornamen angeführte werden, wenn sie zu „den Guten“ gehören. Ross sagt praktisch nichts über das Thema, das, wie allseits bekannt, spätestens seit 1971 die Kernfrage des Konflikts gewesen ist, nämlich die Programme zur Besiedlung und Infrastrukturentwicklung in den besetzten Gebieten, die nur durch die wirtschaftliche, militärische und diplomatische Unterstützung der Vereinigten Staaten, insbesondere auch der Clinton-Administration, möglich waren und sind. Das Problem, das die Taba-Verhandlungen für seine Version darstellen, löst Ross ganz simpel, indem er sein Buch unmittelbar vor Beginn der Verhandlungen enden lässt. Dadurch kann er auch die oben zitierte Bewertung Clintons kurz nach Beginn der Verhandlungen ignorieren. So kann er die Tatsache umschiffen, dass seine wichtigsten Schlüsse aus den Ereignissen des Jahres 2000 umgehend widerlegt wurden.

Auch Abdel Shafi wird in Ross’ Buch Am Rande erwähnt. Natürlich lässt Ross dabei die Einschätzung seines Freundes Shlomo Ben-Amis vom Osloer Friedensprozess und alle bedeutenden Aspekte der verschiedenen auf Oslo folgenden Interimsabkommen und der Verhandlungen in Camp Davis unter den Tisch fallen. Die unzweideutige Weigerung seiner beiden Helden Rabin und Peres – bei ihm: „Yitzhak“ und „Shimon“ –, einen palästinensischen Staat auch nur in Betracht zu ziehen, wird nicht erwähnt. Tatsächlich ist die Möglichkeit eines solchen Staates in Israel offenbar erstmals während der Regierungszeit des „Bösewichts“ und extrem rechten Politikers Binyamin Netanyahu angesprochen worden: Sein Informationsminister antwortete auf die Frage nach einem palästinensischen Staat, ihm sei es gleich, ob die Palästinenser die Kantone, die man ihnen übrig lassen werde, als „Staat“ oder als „Kentucky Fried Chicken“ bezeichnen würden.

Damit sind die Mängel dieses Buchs noch längst nicht erschöpft. Ross’ Darstellung wird durch derart wenig unabhängiges Material gestützt und ist derart selektiv, dass all seine Behauptungen mit großer Vorsicht zu genießen sind, und zwar von spezifischen (mittels eines versteckten Kassettenrecorder aufgezeichneten?) Äußerungen, die er pedantisch und wortwörtlich wiedergibt, bis hin zu seinen sehr weitreichenden Schlussfolgerungen, die ohne glaubwürdige Beweise als unanfechtbar präsentiert werden. Es ist von einigem Interesse, dass dieses Buch behandelt wird, als könne es als autoritativer Bericht betrachtet werden. Von der Tatsache abgesehen, dass es die Wahrnehmung eines der Akteure wiedergibt, ist es so gut wie wertlos. Es ist schwer vorstellbar, wie dies einem Journalisten verborgen bleiben kann.

Keineswegs wertlos sind dagegen wichtige Zeugnisse, die in den USA ignoriert wurden, wie zum Beispiel die Einschätzungen israelischer Geheimdienstleute über die letzten Jahre der Besatzung. Sie stammen vom Chef des israelischen militärischen Nachrichtendienstes, Amos Malka, dem Leiter des Allgemeinen Sicherheitsdienstes Shin Bet, General Ami Ayalon, dem Sonderberater für palästinensische Angelegenheiten beim Leiter von Shin Bet, Matti Steinberg und dem für palästinensische Fragen zuständigen Beamte der Forschungsabteilung des Militärs, Oberst Ephraim Lavie. Malka skizziert den in diesen Kreisen herrschenden Konsens folgendermaßen: „Wir waren der Meinung, dass Arafat einen diplomatischen Prozess vorzieht, dass er alles in seiner Macht stehende tun wird, um ihn voranzubringen, und dass er nur dann, wenn man ihm dabei den Ausweg versperrt, zu Gewalt greifen wird. Aber diese Gewalt würde dann darauf abzielen, ihn wieder aus der Sackgasse herauszubringen, internationalen Druck zu erzeugen und die noch fehlenden Zugeständnisse zu bekommen.“ Malka behauptet weiter, diese Einschätzungen hoher Militärs und Sicherheitsleute seien im Lauf ihrer Weitergabe an die politische Führung und die Öffentlichkeit verfälscht und entstellt wurden. Für US-Journalisten jedenfalls wären diese Einschätzungen problemlos und sogar auf Englisch zugänglich gewesen.

Es bringt also wenig, sich noch weiter mit Millers Version oder mit Ross zu beschäftigen. Wenden wir uns statt dessen dem Boston Globe am liberalen Ende des politischen Spektrums zu. In ihrer Ausgabe vom 12. November halten sich die BG-Herausgeber an dasselbe Grundprinzip wie die NYT (das vermutlich so gut wie überall befolgt wird; es wäre interessant, nach Ausnahmen zu suchen). Immerhin räumen sie ein, dass die Tatsache, dass es immer noch keinen palästinensischen Staat gibt, „nicht nur Arafat angekreidet werden kann. Die politischen Führer Israels ... sind daran auch nicht ganz unschuldig...“ Die entscheidende Rolle der USA dagegen kann nicht erwähnt, ja nicht einmal gedacht werden.

Außerdem brachte der Globe am 11. November einen Titelkommentar. Schon im ersten Absatz erfahren wir, dass Arafat „zu jener kultisch verehrten Gruppe charismatischer, autoritärer Führer von Mao Zedong in China über Fidel Castro in Kuba bis Saddam Hussein im Irak“ gehörte, „die sich aus den weltweit grassierenden antikolonialen Bewegungen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg herausbildete.“

Diese Feststellung ist in mehrfacher Hinsicht interessant. Die hier präsentierte Reihe offenbart erneut den eingefleischten, obligatorischen Hass auf Castro. Dafür hat es je nach dem Umständen verschiedene Vorwände gegeben, aber nichts, was die Schlussfolgerungen der US-Geheimdienste in den frühen Tagen der terroristischen Angriffe und der wirtschaftlichen Kriegsführung Washingtons gegen Kuba in Frage stellen würde: Das wichtigste Problem mit Castro sei sein „erfolgreicher Widerstand“ gegen eine US-Politik, die bis auf die Monroe-Doktrin zurückgeht. Aber dennoch steckt auch ein Körnchen Wahrheit in dem Portrait Arafats im BG-Kommentar, genau wie es der Fall gewesen wäre, wenn man in einem Titelkommentar während der imperialen Begräbniszeremonien für den bei dieser Gelegenheit zum Halbgott stilisierten Ronald Reagan diesen als Mitglied einer kultisch verehrten Gruppe von Massenmördern von Hitler über Idi Amin bis Shimon Peres beschrieben hätte, die ohne Hemmung und mit großer Unterstützung seitens der Medien und der Intellektuellen mordeten. Wer nicht imstande ist, diese Analogie zu begreifen, sollte sich ein wenig intensiver mit Geschichte beschäftigen.

In einer Aufzählung der Verbrechen Arafats berichtet der Globe weiter, er habe die Kontrolle über den Südlibanon an sich gebracht und sie „dazu benutzt, eine Serie von Angriffen auf Israel zu starten, worauf Israel [im Juni 1982] mit der Invasion des Libanon antwortete. Dabei war es das erklärte Ziel Israels, die Palästinenser aus der Grenzregion zu vertreiben, aber dann marschierten die israelischen Streitkräfte unter dem Kommando des damaligen Generals und Verteidigungsministers Sharon bis nach Beirut, wo Sharon seinen Verbündeten unter den christlichen Milizen erlaubte, das berüchtigte Massaker an Palästinensern in den Flüchtlingslagern Sabra und Shatila zu begehen, und dann Arafat und die palästinensische Führung ins Exil nach Tunis vertrieb.“

In der inakzeptablen Welt der wirklichen Geschichte hielt sich die PLO im Jahr vor der israelischen Invasion strikt an ein von den USA arrangiertes Friedensabkommen, während Israel zahlreiche und mörderische Angriffe im Südlibanon durchführte, um eine palästinensische Reaktion zu provozieren, die es dann als Vorwand für die ohnehin geplante Invasion benutzen könnte. Als die PLO keinen Vorwand lieferten, erfand Israel einen, besetzte den Libanon und tötete dabei etwa 20,000 Palästinenser und Libanesen, was nur dank der US-Vetos gegen die Resolutionen des UN-Sicherheitsrats möglich war, die einen Waffenstillstand und den Rückzug Israels forderten. In diesem Rahmen war das Massaker von Sabra und Shatila nur eine Fußnote ganz am Ende. Das sowohl von den höchsten Ebenen der politischen und militärischen Führung als auch von israelischen Wissenschaftlern und politischen Analytikern klar umrissene Ziel der Invasion bestand darin, die immer bedrohlicher werdenden Vorstöße Arafats zu einer diplomatischen Lösung zu konterkarieren und Israels weitere Kontrolle über die besetzten Gebiete sicherzustellen.

Ähnliche diametrale Verkehrungen wohldokumentierter Tatsachen erschienen in praktisch allen Kommentaren zu Arafats Tod und sind seit vielen Jahren in den US-Medien derart üblich, dass man die Journalisten kaum noch dafür kritisieren kann, dass sie sie wiederholen – obwohl schon ein Minimum an Recherche genügen würde, um die Fakten zu etablieren.

Einige Randaspekte dieser Kommentare sind ebenfalls lehrreich. So heißt es in einem Kommentar in der NYT, dass die wahrscheinlichen Nachfolger Arafats – die von Washington bevorzugten „Gemäßigten“ – gewisse Probleme haben: es fehle ihnen an der „Unterstützung der Straße“. Das ist die übliche Formulierung für die öffentliche Meinung in der arabischen Welt, wie zum Beispiel, wenn über die „arabische Straße“ berichtet wird. Wenn ein Politiker im Westen unbeliebt ist, sagen wir nicht, es fehle ihm an der „Unterstützung der Straße“, und wir finden auch keine Berichte über die britische oder die amerikanische „Straße“. Dieser Ausdruck bleibt ohne weiteres Nachdenken für die globalen Unterklassen reserviert. Sie sind keine Menschen, sondern Kreaturen, die auf den „Straßen“ wohnen. Dem können wir noch hinzufügen, dass der populärste politische Führer der „palästinensischen Straße“, Marwan Barghouti, von Israel vorsichtshalber auf Dauer hinter Gitter verfrachtet wurde. Und dass George Bush seine Leidenschaft für die Demokratie dadurch unter Beweis stellte, dass er seinen Freund Sharon – wie er sagte, ein „Mann des Friedens“ – dabei unterstützte, den einzigen demokratisch gewählten arabischen Politiker der arabischen Welt in Ramallah praktisch in Haft zu nehmen und statt dessen Mahmoud Abbas an die Macht zu hieven, obwohl es diesem, wie die USA eingestanden, an der „Unterstützung der Straße“ fehlte. All das könnte uns gewisse Aufschlüsse über das geben, was die liberale Presse als die „messianische Vision“ Bushs zur Verbreitung der Demokratie im Nahen Osten bezeichnet, allerdings nur dann, wenn Fakten und Logik irgendeine Rolle spielen würden.

Neben alldem veröffentlichte die NYT einen ausführlichen Gastkommentar zum Tod Arafats, verfasst von dem israelischen Historiker Benny Morris. Der Kommentar würde eine eingehende Analyse verdienen, die ich hier nicht leisten kann. Ich halte mich statt dessen Morris’ einleitenden Kommentar, der schon den ganzen Ton wiedergibt: Arafat, so Morris, ist ein Rosstäuscher, der von Frieden und dem Ende der Besatzung spricht, aber in Wirklichkeit „Palästina erlösen“ will. Dies demonstriere Arafats unverbesserliche Bösartigkeit.

An dieser Stelle offenbart Morris nicht nur seine tiefgehende Verachtung die Araber, sondern auch seine Verachtung für die Leser der NYT. Er scheint davon auszugehen, letztere würden nicht bemerken, dass er die schreckliche Formel von der „Erlösung Palästinas“ dem Arsenal der zionistischen Ideologie entlehnt. Deren Kernprinzip während mehr eines Jahrhunderts war die „Erlösung des Landes“, ein Prinzip, das hinter dem steckt, was nach Morris’ Erkenntnis immer ein zentrales Konzept der zionistischen Bewegung war: dem „Transfer“, das heißt, der Vertreibung, der ursprünglichen Bevölkerung, um das Land zum Nutzen seiner wahren Eigentümer „zu erlösen“. Die Folgen solcher Konzeptionen müssen wohl nicht eigens erläutert werden.

Morris wird in der NYT zutreffend als der Autor des jüngst erschienenen Buches The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus hat er aber auch die bisher umfangreichste Forschungsarbeiten in den israelischen Archiven zu diesem Thema geleistet und detailliert die Brutalität der israelischen Militäroperationen dokumentiert, die zum „Transfer“ der großen Mehrheit der Bevölkerung aus jenen Gebieten führten, die später zu Israel wurden und zum Teil auch das von den UN für einen palästinensischen Staat vorgesehene Areal umfassten, das sich Israel am Ende des Krieges von 1947-49 zu ungefähr gleichen Teilen mit Jordanien teilte.

Es gebührt Israel zur Ehre, dass Morris’ Haltung zu dieser Frage dort sehr scharf verurteilt worden ist. Hier in den Vereinigten Staaten dagegen glaubt man offenbar, er sei die richtige Wahl für den ausführlichsten Kommentar über das Ableben seines verhassten Feindes.

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Latest Fatality: Dec 23, 2004

Aktuelle Meldungen:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Saturday, December 25, 2004
War News for Christmas Day, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Twelve Iraqis killed, 15 wounded by exploding fuel truck in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Tribal sheik assassinated near Sadiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Police station and governor’s mansion mortared near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents storm and demolish mayor’s office in Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Provincial governor survives assassination attempt between Baquba and Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Professor of medicine assassinated in Baghdad.

Disposition and composition of wounded from attack at FOB Marez.

It`s no fun if you have a plan. “As a result of the failure to produce a plan, Wilson asserts, the U.S. military lost the dominant position in Iraq in the summer of 2003 and has been scrambling to recover ever since. ‘In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative . . . gained over an off-balanced enemy,’ he writes. ‘The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since.’”

Rummy. “Although a Pentagon spokesman said Rumsfeld`s trip had been planned ‘for some time’ and holiday visits to troops in conflict zones are customary, one Capitol Hill aide, who asked not to be named, said that Rumsfeld seemed to regard the visit as ‘Image Rehab 101.’ He noted that Rumsfeld also went to Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal broke in May.”

Help is on the way. “Armenia`s parliament voted Friday to send 46 non-combat troops to Iraq, a move that was backed by President Robert Kocharian but drew sharp criticism from many Armenians and opposition groups.”

Consolation prize. “Contrack International Inc., which this week became the first major American company to withdraw from Iraq reconstruction work because of violence there, was awarded a $63.9 million Army construction contract in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced late Thursday.”

More progress. “One of the oldest U.S. overseas relief organizations has called for the United States to immediately withdraw from Iraq in light of the continuing carnage and Washington`s failure to restore basic services or revive the country`s economy.”

Commentary

Editorial: “On this traditional day of joy, please pause to meditate, if for just a few moments, on the many young Americans who have given so much, and continue to give, in service to our nation -- to us. And then send a prayer or thought of thanksgiving for their sacrifice. It is such a great sacrifice.”

Opinion: “Shortly after the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we as a nation channeled a righteous rage into a firm resolve to take the fight to our enemies. Regrettably, rage and resolve now appear to be turning, ever so surely, to blind hate -- in its typically irrational and self-destructive form. This transformation deepens and widens with the death of every U.S. servicemember in battle -- or in a mess tent in Mosul. You can see it in comments on the petition I mentioned (‘This Marine deserves a medal, not the boot! Nice head shot!’ read one.). You can hear it on talk radio; you likely sense it in fragments of passing conversation as you go through your day. And when we nod our heads in approval, make no mistake, we dehumanize ourselves.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Louisiana soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Virginia soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Tennessee soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Maryland soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: New Hampshire soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Colorado Marine wounded in Iraq.




Monkey Mail!

From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]

You are a happy little pornographer who loves trafficking in the images and stories of men and women killed in this war.

Oh, you may do it under some faux concern about them, but at heart it`s obvious you delight at each death.

I have had the honor of leading Marines. The lowest ranking private understands the concept of honor and sacrifice. You wouldn`t be worthy of filling his canteen.

Like any good liberal, it`s all about you, the world revolves around you. And from this elitist viewpoint all you do is bitch and moan. You never show true support, you only seek to demoralize and demean a mission, that if successful could change the face of the Middle East forever.

You are a petty small little bitch in the scheme of things.

I`ll let you go jerk off now to whatever pictures you have gotten today of our war dead.

You are filth.

Tim Estes
Phoenix

Timmy can’t handle the truth about his hero Lieutenant AWOL so he calls me a ”pornographer.” I’m surprised the stupid fucker didn’t call me an “abortionist,” too. Obviously this right-wing dildo never read this blog before he opened his cake-hole, because I`ve never posted a picture of an American or Iraqi casualty. I wouldn`t be surprised if he`s lying about his military service, too.

Run along and play with your Dubya doll, toe cheese.

YD
CW4, USA (Ret.)



# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:34 AM
Comments (16) | Trackback (0)

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Wird Kerry nun doch gegen das Wahlergebnis in Ohio klagen?
Zuerst einmal der Vorgang auch als Video und dann der Bericht über den Versuch der Klageeinreichung, wegen des Schneesturms auf Montag verschoben.
Sollten sich die 52% für Kerry beim Exitpoll in Ohio doch noch bewahrheiten?

Video Supporting Ohio Vote Fraud Claim Revealed
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report
Thursday 23 December 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122404X.shtml

Editor`s Note | Due to a severe snowstorm, the Southern District courthouse was closed today, and Kerry`s representatives were unable to file on this issue as intended. They will file on Friday, December 24 if the courthouse is open, or on Monday, December 27. In other words, they will file as soon as they are able to. No one controls the weather, unfortunately. - wrp

Kerry to Enter Ohio Recount Fray
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 23 December 2004

2004 Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry will file today, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, papers in support of the Green Party/Libertarian Party recount effort. Specifically, Kerry will be filing a request for expedited discovery regarding Triad Systems voting machines, as well as a motion for a preservation order to protect any and all discovery and preserve any evidence on this matter.

Triad Systems has come under scrutiny recently after Sherole Eaton, deputy director of elections for Hocking County, swore out an affidavit in which she described her witnessing the tampering of electronic voting equipment by a Triad representative. Rep. John Conyers, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, has requested an investigation into this matter by the FBI and the Hocking County prosecutor.

Truthout will have more on this specific Triad allegation later in the day.

Previously, the Green Party and Libertarian Party have not fared well in their efforts to get emergency orders regarding this matter in Ohio. In order to pass muster with a judge, the individual or group requesting an emergency order for such a recount must show both irreperable harm as well as a substantial chance for success on the merits. While Green and Libertarian representatives could theoretically be able to show irreparable harm, they could not establish a substantial chance for success on the merits, because no recount would deliver Ohio to either party.

Kerry`s entry into this recount effort changes the math on this matter dramatically. He can likewise show irreparable harm, and unlike the Green and Libertarian candidates, he can also prove a substantial chance for success on the merits because he lost the Ohio vote by a statistical whisker.

It should be noted that Kerry`s filing of these requests does not indicate his complete entry into the recount process, but does clearly indicate that he is moving decisively in that direction. His previous stance on the matter was based simply on his desire to defend the right to have a recount in the first place. The evidence of election tampering in Ohio, specifically surrounding Triad, has motivated him to actively join the fight. The Democratic Party is also quietly putting financial resources into the Ohio recount effort.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of all this, from the activist point of view, has been the effectiveness of the telephone calls and letters to Kerry. The activist push to get him involved had a significant effect on his decision to enter this effort. Likewise, calls to other Senators in order to convince them to join House members in challenging the election have likewise had significant effect. If such an effort continues, the activists involved will very likely see the desired result unfold.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books - `War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn`t Want You to Know` and `The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.`

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World feels bullied by Washington
Posted on Friday, December 24 @ 10:12:02 EST By William J. Kole, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) - To the French, he`s an uncouth cowboy - a swaggering statesman in a Stetson who shoots from the hip and asks questions later, if he asks them at all.

They`re not the only ones who think so. From Berlin to Beijing, President Bush was widely scorned abroad during his first term as a headstrong hombre more interested in action than consultation.

Now, as the world spins into a new year, many are eyeing his second term with a mixture of caution, frustration and resignation.

Denied the chance to wipe the slate clean with a Kerry administration, nations like France - snubbed and sidelined by a bitter trans-Atlantic rift over Iraq and other foreign policy squabbles - can only hope that Bush will cast a less imposing shadow over the next four years.



The angst and suspense underscore a simple, if jarring, truism: Like it or not, America, the world`s only remaining superpower, still calls the shots on everything from global warming to peace in the Middle East.

"The Old Europe faces Bush anew," the French newspaper Le Figaro headlined over an editorial imploring Bush`s second administration to be more conciliatory than his first. France and Germany, which tangled the most fiercely with Washington over the U.S.-led war in Iraq, "greet Bush`s second mandate with prudence and suspicion," columnist Luc de Barochez said.

"They caress the hope that, like the second presidencies of Reagan and Clinton, the second mandate of the guest in the White House - unlike the first - will be marked by a desire for international cooperation," he wrote.

Bush has promised to visit Europe soon after his Jan. 19 inauguration. The French and Germans will be watching closely to see whether he merely jets off to Britain to huddle with Prime Minister Tony Blair, his biggest ally in the war on terror, or takes the initiative to mend relations with stops in Paris and Berlin.

To do otherwise would be "a wrong signal," said Eberhard Sandschneider, a German foreign policy analyst. Sometimes a phone call isn`t enough, and "it`s helpful to sit with someone over a cup of coffee," he said. Europe`s alienated powerhouse nations aren`t the only ones wondering what four more years will mean to the rest of the international community.

The Israelis and Palestinians have the most to gain, viewing Washington as the only force with serious mediating leverage. Yasser Arafat`s death has renewed hopes for peace, and the world is looking to Bush to seize the moment with a more vigorous diplomatic effort than that of his first administration. Bush refused to have any dealings with Arafat, and an early test of his intentions will be how he treats the Arafat successor to be elected next month.

In Asia, Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen reflected a widely held view when he accused Bush in a newspaper commentary of trying to "rule over the whole world with overwhelming force."

Not so in Japan, where Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi recently tossed roses rather than thorns at Bush. Koizumi said he admired Bush`s ability to face down critics, gushing: "It`s impressive. I`ll have to learn from him."

Bush`s re-election eases the pressure on Koizumi to pull his country`s 550 troops out of Iraq. Japanese resistance to continued involvement in the U.S.-led coalition has soared since Islamic militants, demanding that Japan withdraw, killed a Japanese hostage.

In South Korea, where the Pentagon intends to draw down troop levels by 12,500 over the next few years, the government hopes to build on the close ties it forged with the first George W. Bush administration for help in easing the nuclear standoff with North Korea.

But the most immediate challenge awaits in Europe, where denigrating Bush is a blood sport.

Icy Franco-American relations have spawned an new underground newspaper in Paris, L`Anti-Americain, filled with venom, toilet humor and general disrespect for the United States. "We are all anti-American!" its masthead taunts.

If Bush needs friends, he need only turn to staunch U.S. allies such as Poland, where many are charmed by what they see as his sincerity and simplicity. They say it reminds them of Ronald Reagan, revered by Poles for helping to end the Cold War. He can also look to Italy, where Premier Silvio Berlusconi describes himself as a close friend and bucked the pro-Kerry sentiment that swept most of the continent - including his own country - by openly rooting for Bush.

Even though there`s minimal chance Europe will send any troops to Iraq, some of its leaders past and present are doing what they can to break the impasse.

Key European powers, including anti-war France, Germany and Russia, have agreed to join U.S.-led efforts to get Iraq`s economy back on track by forgiving its debts. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow called it a "real milestone" that "shows the trans-Atlantic alliance remains a strong force for good in the world."

French President Jacques Chirac, who clashed publicly and repeatedly with Bush, wrote a "Dear George" letter congratulating the American president on his re-election and expressing his wish "to reinforce the French-American friendship."

One former French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, famously snarled that Bush`s victory would leave the world with a "hangover." But another, Herve de Charette, recently urged France. to let bygones be bygones and "renew strategic dialogue with the Americans"

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, also anxious to improve relations with the United States, has moved from rhetoric to action by launching a program to train Iraqi soldiers and police outside Iraq as an alternative to involvement in the U.S.-led peacekeeping effort.

But Schroeder, like many Europeans who resent having lost their voice in world affairs, insists he should be able to criticize U.S. policy without automatically being branded as anti-American.

"I hope they realize that one can win wars alone, but not peace," Schroeder said recently. "And that the conclusion will be drawn that they should consult more carefully than ever with the partners who have to be there afterward."

Associated Press Writer Matt Surman in Berlin contributed to this story.

From Associated Press:
http://www.fresnobee.com/24hour/world/story/1945739p-9922481…

49 comments
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Published on Friday, December 24, 2004 by Reuters
Falluja Returnees Angry, `City Unfit for Animals`
by Fadil al-Badrani


FALLUJA, Iraq - Iraqis reacted with anger, frustration and resentment Friday after many returned to Falluja to discover their homes in rubble and their livelihoods ruined following last month`s U.S. offensive.

"I saw the city and al-Andalus destroyed," said Ali Mahmood, 35, referring to the district of the city he returned to briefly Thursday but now plans to leave after seeing the mess.

"My house is completely destroyed. There is nothing left for me to stay for," the teacher said, adding that he would rather live in the tented camp outside Falluja that has been his family`s home for the past two months.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on a suprise pre-Christmas visit to Iraq, visited troops at a base near Falluja Friday but made no mention of the city`s rebuilding.

Marine Lieutenant General John Sattler told Rumsfeld how intense the fighting had been in the city, where much of the combat was house-to-house and even hand-to-hand.

"You come through the door and it`s who wants it most, and it was us," Sattler said, praising the resolve of his men.

Conservative estimates say several hundred buildings were partly or completely destroyed by the U.S. assault, which began on Nov. 8 and involved bombardment by U.S. planes, tanks and artillery. Rebels also blew up many homes in booby-trap blasts.

The offensive, designed to uproot insurgents from what had become a guerrilla bastion, was declared a success more than a month ago, but fighting continued in several districts. U.S. planes bombed a western neighborhood overnight, residents said.

An Iraqi Health Ministry official said his greatest concern was the resentment Falluja`s people were likely to feel when they saw how much damage had been done to their homes.

That was certainly the case Friday. While those who fled were at pains to say they had nothing to do with the rebels who made Falluja their stronghold, many of them have since become angry and militant as a result of the offensive.

"Would Allah want us to return to a city that animals can`t live in?" said Yasser Satar as he saw his destroyed home.

"Even animals who have no human sense and feelings can not live here," he said, crying.

"What do they want from Falluja? This is the crime of the century. They want to destroy Islam and Muslims. But our anger and resistance will increase."

NO WATER, ELECTRICITY

Aid workers said 200,000 people fled Falluja before the assault and have spent the past seven weeks living in nearby towns and villages or in tented refugee camps nearby.

The city was estimated to have had a population of around 250,000 before the offensive. It is not clear how many people stayed behind during the fighting, although it is thought to have been around 50,000, mostly in outlying areas. Most central areas became a ghost town.

The Iraqi interim government and the U.S. military this week announced that around 2,000 heads of household would be allowed to return to the Andalus district of Falluja, considered one of the more secure, from Thursday.

Some 900 people, mostly men, made the journey, going through intense security checks before being allowed to enter, including fingerprinting and iris scanning of "suspicious military-age men" to ensure insurgents do not filter back in.

The U.S. military said the program to return residents had gone well Thursday and it expected more people to flow back into the Andalus district in the days ahead. In the coming weeks, others will be allowed to return to their neighborhoods.

But they will be without water and electricity as basic services and communications were knocked out in the assault.

Iraq`s government has said it will pay $2,000 compensation for partial damage to homes, $4,000 for substantial damage and $10,000 to those whose homes were completely destroyed -- far less than Iraqis say they would need to rebuild their homes.

Shopkeepers will receive $1,500-$3,000 based on the size of their shop and what they sell. But that may not be enough to assuage the anger of many. Asked Satar: "Is this freedom and democracy that they brought to Falluja?"

Additional reporting by Omar Anwar and Luke Baker

© Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd

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Das wäre der Supergau für die USA. Im Endeffekt wäre der ganze Krieg für die Katz und ein Superstaat der Schiiten würde entstehen. Und dadurch wäre ein Frieden im Nahen Osten auch nicht garantiert, weil die Sunniten mit den Saudis an der Spitze sich bedroht fühlen würden.
Die Dummheit der Bush-Politik wird immer offensichtlicher.

DER SPIEGEL 53/2004 - 27. Dezember 2004
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,334288,00.html

Irak

Die Stunde der Mullahs

Von Bernhard Zand

Der Wahlkampf in Bagdad reißt alte Gräben auf: Den Sieg der Schiiten vor Augen, legen sich die Sunniten des Irak mit den religiösen Ultras in Teheran an. Sie halten den Schiitenführer Hakim für einen Statthalter des verhassten Nachbarstaats.

Abd al-Asis al-Hakim muss schon früh geahnt haben, dass die Last der Verantwortung eines Tages auf seinen Schultern liegen würde.

Sechs seiner Brüder hat Saddam Hussein umbringen lassen. Nur einer lebte noch, als der Irak vom Tyrannen befreit war und der Rest der Familie aus dem iranischen Exil zurückkehrte: Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, der Ajatollah, der sich 20 Jahre lang in Teheran darauf vorbereitet hatte, das Haus Hakim zu rehabilitieren und die Schiiten im Irak an die Macht zu bringen.

Drei Monate später fiel auch dieser siebte Bruder einem politischen Mord zum Opfer. Er starb zusammen mit fast hundert seiner Anhänger am 29. August 2003 vor den Toren der Imam-Ali-Moschee in Nadschaf. Es war der bis heute folgenreichste Anschlag im Nachkriegs-Irak. Abd al-Asis, der immer im Schatten Mohammed Bakirs gestanden hatte, rückte an seiner statt zum Führer der mächtigsten Schiitenpartei im Irak auf, des "Obersten Islamischen Revolutionsrates".

Nur selten war seitdem von ihm zu hören. Hakim saß im Regierungsrat, den noch US-Zivilverwalter Paul Bremer eingerichtet hatte, er schickte Gefolgsleute in die Übergangsregierung, er knüpfte Verbindungen und baute die Badr-Brigade aus, die stärkste Miliz im Lande - doch stets agierte er aus dem Hintergrund und mied den öffentlichen Auftritt.

Das wird sich nun ändern. Hakims Name steht auf Listenplatz eins der "Vereinigten Irakischen Allianz", des mächtigsten, von Großajatollah Ali al-Sistani geschmiedeten Parteienbündnisses für die Wahl am 30. Januar. Und Hakim steht im Zentrum des Streits, der den Wahlkampf beherrscht: Kann ein Sieg der Schiiten den Irak befrieden - oder übernehmen mit einem Präsidenten oder Ministerpräsidenten Hakim die Mullahs aus Teheran die Macht in Bagdad?

Die gute Nachricht der vergangenen Woche - am Dienstag kamen die zwei im August verschleppten französischen Journalisten aus der Geiselhaft frei - wurde von einer ganzen Serie düsterer Meldungen überschattet: Mehr als 90 Menschen verloren bis zum vorigen Mittwoch ihr Leben, 22 bei einem Angriff auf eine US-Kantine in der nordirakischen Stadt Mossul, 66 bei einem Doppelanschlag auf die Schiitenschreine in Nadschaf und Kerbela.

Das Ziel der Terroristen sei es, so Premierminister Ijad Alawi, "ethnische und religiöse Konflikte zu schaffen". Ihr Handlungsmuster sei das von Osama Bin Laden, und die Zahl der Attacken werde in den Wochen vor der Wahl noch zunehmen.

Beunruhigend ist, dass selbst Gefolgsleute Alawis die Spannungen mit anheizen. Sie schüren einen Hass, den bislang nur extreme Randgruppen predigten. Politiker bis tief in gemäßigte Kreise unterstützen sie dabei.

Als "iranische Liste" dämonisierte Alawis Verteidigungsminister Hasim Schaalan das Wahlbündnis, dem Abd al-Asis al-Hakim vorsteht. "Iran ist der gefährlichste Feind des Irak und der Araber", erklärte Schaalan vor einer Versammlung amerikanischer und anderer Nato-Offiziere in Bagdad. "Wir müssen alle Anstrengungen bündeln, um diese kriechenden schwarzen Horden zu stoppen." Mancher seiner Zuhörer mochte sich bis in den Wortlaut an Saddams antipersische Propaganda während des Irak/Iran-Krieges erinnert fühlen. Doch Schaalans Wahlkampfthese - die schiitischen Mullahs mit ihren schwarzen Turbanen wollten im Irak "die Diktatur des Islam" errichten - ist in Washington seit langem ein Standardargument außenpolitischer Falken.

Eine Einmischung Irans in den irakischen Wahlkampf sei unakzeptabel, so US-Präsident George W. Bush vergangene Woche [url(siehe auch SPIEGEL-Gespräch)]http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,334289,00.html[/url]. Einen handfesten Anlass für die Warnung bot ihm der irakische Übergangspräsident Ghasi al-Jawir in einem BBC-Interview: Teheran unterstütze schiitische Parteien im Zweistromland mit Geld, Hunderttausende hätten sich an der mehr als 1400 Kilometer langen Grenze gruppiert, um Einfluss auf das Wahlergebnis zu nehmen.

Dass Abd al-Asis al-Hakim anbot, die Wahlbüros am 30. Januar von den 100.000

Milizionären seiner Badr-Brigade bewachen zu lassen, hat die Ängste der Sunniten erst recht vertieft. Die Brigade, in den achtziger Jahren in Teheran gegründet und von Chomeinis Revolutionswächtern ausgebildet, kämpfte im ersten Golfkrieg auf iranischer Seite, ihre Mitglieder werden von vielen Irakern einfach "die Iraner" genannt.

Hakim selbst hat über 20 Jahre im iranischen Exil verbracht; sein gestutzter Vollbart, das kragenlose Hemd, der braune Umhang und der schwarze Turban, der ihn als Nachfahren des Propheten ausweist, entsprechen exakt dem Erscheinungsbild eines iranischen Klerikers. Dass er als Mitglied des Regierungsrats im Herbst 2003 erst Iran und dann ausgerechnet Irans neuen Verbündeten, den syrischen Präsidenten Baschar al-Assad, besuchte, hat Argwohn erweckt.

Sunniten, Christen und selbst säkulare Schiiten brüskierte er zusätzlich, als er im Dezember 2003 als Präsident des Regierungsrats das irakische Familien- und Scheidungsrecht auf den Boden der Scharia stellen wollte. Der Plan scheiterte am Widerstand einer breiten Koalition der Säkularen - und an Paul Bremer.

Das Problem von Bremers Nachfolgern in Bagdad ist, dass es trotz aller Zweifel am Kandidaten der Schia wohl keinen besseren gibt. Dem Bündnis von Ijad Alawi, den Washington im Juni als Übergangspremier durchsetzte, werden nur geringe Chancen auf einen Wahlsieg eingeräumt. Er gilt als Marionette der Amerikaner; der von ihm autorisierte Sturm auf Falludscha und seine wiederholten Dankadressen an die US-Armee haben ihn zusätzlich diskreditiert.

Hakim hingegen scheint erreicht zu haben, was keinem anderen der irakischen Nachkriegsführer gelang: Er hat sich hinreichend von den Amerikanern distanziert, um für breite Schichten wählbar zu sein, und er hielt gleichzeitig jenen kalten Frieden mit Washington, den er auch brauchen wird, falls ihn das erste frei gewählte Parlament des Irak zum Präsidenten oder Ministerpräsidenten ernennen sollte.

Hakim hat sich vor dem Krieg mit US-Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld und Vizepräsident Dick Cheney getroffen. Wie sich die Dinge im Irak seitdem entwickelt haben, wiegen Hakims Vorzüge aus amerikanischer Sicht seine Nachteile inzwischen wohl auf. Er ist moderater als der junge Schiitenprediger Muktada al-Sadr, und er ist glaubwürdiger als Ahmed Tschalabi, der längst fallen gelassene Protegé des Pentagon, der sich nach langem Streit nun demselben Wahlbündnis angeschlossen hat. Und Hakim hat den Segen jenes Mannes, der den Ausgang der Wahl vermutlich entscheiden wird: Großajatollah Ali al-Sistani, die führende geistliche Autorität der irakischen Schiiten.

Sistani, anders als Hakim, ist gebürtiger Perser. Er könnte sich gar nicht zur Wahl stellen, weil er keinen irakischen Pass hat. Und er würde es gewiss auch nicht tun, da er, im Gegensatz zu den Ajatollahs in Teheran, der "quietistischen" Schule der Schia angehört, die ein politisches Mandat für Kleriker ablehnt.

Hakims Hauptquartier in der Tigris-Villa von Saddams ehemaligem Außenminister Tarik Asis, so berichtet ein Vertrauter, sei in den vergangenen Wochen zu einer Art Politbüro des zurückgezogen in Nadschaf lebenden Sistani geworden: "Sajjid Hakim hat fast täglich Kontakt zu ihm und holt sich geistlichen Rat."

Die Arbeitsteilung ist sinnvoll, denn anders als Sistani oder sein ermordeter Bruder Mohammed Bakir hat es Abd al-Asis al-Hakim in der geistlichen Ausbildung nur bis zum Hodschatolislam gebracht. Zum Ajatollah fehlen ihm mindestens zehn Jahre Studium.

Fraglich ist, welche Arbeitsteilung dem Politiker Hakim für den Fall eines Wahlsieges vorschwebt. Als Ministerpräsidenten, so heißt es, habe er den Mann auf Platz sieben seiner Wahlliste im Auge, den Atomwissenschaftler Hussein al-Schahristani.

"Sajjid Hakim ist ehrgeizig", sagt jedoch der Vertraute. "Ich glaube, er will Präsident werden."

© DER SPIEGEL 53/2004

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Wie will man bei einer `demokratischen` Wahl Mandate garantieren?
Wieder mal Wahlen nach dem US-Modell geplant?

December 26, 2004
ELECTIONS
U.S. Is Suggesting Guaranteed Role for Iraq`s Sunnis
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Dec. 25 - The Bush administration is talking to Iraqi leaders about guaranteeing Sunni Arabs a certain number of ministries or high-level jobs in the future Iraqi government if, as is widely predicted, Sunni candidates fail to do well in Iraq`s elections.

An even more radical step, one that a Western diplomat said was raised already with an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq`s most revered Shiite cleric, is the possibility of adding some of the top vote-getters among the Sunni candidates to the 275-member legislature, even if they lose to non-Sunni candidates.

The diplomat said even some Shiite politicians who were followers of Ayatollah Sistani were concerned that a Pyrrhic victory by Shiites, effectively shutting Sunni Arabs out of power, could alienate Sunnis and lead to more internal strife. Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraqis and were generally denied power under Saddam Hussein.

Strife was still the word in Baghdad, where the death toll from the explosion of a tanker truck on Christmas Eve rose to nine on Saturday, with 19 wounded, the Interior Ministry said. No group has taken responsibility for the attack, which apparently did not damage any obvious insurgent targets. [Page 20.]

Families returning to Falluja have cars searched by United States marines. Assuring voter turnout in such Sunni towns worries election planners.

The idea of adding Sunnis to the legislature after the election was acknowledged by officials as likely to be difficult to carry out, but they said it might be necessary to avoid Sunni estrangement.

Sunnis Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population and formed the core of Mr. Hussein`s power structure.

Much of the violent insurgency is taking place in Sunni-dominated areas in the central part of the country, and some Sunni leaders have called for a boycott of the election. This has led to fears that large numbers of Sunnis will obey the call or be afraid to vote.

"There`s some flexibility in approaching this problem," said an administration official. "There`s a willingness to play with the end result - not changing the numbers, but maybe guaranteeing that a certain number of seats go to Sunni areas even if their candidates did not receive a certain percentage of the vote."

The idea of altering election results is so sensitive that administration officials who spoke about it did not want their names revealed. Some experts on Iraq say such talk could undercut efforts to drum up support for voting in Sunni areas.

Guaranteeing a certain number of positions in government for certain ethnic groups is not without precedent, though. Lebanon, for example, has a power-sharing arrangement among its main sectarian groups. The Parliament in Iran has seats reserved for religious minorities.

It was not known whether Ayad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, had been consulted about the possibility of taking such action.

Any suggestion of delaying the elections because Sunnis are reluctant to vote has been knocked down by President Bush and other administration officials. An administration official said, for example, that when King Abdullah II of Jordan visited Mr. Bush earlier this month, the president began the meeting by telling the king to not even raise the issue of postponing the elections because it was beyond consideration. Instead, Mr. Bush has pressed King Abdullah and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries to spread the word to Sunnis in Iraq to support their candidates and to vote.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other top officials have said in the past week that they were generally pleased with indications that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis wanted to vote and that many well-known Sunni leaders were running for office, despite the calls for a boycott by other prominent Sunnis.

But there are also American-made factors hobbling full participation in the election.

Administration officials say, for example, that one reason why some Sunnis are not running is that they have refused to sign documents renouncing their former affiliation with the Baath Party of Mr. Hussein, as demanded by Iraqi authorities.

"I`ve talked to a number of people in the Baath Party, and they bitterly resent having to sign such a document," said a Western diplomat in Baghdad. The diplomat acknowledged that the requirement had been an obstacle to a fully inclusive range of candidates, including figures associated with Mr. Hussein who are believed by Western diplomats to be ready to take part in the political process if they do not have to renounce their past ties.

He said Shiite and Kurdish leaders in Iraq had pressed for an outlawing of the old Baath Party since the beginning of the American occupation, when L. Paul Bremer III, the former civilian commander of the occupation, ordered a ban. There is disagreement within the administration about whether this was a mistake - reflecting a difficult tradeoff by American policy makers at the beginning of the occupation. But now many officials say they have no choice but to go along with what the interim Iraqi leadership wants.

American officials say many of those leaders oppose any effort to let former Baath Party officials run without renouncing their old affiliation, contending that their stand is analogous to banning the Nazi Party in postwar German elections.

"Given the number of people running for office in Iraq, you have to be impressed with the breadth of Iraqi society represented," the Western diplomat said. "What you don`t have running, however, are the old-style Sunni nationalists, the old regime elements who used to dominate the country`s politics."

Not everyone sees the idea of altering the results after the election as practical or desirable.

"This idea is a nonstarter," said Feisal al-Istrabadi, Iraq`s deputy permanent representative at the United Nations. "But what it tells you is that inherently people are concerned about the problems with respect to legitimacy of the elections, not because people are going to boycott, but because people are going to be afraid to vote."

Mr. Istrabadi said that unlike most Iraqi officials in Baghdad, he personally did not oppose postponing the elections, an idea advocated by some Iraqi politicians and raised by Arab leaders in the region, if a delay could help secure certain areas and persuade people to vote.

He explained that he viewed the idea of adding legislators after the election as having practical and legal difficulties, because there was no provision in the law that would permit it. However, others say that because the plan for 275 members in the future legislature was put forward by an unelected government, an elected government might be able to do what it wanted.

"You do the math," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a former adviser to the American occupation in Baghdad. "Iraq`s population is about 60 percent Shiite, 20 percent Sunni and 20 percent Kurds. But if Sunnis don`t vote, they could become only 5 percent of the electorate." Iraqis are to choose among 107 slates and 7,000 candidates.

If Sunnis are marginalized in that fashion, Mr. Diamond said, it could lead to further alienation, an increased insurgency and possibly a civil war, especially if the Kurdish and Shiite victors try to write a constitution that favors their interests over the Sunnis`.

A further fear in the administration is the possibility that continuing violence may force some Sunni candidates and parties to withdraw from the process before Jan. 30, on the ground that they have little chance of winning because voters may not turn out.

"Suppose that the violence is so bad that even if candidates are brave enough to stay in the race, but voters don`t turn out, Sunni candidates in the end win very few seats," said the Western diplomat in Baghdad. "One thing you could see happen, I think, is some of these Sunni candidates withdrawing because their base isn`t going to turn out."

Mr. Powell said last week that the United States did not favor talking with any leaders of the insurgency to get them to lay down their arms and take part in the election. "They`re terrorists, they`re murderers, and they have no interest in a free, fair election or democratic participation in such elections," he said.

He said the State Department had set up a "war room" to monitor election developments and spread the word to Iraqis that "if you are unhappy with what`s going on, this is the time for you to express your view through an election."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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December 26, 2004
As Nuclear Secrets Emerge, More Are Suspected
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

hen experts from the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency came upon blueprints for a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the files of the Libyan weapons program earlier this year, they found themselves caught between gravity and pettiness.

The discovery gave the experts a new appreciation of the audacity of the rogue nuclear network led by A. Q. Khan, a chief architect of Pakistan`s bomb. Intelligence officials had watched Dr. Khan for years and suspected that he was trafficking in machinery for enriching uranium to make fuel for warheads. But the detailed design represented a new level of danger, particularly since the Libyans said he had thrown it in as a deal-sweetener when he sold them $100 million in nuclear gear.

"This was the first time we had ever seen a loose copy of a bomb design that clearly worked," said one American expert, "and the question was: Who else had it? The Iranians? The Syrians? Al Qaeda?"

But that threat was quickly overshadowed by smaller questions.

The experts from the United States and the I.A.E.A., the United Nations nuclear watchdog - in a reverberation of their differences over Iraq`s unconventional weapons - began quarreling over control of the blueprints. The friction was palpable at Libya`s Ministry of Scientific Research, said one participant, when the Americans accused international inspectors of having examined the design before they arrived. After hours of tense negotiation, agreement was reached to keep it in a vault at the Energy Department in Washington, but under I.A.E.A. seal.

It was a sign of things to come.

Nearly a year after Dr. Khan`s arrest, secrets of his nuclear black market continue to uncoil, revealing a vast global enterprise. But the inquiry has been hampered by discord between the Bush administration and the nuclear watchdog, and by Washington`s concern that if it pushes too hard for access to Dr. Khan, a national hero in Pakistan, it could destabilize an ally. As a result, much of the urgency has been sapped from the investigation, helping keep hidden the full dimensions of the activities of Dr. Khan and his associates.

There is no shortage of tantalizing leads. American intelligence officials and the I.A.E.A., working separately, are still untangling Dr. Khan`s travels in the years before his arrest. Investigators said he visited 18 countries, including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, on what they believed were business trips, either to buy materials like uranium ore or sell atomic goods.

In Dubai, they have scoured one of the network`s front companies, finding traces of radioactive material as well as phone records showing contact with Saudi Arabia. Having tracked the network operations to Malaysia, Europe and the Middle East, investigators recently uncovered an outpost in South Africa, where they seized 11 crates of equipment for enriching uranium.

The breadth of the operation was particularly surprising to some American intelligence officials because they had had Dr. Khan under surveillance for nearly three decades, since he began assembling components for Pakistan`s bomb, but apparently missed crucial transactions with countries like Iran and North Korea.

In fact, officials were so confident they had accurately taken his measure, that twice - once in the late 1970`s and again in the 1980`s - the Central Intelligence Agency persuaded Dutch intelligence agents not to arrest Dr. Khan because they wanted to follow his trail, according to a senior European diplomat and a former Congressional official who had access to intelligence information. The C.I.A. declined to comment.

"We knew a lot," said a nuclear intelligence official, "but we didn`t realize the size of his universe."

President Bush boasts that the Khan network has been dismantled. But there is evidence that parts of it live on, as do investigations in Washington and Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. is based.

Cooperation between the United Nations atomic agency and the United States has trickled to a near halt, particularly as the Bush administration tries to unseat the I.A.E.A. director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, who did not support the White House`s prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq.

The chill from the White House has blown through Vienna. "I can`t remember the last time we saw anything of a classified nature from Washington," one of the agency`s senior officials said. Experts see it as a missed opportunity because the two sides have complementary strengths - the United States with spy satellites and covert capabilities to intercept or disable nuclear equipment, and the I.A.E.A. with inspectors who have access to some of the world`s most secretive atomic facilities that the United States cannot legally enter.

In the 11 months since Dr. Khan`s partial confession, Pakistan has denied American investigators access to him. They have passed questions through the Pakistanis, but report that there is virtually no new information on critical questions like who else obtained the bomb design. Nor have American investigators been given access to Dr. Khan`s chief operating officer, Buhari Sayed Abu Tahir, who is in a Malaysian jail.

This disjunction has helped to keep many questions about the network unanswered, including whether the Pakistani military was involved in the black market and what other countries, or nonstate groups, beyond Libya, Iran and North Korea, received what one Bush administration official called Dr. Khan`s "nuclear starter kit" - everything from centrifuge designs to raw uranium fuel to the blueprints for the bomb.

Privately, investigators say that with so many mysteries unsolved, they have little confidence that the illicit atomic marketplace has actually been shut down. "It may be more like Al Qaeda," said one I.A.E.A. official, "where you cut off the leadership but new elements emerge."

A Potential Danger

A. Q. Khan may have been unknown to most Americans when he was revealed about a year ago as the mastermind of the largest illicit nuclear proliferation network in history. But for three decades Dr. Khan, a metallurgist, has been well known to British and American intelligence officials. Even so, the United States and its allies passed up opportunities to stop him - and apparently failed to detect that he had begun selling nuclear technology to Iran in the late 1980`s. It was the opening transaction for an enterprise that eventually spread to North Korea, Libya and beyond.

Dr. Khan studied in Pakistan and Europe. After he secured a job in the Netherlands in the early 1970`s at a plant making centrifuges - the devices that purify uranium - Dutch intelligence officials began watching him. By late 1975, they grew so wary, after he was observed at a nuclear trade show in Switzerland asking suspicious questions, that they moved him to a different area of the company to keep him away from uranium enrichment work. "There was an awareness," said Frank Slijper of the Dutch Campaign against Arms Trade, who recently wrote a report on Dr. Khan`s early days, "that he was a potential danger."

Dr. Khan suddenly left the country that December, called home by his government for its atomic project. Years later, investigators discovered that he had taken blueprints for the centrifuges with him. In Pakistan, Dr. Khan was working to develop a bomb to counter India`s, and Washington was intent on stopping the project.

It later proved to be the first of several occasions when the United States failed to fully understand what Dr. Khan was up to. Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor who has served in several administrations, said American intelligence agencies thought Pakistan would try to make its bomb by producing plutonium - an alternative bomb fuel. Mr. Nye was sent to France to halt the shipment of technology that would have enabled Pakistan to complete a reprocessing plant for the plutonium fuel. "We returned to Washington to celebrate our victory, only to discover that Khan had already stolen the technology for another path to the bomb," Mr. Nye recalled.

To gather more atomic gear and skill, Dr. Khan returned to the Netherlands repeatedly. But the United States wanted to watch him, and a European diplomat with wide knowledge of nuclear intelligence cited the two occasions when the C.I.A. persuaded the Dutch authorities not to arrest him. Intelligence officials apparently felt Dr. Khan was more valuable as an unwitting guide to the nuclear underworld.

"The Dutch wanted to arrest him," the diplomat said. "But they were told by the American C.I.A., `Leave him so we can follow his trail.` "

A Chinese Connection

Dr. Khan quickly led the agents to Beijing. It was there in the early 1980`s that Dr. Khan pulled off a coup: obtaining the blueprints for a weapon that China had detonated in its fourth nuclear test, in 1966. The design was notable because it was compact and the first one China had developed that could easily fit atop a missile.

American intelligence agencies only learned the full details of the transactions earlier this year when the Libyans handed over two large plastic bags with the names of an Islamabad tailor on one side and a dry-cleaner on other - one of several clues that it had come from the Khan Laboratories. The design inside included drawings of more than 100 parts, all fitting in a sphere about 34 inches in diameter, just the right size for a rocket.

Equally remarkable were the handwritten notations in the margins. "They made reference to Chinese ministers, presumably involved in the deal," one official who reviewed it disclosed. And there was also a reference to "Munir," apparently Munir Khan, Dr. Khan`s rival who ran the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and was in a contest with Dr. Khan to put together a Pakistani weapon that would match India`s.

In that race, size was critical, because only a small weapon could be put atop Pakistani missiles. One note in the margin of the design, the official said, was that "Munir`s bomb would be bigger."

Intelligence experts believe that Dr. Khan traded his centrifuge technology to the Chinese for their bomb design.

A certain familiarity developed between Dr. Khan and those watching him.

"I remember I was once in Beijing on a nonproliferation mission," said Robert J. Einhorn, a longtime proliferation official in the State Department, "and we knew that Khan was in Beijing, too, and where he was. I had this fantasy of going over to his hotel, calling up to his room, and inviting him down for a cup of coffee."

Of course, he never did. But if he had, Dr. Khan might not have been surprised.

Simon Henderson, a London-based author who has written about Dr. Khan for more than two decades, said the Pakistani scientist long suspected he was under close surveillance. "Khan once told me, indignantly, `The British try to recruit members of my team as spies,` " Mr. Henderson recalled. "As far as I`m aware, he was penetrated for a long, long time."

Still, for all the surveillance, American officials always seemed a step or two behind. In the 1990`s, noted Mr. Einhorn, the assumption was that Iran was getting most of its help from Russia, which was providing the country with reactors and laser-isotope technology. Virtually no attention was paid to its contacts with Dr. Khan.

"It was a classic case of being focused in the wrong place," Mr. Einhorn said. "And if Iran gets the bomb in the next few years, it won`t be because of the Russians. It will be because of the help they got from A. Q. Khan."

Triumph and Mystery

As soon as Mr. Bush came to office, his director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, began tutoring him on the dangers of Dr. Khan and disclosing how deeply the agency believed it had penetrated his life and network. "We were inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms," Mr. Tenet said in a recent speech. "We were everywhere these people were."

But acting on the Khan problem meant navigating the sensitivities of a fragile ally important in the effort against terrorism. That has impeded the inquiry ever since.

Washington had little leverage to force Pakistan`s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to clamp down on a national hero, especially since Dr. Khan may have had evidence implicating the Pakistani government in some of the transactions. And in interviews, officials said they feared that moving on Dr. Khan too early would hurt their chances to roll up the network.

Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, went to Pakistan soon after the Sept. 11 attacks and raised concerns about Dr. Khan, some of whose scientists were said to have met with Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda`s leader. But Mr. Hadley did not ask General Musharraf to take action, according to a senior administration official. He returned to Washington complaining that it was unclear whether the Khan Laboratories were operating with the complicity of the Pakistani military, or were controlled by freelancers, motivated by visions of profit or of spreading the bomb to Islamic nations. The Pakistanis insisted they had no evidence of any proliferation at all, a claim American officials said they found laughable.

As evidence grew in 2003, Mr. Bush sent Mr. Tenet to New York to meet with General Musharraf. "We were afraid Khan`s operation was entering a new, more dangerous phase," said one top official. Still there was little action.

But in late October 2003, the United States and its allies seized the BBC China, a freighter bearing centrifuge parts made in Malaysia, along with other products of Dr. Khan`s network, all bound for Libya. Confronted with the evidence, Libya finally agreed to surrender all of its nuclear program. Within weeks, tons of equipment was being dismantled and flown to the Energy Department`s nuclear weapons lab at Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Pressures mounted on General Musharraf. "I said to him, `We know so much about this that we`re going to go public with it,` " Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told journalists last week. " `And you need to deal with this before you have to deal with it publicly.` "

On television, Dr. Khan was forced to confess but he gave no specifics, and General Musharraf pardoned the scientist. American officials pressed to interview him and his chief lieutenant, Mr. Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman living in Dubai and Malaysia, who was eventually arrested by Malaysian authorities.

But the Pakistanis balked, insisting that they would pass questions to Dr. Khan and report back. Little information has been conveyed.

"Some questions simply were never answered," said one senior intelligence official. "In other cases, you don`t know if you were getting Khan`s answer, or the answer the government wanted you to hear."

Dr. Khan`s silence has extended to the question of what countries, other than Libya, received the bomb design. Intelligence experts say they have no evidence any other nation received the design, although they suspect Iran and perhaps North Korea. But that search has been hampered by lack of hard intelligence.

"We strongly believe Iran did," said one American official. "But we need the proof."

Dr. Khan has also never discussed his ties with North Korea, a critical issue because the United States has alleged - but cannot prove - that North Korea has two nuclear arms programs, one using Khan technology.

"It is an unbelievable story, how this administration has given Pakistan a pass on the single worst case of proliferation in the past half century," said Jack Pritchard, who worked for President Clinton and served as the State Department`s special envoy to North Korea until he quit last year, partly in protest over Mr. Bush`s Korea policy. "We`ve given them a pass because of Musharraf`s agreement to fight terrorism, and now there is some suggestion that the hunt for Osama is waning. And what have we learned from Khan? Nothing."

Some Missing Pieces

In March, American investigators invited reporters to the giant nuclear complex in Oak Ridge to display the equipment disgorged by the Libyans. They surrounded the site with guards bearing automatic weapons, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham joined the officials in showing off some of the 4,000 centrifuges.

"We`ve had a huge success," he said. But it turned out that the centrifuges were missing their rotors - the high-speed internal device that makes them work. To this day, it is not clear where those parts were coming from. While some officials believe the Libyans were going to make their own, others fear the equipment had been shipped from an unknown location - and that the network, while headless, is still alive.

John R. Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, echoed those suspicions, saying the network still had a number of undisclosed customers. "There`s more out there than we can discuss publicly," he said in April.

Federal and private experts said the suspected list of customers included Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Kuwait, Myanmar and Abu Dhabi.

Given the urgency of the Libyan and Khan disclosures, many private and governmental experts expected that the Bush administration and the I.A.E.A. would work together. But European diplomats said the administration never turned over valuable information to back up its wider suspicions about other countries. "It doesn`t like to share," a senior European diplomat involved in nuclear intelligence said of the United States. "That makes life more difficult. So we`re on the learning curve."

Federal officials said they were reluctant to give the I.A.E.A. classified information because the agency is too prone to leaks. The agency has 137 member states, and American officials believe some of them may be using the agency to hunt for nuclear secrets. One senior administration official put it this way: "The cops and the crooks all serve on the agency`s board together."

The result is that two separate, disjointed searches are on for other nuclear rogue states - one by Washington, the other by the I.A.E.A. And there is scant communication between the feuding bureaucracies.

That lack of communication with the United Nations agency extends to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a loose organization of countries that produce nuclear equipment. It can stop the export of restricted atomic technology to a suspect customer, but it does not report its actions to the I.A.E.A. Moreover, there is no communication between the I.A.E.A. and the Bush administration`s Proliferation Security Initiative, which seeks to intercept illicit nuclear trade at sea or in the air.

"It`s a legitimate question whether we need a very different kind of super-agency that can deal with the new world of A. Q. Khans," said a senior administration official. "Because we sure don`t have the system we need now."

Dr. ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations agency, says he is plunging ahead, pursuing his own investigation even as the Bush administration attempts to have him replaced when his term expires late next year. In an interview in Vienna, he defended his record, citing the information he has wrung out of Iran, and his agency`s discovery of tendrils of Dr. Khan`s network in more than 30 countries around the globe.

"We`re getting an idea of how it works," he said of the Khan network. "And we`re still looking" for other suppliers and customers.

One method is to investigate the countries Dr. Khan visited before his arrest. Nuclear experts disclosed that the countries were Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. Many of them are Islamic, and several of the African countries are rich in uranium ore.

In one of its biggest operations, the agency is hunting for clues in a half dozen of the network`s buildings and warehouses in Dubai, which for years were used for assembling and repacking centrifuges.

Both in Washington and in Vienna, the most delicate investigations involve important American allies - including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. So far, said European intelligence officials familiar with the agency`s inner workings, no hard evidence of clandestine nuclear arms programs has surfaced.

Suspicious signs have emerged, however. For instance, experts disclosed that SMB Computers, Mr. Tahir`s front company in Dubai for the Khan network, made telephone calls to Saudi Arabia. But the company also engaged in legitimate computer sales, giving it plausible cover. Experts also disclosed that Saudi scientists traveled to Pakistan for some of Dr. Khan`s scientific conferences. But the meetings were not secret, or illegal.

There is also worry in both Washington and Vienna about Egypt, which has two research reactors near Cairo and a long history of internal debate about whether to pursue nuclear arms. But European intelligence officials said I.A.E.A. inspectors who recently went there found no signs of clandestine nuclear arms and some evidence of shoddy workmanship that bespeaks low atomic expectations. As for Syria, the Bush administration had repeatedly charged that it has secretly tried to acquire nuclear arms. But the I.A.E.A. has so far found no signs of a relationship with Dr. Khan or a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Worried about what is still unknown, the I.A.E.A. is quietly setting up what it calls the Covert Nuclear Trade Analysis Unit, agency officials disclosed. It has about a half dozen specialists looking for evidence of deals by the Khan network or its imitators.

"I would not be surprised to discover that some countries pocketed some centrifuges," Dr. ElBaradei said. "They may have considered it a chance of a lifetime to get some equipment and thought, `Well, maybe it will be good for a rainy day.` "

William J. Broad reported from New York for this article, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Wenigstens die Hunde in Falluja hatten eine schöne Weihnacht!

[urlUS strategy `based in fantasyland`]http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1379095,00.html[/url]
December 23: America`s handling of the occupation of Iraq came in for scathing criticism yesterday, with government officials accused of living in a `fantasyland` and failing to learn from mistakes made in Vietnam.

BUILDING IRAQI SECURITY FORCES
New Report Outlines Progress, Failures, Offers Statistical Analysis
http://www.csis.org/features/iraq_strengtheningforces.pdf

Iraq timeline: February 1 2004 to present
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,1151021,00.html

Iraq timeline: July 16 1979 to January 31 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Sunday, December 26, 2004

Bombings and Assassinations Mar Christmas Day in Iraq

Douglas Ireland of the LA Weekly has a fine piece on the problems with the coverage of Iraq in the US media, and offers some helpful pointers on how to penetrate the fog of information war.

Guerrillas detonated a car bomb on Saturday at Khan al-Nus, between the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, killing five Iraqi civilians. The guerrillas had apparently been aiming at a US military convoy but missed.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat and wire services report that new bodies were pulled out of rubble near a truck bombing that appears to have targeted the Jordanian embassy in the Mansur District of Baghdad on Friday, bring the total number of deaths in that incident to 9.

Near Taji, Guerillas gunned down Jalil Ibrahim and Ali Muhammad. Ibrahim was a member of a local governing council.

South of Mosul, guerrillas assassinated an Iraqi translator working for the US military, along with his wife, at the village of Abu Hiza`.

Gunmen assassinated Dr. Hasan al-Ruba`i, 45, a professor in the medical school at Baghdad University, as he drove in his car with his wife. She was unharmed. Al-Ruba`i had a reputation for having stood for academic integrity against attempts to make hiring or firing decisions at the medical school on the basis of politics imposed from above.

In a case of mistaken identity, US troops killed Muhammad Nihad Hamudi as he was driving out near the airport. They had thought him a guerrilla, but he was not.

In Mosul, in two separate incidents guerrillas attacked Iraqi police with a hand grenade and with small arms fire. There was no word of casualties.

In Samarra, clashes between guerrillas and Iraqi national guardsmen left two guardsmen and three civilians dead.

The Association of Muslim Scholars claimed that on Friday, US troops had invaded the home of one of its members, Shaikh Muwaffaq Muzaffar Al-Duri, the Friday prayers leader at Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Mosque. The AMS claimed that US troops "executed" Al-Duri, with "the utmost barbarity." The US military denies any knowledge of the incident.

The AMS office in Iskandariyah, Babil province, was also assaulted by a mixed force of US troops and Iraqi national guards. The AMS is often suspected of having at least some links to the guerrilla resistance among Sunni Arabs to the US presence in Iraq. The AMS says that in the past 2 months, some 20 Sunni Friday prayer leaders have been assassinated or disappeared, 80 have been arrested, and several mosques have been invaded and searched.

Militants kidnapped multimillionnaire Turkish businessman Kahraman Sadikoglu along with several other Turks from the port city of Umm Qasr on the Gulf earlier this week, a video showed. Sadikoglu, a shipping magnate, had been helping clear the Gulf of debris from the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

US Marines captured two members of the Monotheism and Holy War group that now styles itself the "Mesopotamian al-Qaeda." AP reports, ` A Marines statement identified the men as Saleh Arugayan Kahlil and Bassim Mohammad Hazeem. Their cells kidnapped and executed 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen, carried out car bombings and other attacks in the Ramadi area and "smuggled foreign terrorists into the country," the Marines said. "This group is responsible for intimidating, attacking and murdering innocent Iraqi civilians, Iraqi police and security forces, and business and political leaders throughout the [A]nbar province," the statement said. `

Edmund Sanders of the Los Angeles Times reports that candidates loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr on the various electoral slates running for parliament number altogether about 180. He says Sadr himself, a Shiite fundamentalist and Iraqi nationalist who wants US troops out of the country, is hedging his bets so as to maximize his opportunities to take advantage of the post-election situation. If the elections go well, he will have at least some followers in place in parliament. If they go badly, he can point out that he had public reservations all along.

posted by Juan @ 12/26/2004 06:33:57 AM

Study of Arabic in the US

Harry Levins of the St. Louis Post Dispatch has an interesting article on the lack of Arabic speakers in the US. He says that a little over 10,000 students are now studying Arabic. That is a big increase from the 1980s, when it was about 2500, or from the early 1990s, when it was about 4500. It compares poorly to 30,000 studying China, and 400,000 studying Spanish.

The subtext of the article is, of course, US security needs. At one point he quotes someone named Carafano at the so-called American Heritage Foundation suggesting that universities aren`t "defense-friendly" and that therefore their students "won`t be security-minded." What a load of hogwash. First of all, universities are much more interested in the genuine defense of the United States than hack shops like the AHF (funded by Joe Coors of Coors beer and notorious far rightwing billionnaire gadfly Richard Mellon Scaife). What the university community mostly is not interested in is naked imperial aggression, of the sort the so-called American Heritage Foundation promotes.

Second, almost everyone in the security agencies of the US government-- the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, etc., etc., has at least a BA or BSc. from a US university, so it makes no sense to allege that university-trained students are uninterested in the security field. Why should students who study Arabic be less so?

I`ll tell you what the real problems are. In some of what follows, I am influenced by comments of my colleague John Walbridge of Indiana University, but I am responsible for these remarks, and some of them are mine alone:

1) The US education system generally does a horrible job of teaching languages. Schools most often start the kids on a language only in 7th grade (typically age 11 or 12!). And often they only give the children a "sampling" of languages that year (which is useless). So they do not really begin until age 13 or so, about the time that language learning ability atrophies. If you want fluent speakers of other languages, you should be starting them in kindergarten. Not only do younger children learn languages faster and better, but being at least bilingual as a young child keeps the brain malleable for learning languages later in life. If you are monolingual and 14, learning languages is unlikely to come easily to you. This frankly brain dead approach to language teaching in the US is a vast mystery to me, but no doubt it has something to do with financial issues. Since Americans appear to think it is far more important to give tax cuts to billionnaires than actually to pay for needed social and cultural services in society, it is no wonder they don`t fork over money to tutor our five-year-olds in French. But US security, and the US image in the world (they are related) would both be much improved if more Americans were fluent in languages.

2) There is almost no scholarship money for studying Arabic. Why should students do something that is exotic, that may or may not produce well-paid employment, and for which there is almost no fellowship incentive?

3) Arabic translation is a relatively poorly paid occupation. The kinds of salaries offered Arabic translators by the FBI after 9/11 were frankly laughable.

4) The recruiters for the US security agencies shy away from hiring Muslim Americans, for fear they might turn out to be double agents. Muslim Americans are more likely to know Arabic well than others, and 99.999% of them are loyal Americans. All the 9/11 hijackers had to be brought in from abroad.

5) The recruiters for the US security agencies don`t want Americans who have spent long periods abroad, lest they have developed local sympathies. This foolish approach excludes the most knowledgeable US citizens. (It is a flaw in the philosophy of American journalism as well, and its silliness can easily be shown by pointing to the work in Iraq of Anthony Shadid, an Arabist who had previously covered Egypt; obviously, Shadid has gotten stories that non-Arabic speakers unfamiliar with the culture could not have).

6) The recruiters even advise Americans studying Arabic not to go on summer or semester-long study abroad programs, since apparently even that much living outside the US could permanently injure their loyalty to their country. But such study abroad is essential to gaining fluency!

7) Being involved in Arabic studies and Middle Eastern studies in the United States is extremely controversial and often leads to character assassination, and you just have to have an iron constitution to put up with all the junk that gets thrown your way by the bigotted. David Steinmann`s "Campus Watch Program" (he is also head of the far-rightwing Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs that produced Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith), which smears university professors and students that don`t toe the Likud Party line, is a case in point. (Ironically, Feith helped make a mess of the American enterprise in Iraq by excluding veteran State Department Arabists from the Coalition Provisional Authority in summer and fall of 2003!)

Not only is being misrepresented and smeared painful to most people, but trying to be even-handed on the Middle East will get a person called "racist" (i.e. insufficiently enthusiastic about Ariel Sharon), Orientalist (insufficiently enthusiastic about radical Muslim fundamentalism), or "terrorist-lover" (i.e. insufficiently enthusiastic about aggressive imperial warfare by the Bush administration). Since such epithets can harm careers, any sensible person would just stay away from Middle Eastern languages, or study something safe like Spanish.

Well, obviously, you just aren`t likely to get really fluent Arabists into the security agencies under these circumstances. And nor are you going to get Americans able to communicate with Muslim audiences actually before those audiences if the US government doesn`t trust the ablest Americans in this regard, and if David Horowitz is busy libelling them. I don`t expect this miserable situation to change anytime soon. And I am sure that this situation puts the United States at risk.

posted by Juan @ [url12/26/2004 06:04:20 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/study-of-arabic-in-us-harry-levins-of.html[/url]

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4 Ways to Find Out What’s Really Happening in Iraq
by Doug Ireland

Coverage of Iraq made this an annus horribilis for America’s major media. If you want to know why public opinion in Western Europe has been so overwhelmingly against the U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq, there’s one obvious answer: the difference in television news between theirs and ours. You can easily determine this for yourself: Spend a week watching the news broadcasts and TV magazines of the BBC, France2 and Deutsche Welle, all available on many U.S. cable systems. The footage of dead Iraqi babies and children — victims of U.S. attacks on "terrorists" — that you will regularly see on European public television is rarely aired on U.S. networks. The regular interviews in Iraqi hospitals with doctors recounting the slaughter of the innocents that show up on European news broadcasts aren’t often seen on the all-news cable networks here, let alone on the Big Three broadcast nets’ newscasts. Iraqis, of course, know this daily reality all too well — which explains their overwhelming hostility to the U.S. occupation.

An on-the-ground study of Iraqi casualties between April and September by Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder newspapers demonstrated that "Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis — most of them civilians — as attacks by insurgents." But you’re not told this by U.S. TV’s "embedded" reporters, who’ve traded their reportorial independence for access to the boom-boom footage that drives what Time magazine has labeled the "militainment" proffered by American television. In fact, embedded reporters are enrolled in what the Pentagon calls "information operations" — a counterpart to military operations designed to exact the rosiest possible picture of the U.S. occupation from accredited reporters. Those who don’t toe the Pentagon line, and who report negatively on the occupation of Iraq and the indiscriminate effects of U.S. forces’ combat there, are simply blacklisted.

The demagogic nationalism of Fox News, the ratings king, has dragged the other networks down to its level as they seek to win back lost viewers. In a must-read article on "Iraq, the Press and the Election" in the December 16 issue of The New York Review of Books (available online at www.nybooks.com), the Columbia Journalism Review’s Michael Massing dissects U.S. media coverage of Iraq with devastating effect. CNN, for example, he portrays as "careening wildly between an adherence to traditional news values on the one hand and a surrender to the titillating, overheated, nationalistic fare of contemporary cable on the other. In the end, CNN . . . offered the superficiality of Fox without any of its conviction."

The degree to which coverage of Iraq reflects the structural corruption of U.S. major media is even more damningly portrayed in Weapons of Mass Deception, the superb new film by Danny Schechter. Schechter, a TV veteran of three decades, is an Emmy-winning former investigative producer for ABC and CNN (he calls himself a "network refugee"), and the founder of the independent TV production company Globalvision and also of [urlMediaChannel.org]http://www.mediachannel.org/[/url], the Web site where his sharp-eyed, acid-tongued media criticism punches gaping holes in official newsdom’s coverage of Iraq. In this film — which is much more meticulously documented and more accurate than Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and therefore infinitely more devastating — Schechter shows with precision how U.S. mass media have been recruited as part and parcel of the Pentagon’s war-propaganda machine.

There is no end in sight in Iraq. Senator Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, reported recently from Iraq that he hasn’t talked to a single U.S. military commander who doesn’t believe the U.S. occupation will last "three, or five, or seven years more" at least. So, to penetrate the fog of propaganda relayed by our major media, you’ll need to be well-armed. Here, then, are a few suggestions of how to get your head around the reality of what’s truly happening in Iraq from online sources, in addition to the previously mentioned MediaChannel.org:

Undernews (http://prorev.com/indexa.htm), the daily press review by veteran Washington journalist Sam Smith, is in the I.F. Stone tradition: He culls open sources in the English language from which to construct an alternative version of reality. It’s the perfect solution for the average news consumer too busy to wade through all of the English-language press — including the fine coverage of Iraq from British and Australian newspapers — from which Undernews provides brief extracts and links to complete articles.

Truthout (www.truthout.org/) is edited by William Rivers Pitt, the author of the best-selling War on Iraq — What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You To Know. Truthout’s daily e-bulletins bring you a selection of the latest news and analysis that counters official Washington’s worldview — augmented by Rivers’ scintillating commentaries and contributions from Truthout’s own foreign correspondents.

Informed Comment (www.juancole.com/) is the Web site of University of Michigan history professor and Middle East specialist Juan Cole, whose analysis has become a must-read for anyone seriously interested in Iraq.

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Sunday, December 26, 2004
War News for Sunday, December 26, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police colonel assassinated in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqis killed in car bomb attack against US convoy in Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis killed by roadside bomb near Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Muslim scholar killed in US raid in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: ING convoy ambushed in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: US troops wounded in car bomb attack near Beiji.

Commentary

Editorial: “If Rumsfeld`s assessment of the war`s duration is correct, all Americans must accept the reality of their husbands, wives, sons, daughters, fathers and mothers not coming home. At the very least, the president and Rumsfeld, the chief architect of this war, need to be more truthful about what`s going on in Iraq. A war that had overwhelming support among Americans just a year ago is now widely unpopular. A majority of those surveyed think it was a mistake, and that number is growing with each casualty report. No, there isn`t an easy way out. This is going to be very painful, for a long time.”

Opinion: “In a war against insurgents, you cannot always tell a combatant from a noncombatant, which is one reason for the confusion about the number of civilian victims in Iraq. Most guesses range between 10,000 and 20,000, though other estimates run much higher. The British medical journal Lancet recently suggested the total may be close to 100,000. Remember, though, that almost half the population of Iraq is 18 years old or younger. Whatever the overall number of civilian casualties turns out to be, it will include an awful lot of children.”

Opinion: “We have made a disaster in Iraq. We cannot escape from all of its consequences. But the human consequences of staying—the Iraqi civilians we will kill, the young American men and women alive this minute who will die or be maimed in body or mind—are worse than the political consequences of withdrawing. In any case, the political consequences are notional, as weighed against the certainty of death, suffering, and grief. In our own eyes, our prestige diminished after we withdrew from Vietnam, but our international position was not weakened. Asked for the hundredth time why we were in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, according to Arthur Goldberg, his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, "unzipped his fly, drew out his substantial organ, and declared, `This is why!`" In Iraq as in Vietnam, at risk is not America`s prestige but the President`s. No one should have to die to save George W. Bush`s face.”

Opinion: “One must support the troops, I am told. I certainly support the troops the best way possible: Bring them home, get them out of a war for which the planning was inadequate, the training nonexistent, the goal obscure, and the equipment and especially the armor for their vehicles inferior. They are brave men and women who believe they are fighting to defend their country and have become sitting ducks for fanatics. Those who die are the victims of the big lie. They believe that they are fighting to prevent another terror attack on the United States. They are not the war criminals. The ‘Vulcans,’ as the Bush foreign policy team calls itself, are the criminals, and they ought to face indictment as war criminals.” Thanks to alert reader bob for posting this link.

Analysis: “What puzzled many of us who had listened to Shinseki was the contrast between his emphasis on careful military planning and how shortsighted the administration was in preparing for the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. Before the war, Shinseki`s Army planners were not once consulted by Rumsfeld`s office. The State Department`s planning proposal for postwar Iraq was similarly ignored by the administration. It was a case of an outside group of civilian neoconservatives moving into the Pentagon and arrogantly taking over the military. Heedless of any advice to the contrary, Rumsfeld`s ‘shock and awe’ attack gained an apparent quick victory at the cost of postwar policy. Some 20 months after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq remains in pieces, with anti-American fervor strong and our military victory tarnished by a stubborn insurgency and the needless brutalities at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. If this is what Rumsfeld`s idea of ‘transformation’ has brought us, it`s a pity we didn`t try Shinseki`s.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Virginia soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Wyoming soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Florida airman wounded in Iraq.


Rant of the Day

I’ve never heard of this writer before I read this piece in today’s LA Times. The author, Mark Kramer of Harvard University, argues that the Soviets almost “won” the Soviet-Afghan War, and a decisive military victory was within reach of the Red Army but for the Gorbachev’s lack of will to pursue the war.

“The announcement in 1988 by then-Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev that forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within a year was a political and diplomatic decision, not a military one. The ‘bleeding wound’ that Gorbachev described was not primarily Russian but Afghan. During the nine years of fighting, more than 2.5 million Afghans (mostly civilians) were killed or maimed; millions more were displaced or forced into exile. By contrast, 14,453 Soviet troops were killed, an average of 1,600 a year. This was not a trivial number, but certainly sustainable for the Soviet army, which numbered more than 4 million.”



Sound familiar? To me, this sounds remarkably similar to the revisionist historians at conservative think tanks who crunch numbers and conclude that Vietnam was a “winnable” conflict but for the lack of will on the part of American political leaders. Worse, there’s something morally bankrupt when you compare combatant and non-combatant casualty rates and conclude this kind of attrition was “sustainable.” And it only gets worse.

“When Soviet generals shifted, in mid-1983, to a counterinsurgency strategy of scorched-earth tactics and the use of heavily armed special operations forces, their progress against the guerrillas accelerated. Over the next few years, the Soviets increased their control of Afghanistan, inflicting many casualties — guerrilla and civilian. Had it not been for the immense support — weapons, training, materials — provided to the Afghan guerrillas by the United States, Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan, Soviet troops would have achieved outright victory.”



“Scorched earth” is a viable counterinsurgency strategy? Well, I suppose that’s how the Romans nipped that nasty Carthaginian insurgency in the bud. But isn’t this policy counter-productive if your objective is something other than a semi-genocidal suppression of a hostile population? The author certainly suggests America has a loftier purpose in Iraq as he applies the lessons of the Soviet-Afghan War to the American occupation of Iraq:

“What relevance does the Soviet-Afghan war have for U.S. military operations in Iraq? Very little. Soviet troops did not invade and occupy Afghanistan to oust a brutal dictator or promote democratic elections. They simply aimed to install a friendly communist regime in Kabul. The number of Soviet troops never exceeded 120,000 at any time, but they eventually laid waste to the entire country.”



First he says the Soviet experience in Afghanistan has “very little” relevance, but then he tells us:

“The Soviet-Afghan war`s main relevance to the U.S. campaign in Iraq is operational. The Soviet experience underscored the crucial importance of intelligence in fighting an insurgency, an advantage the U.S. continues to lack in Iraq. It also highlighted the enormous potential of attack and transport helicopters that can strike deep in enemy territory, and it reaffirmed the value of small, flexible units of heavily armed special operations forces that are capable of carrying out rapid strikes. Most important, the Soviet war demonstrated that the Afghan guerrillas were not invincible and that well-designed counterinsurgency operations can inflict grave damage on, and spread turmoil among, the enemy.”



It seems to me that the Soviets inflicted far more damage and turmoil on the civilian population than on the Afghan mujahadeen. This next piece also seems misleading:

“When the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989, the situation on the ground was relatively favorable to Moscow, in part because the Soviet air force conducted sustained bombing raids to cover the withdrawal. Aided by huge inflows of Soviet weaponry, Kabul`s staunchly pro-Soviet regime led by President Najibullah remained in power for the next three years. The regime`s durability represented a notable success for the Soviet war effort. Only after the Soviet Union collapsed and the new Russian government cut off military aid to Afghanistan did Najibullah fall.”



Until the Kabul fell to the Taliban, Najibullah’s regime controlled a steadily shrinking perimeter of Afghan territory until only Kabul remained in government hands. The rest of the country was controlled by insurgents, Taliban forces or murderous warlords.

I hope I’m confused. I hope I’ve misread the author’s intent. I hope he isn’t suggesting that a noble end justifies a dastardly means. Because if that’s his point, the man’s a fool teaching foolishness to a generation of America’s future leaders. Any enterprise, however noble, will end in disaster if you hope to achieve it with evil means.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:43 AM

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December 27, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Shopping for War
By BOB HERBERT

You might think that the debacle in Iraq would be enough for the Pentagon, that it would not be in the mood to seek out new routes to unnecessary wars for the United States to fight. But with Donald Rumsfeld at the apex of the defense establishment, enough is never enough.

So, as detailed in an article in The Times on Dec. 19, Mr. Rumsfeld`s minions are concocting yet another grandiose and potentially disastrous scheme. Pentagon officials are putting together a plan that would give the military a more prominent role in intelligence gathering operations that traditionally have been handled by the Central Intelligence Agency. They envision the military doing more spying with humans, as opposed, for example, to surveillance with satellites.

Further encroachment by the military into intelligence matters better handled by civilians is bad enough. Now hold your breath. According to the article, "Among the ideas cited by Defense Department officials is the idea of `fighting for intelligence,` or commencing combat operations chiefly to obtain intelligence."

That is utter madness. The geniuses in Washington have already launched one bogus war, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and provoked levels of suffering that are impossible to quantify. We don`t need to be contemplating new forms of warfare waged for the sole purpose of gathering intelligence.

Part of this plan to further aggrandize Mr. Rumsfeld is being drafted under the direction of Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense who has already demonstrated that he should not be allowed anywhere near the most serious matters of national security. General Boykin, who once had the job of directing the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is an evangelical Christian who believes God put President Bush in the White House. He has described the fight against Islamic militants as a struggle against Satan and declared that it can be won only "if we come at them in the name of Jesus."

General Boykin asserted his views in speeches that he delivered in his military uniform at religious functions around the country. In one speech, referring to a Muslim fighter in Somalia, the general said: "Well, you know what I knew - that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

General Boykin was forced to apologize after media accounts led to widespread criticism. But the Bush administration is still holding him tightly in its embrace. How difficult is it to come to the conclusion that this is not a fellow who should be making decisions on matters involving armed conflict with Muslims?

It`s also time to rein in Mr. Rumsfeld. As The Times noted in a recent editorial, "The last time Mr. Rumsfeld tried to force himself into the intelligence collection and analysis business, he created a boutique C.I.A. in the bowels of the Pentagon under the command of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. The office essentially fabricated a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden - a link used to justify the Iraq invasion, and one that Mr. Rumsfeld was not getting from the C.I.A."

As Mr. Rumsfeld sees it, if the professionals won`t give you what you want, find someone who will. What the Bush administration wanted from its intelligence sources was a reason to go to war. Mr. Rumsfeld`s shop was more than happy to oblige.

The war in Iraq was the result of powerful government figures imposing their dangerous fantasies on the world. The fantasies notably included the weapons of mass destruction, the links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the throngs of Iraqis hurling kisses and garlands at the invading Americans, and the spread of American-style democracy throughout the Middle East. All voices of caution were ignored and the fantasies were allowed to prevail.

The world is not a video game, although it must seem like it at times to the hubristic, hermetically sealed powerbrokers in Washington who manipulate the forces that affect the lives of so many millions of people in every region of the planet. That kind of power calls for humility, not arrogance, and should be wielded wisely, not thoughtlessly and impulsively.

This latest overreach by Mr. Rumsfeld is a sign that the administration, like a hardheaded adolescent, has learned little or nothing from the tragic consequences of its wrongheaded policies. The second term is coming, so buckle up. It promises to be a very dangerous four years.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Don Wright - Best of 2004 , The Palm Beach Post.

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washingtonpost.com
Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A01

The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.

The plane`s owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each one of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security number and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.

Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories -- just the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former intelligence officials, that the CIA uses to conceal involvement in clandestine operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.

The CIA calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive`s Gulfstream helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the CIA`s arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.

According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to whisk detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden, usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling stops.

As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the United States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on Torture.

The CIA has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush administration has reviewed and renewed. The CIA declined to comment for this article.

"Our policymakers would never confront the issue," said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA counterterrorism officer who has been involved with renditions and supports the practice. "We would say, `Where do you want us to take these people?` The mind-set of the bureaucracy was, `Let someone else do the dirty work.` "

The story of the Gulfstream V offers a rare glimpse into the CIA`s secret operations, a world that current and former CIA officers said should not have been so easy to document.

Not only have the plane`s movements been tracked around the world, but the on-paper officers of Premier Executive Transport Services are also connected to a larger roster of false identities.

Each of the officers of Premier Executive is linked in public records to one of five post office box numbers in Arlington, Oakton, Chevy Chase and the District. A total of 325 names are registered to the five post office boxes.

An extensive database search of a sample of 44 of those names turned up none of the information that usually emerges in such a search: no previous addresses, no past or current telephone numbers, no business or corporate records. In addition, although most names were attached to dates of birth in the 1940s, `50s or `60s, all were given Social Security numbers between 1998 and 2003.

The Washington Post showed its research to the CIA, including a chart connecting Premier Executive`s officers, the post office boxes, the 325 names, the recent Social Security numbers and an entity called Executive Support OFC. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

According to former CIA operatives experienced in using "proprietary," or front, companies, the CIA likely used, or intended to use, some of the 325 names to hide other activities, the nature of which could not be learned. The former operatives also noted that the agency devotes more effort to producing cover identities for its operatives in the field, which are supposed to stand up under scrutiny, than to hiding its ownership of a plane.

The CIA`s plane secret began to unravel less than six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

On Oct. 26, 2001, Masood Anwar, a Pakistani journalist with the News in Islamabad, broke a story asserting that Pakistani intelligence officers had handed over to U.S. authorities a Yemeni microbiologist, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, who was wanted in connection with the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

The report noted that an aircraft bearing tail number N379P, and parked in a remote area of a little-used terminal at the Karachi airport, had whisked Mohammed away about 2:40 a.m. Oct. 23. The tail number was also obtained by The Post`s correspondent in Pakistan but not published.

The News article ricocheted among spy-hunters and Web bloggers as a curiosity for those interested in divining the mechanics of the new U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

At 7:54:04 p.m. Oct. 26, the News article was posted on FreeRepublic.com, which bills itself as "a conservative news forum."

Thirteen minutes later, a chat-room participant posted the plane`s registered owners: Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., of 339 Washington St., Dedham, Mass.

"Sounds like a nice generic name," one blogger wrote in response. "Kind of like Air America" -- a reference to the CIA`s secret civilian airlines that flew supplies, food and personnel into Southeast Asia, including Laos, during the Vietnam War.

Eight weeks later, on Dec. 18, 2001, American-accented men wearing hoods and working with special Swedish security police brought two Egyptian nationals onto a Gulfstream V that was parked at night at Stockholm`s Bromma Airport, according to Swedish officials and airport personnel interviewed by Swedish television`s "Cold Facts" program. The account was confirmed independently by The Post. The plane`s tail number: N379P.

Wearing red overalls and bound with handcuffs and leg irons, the men, who had applied for political asylum in Sweden, were flown to Cairo, according to Swedish officials and documents. Ahmed Agiza was convicted by Egypt`s Supreme Military Court of terrorism-related charges; Muhammad Zery was set free. Both say they were tortured while in Egyptian custody. Sweden has opened an investigation into the decision to allow them to be rendered.

A month later, in January 2002, a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V landed at Jakarta`s military airport. According to Indonesian officials, the plane carried away Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian traveling on a Pakistani passport and suspected of being an al Qaeda operative who had worked with shoe bomber suspect Richard C. Reid. Without a hearing, he was flown to Egypt. His status and whereabouts are unknown. The plane`s tail number was not noted, but the CIA is believed to have only one of the expensive jets.

Over the past year, the Gulfstream V`s flights have been tracked by plane spotters standing at the end of runways with high-powered binoculars and cameras to record the flights of military and private aircraft.

These hobbyists list their findings on specialized Web pages. According to them, since October 2001 the plane has landed in Islamabad; Karachi; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Dubai; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Baghdad; Kuwait City; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Rabat, Morocco. It has stopped frequently at Dulles International Airport, at Jordan`s military airport in Amman and at airports in Frankfurt, Germany; Glasglow, Scotland, and Larnaca, Cyprus.

Premier Executive Transport Services was incorporated in Delaware by the Prentice-Hall Corporation System Inc. on Jan. 10, 1994. On Jan. 23, 1996, Dean Plakias, a lawyer with Hill & Plakias in Dedham, filed incorporation papers with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts listing the company`s president as Bryan P. Dyess.

According to public documents, Premier Executive ordered a new Gulfstream V in 1998. It was delivered in November 1999 with tail number N581GA, and reregistered for unknown reasons on March 2000 with a new tail number, N379P. It began flights in June 2000, and changed the tail number again in December 2003.

Plakias did not return several telephone messages seeking comment. He told the Boston Globe recently that he simply filed the required paperwork. "I`m not at liberty to discuss the affairs of the client business, mainly for reasons I don`t know," he told the Globe. Asked whether the company exists, Plakias responded: "Millions of companies are set up in Massachusetts that are just paper companies."

A lawyer in Washington, whose name is listed on a 1996 IRS form on record at the Secretary of the Commonwealth`s office in Massachusetts -- and whose name is whited out on some copies of the forms -- hung up the phone last week when asked about the company.

Three weeks ago, on Dec. 1, the plane, complete with a new tail number, was transferred to a new owner, Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore., according to FAA records. Its registered agent in Portland, Scott Caplan, did not return phone calls.

Like the officers at Premier Executive, Bayard`s sole listed corporate officer, Leonard T. Bayard, has no residential or telephone history. Unlike Premier`s officers, Bayard`s name does not appear in any other public records.

Researchers Margot Williams and Julie Tate contributed to this report. Williams has since left The Washington Post.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Yes, you must pull out - but also pay for the damage

The US isn`t protecting or feeding Iraqis, it`s stoking violence and hardship
Naomi Klein
Monday December 27, 2004

Guardian
Colin Powell invoked it before the invasion, telling aides that if the US went into Iraq "you`re going to be owning this place". John Kerry pledged his allegiance to it during the first presidential debate, saying: "Now, if you break it, you made a mistake. It`s the wrong thing to do. But you own it."

It`s the so-called Pottery Barn rule: "You break it, you own it." Pottery Barn, a chain of stores that sells upmarket home furnishings in shopping malls across America, apparently has an in-store policy that if you shatter anything while shopping, you have to pay for it, because "you own it".

In US foreign policy, this little dictate has come to wield more influence than the Geneva conventions and the US army`s law of land warfare combined - except it turns out that the rule doesn`t even exist. "In the rare instance that something is broken in the store, it`s written off as a loss," an exasperated company spokesperson recently told a journalist.

Never mind that. The imaginary policy of a store selling $80 corkscrews continues to be the favoured blunt instrument with which to whack anyone who dares to suggest that the time has come to withdraw troops from Iraq: sure the war was wrong, the argument goes, but we can`t stop now - you break it, you own it.

Though not invoking the chain store by name, Nicholas Kristof laid out this argument in a recent New York Times column. "Our mistaken invasion has left millions of Iraqis desperately vulnerable, and it would be inhumane to abandon them now. If we stay in Iraq, there is still some hope that Iraqis will come to enjoy security and better lives, but if we pull out we will be condemning Iraqis to anarchy, terrorism and starvation, costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of children over the next decade."

Let`s start with the idea that the US is helping to provide security. On the contrary, the presence of US troops is provoking violence on a daily basis. The truth is that as long as the troops remain, the country`s entire security apparatus - occupation forces as well as Iraqi soldiers and police - will be exclusively dedicated to fending off resistance attacks, leaving a security vacuum when it comes to protecting regular Iraqis. If the troops pulled out, Iraqis would still face insecurity, but they would be able to devote their local security resources to regaining control over their cities and neighbourhoods.

As for preventing "anarchy", the US plan to bring elections to Iraq seems designed to spark a civil war - the civil war needed to justify an ongoing presence for US troops no matter who wins the elections. It was always clear that the Shia majority, which has been calling for immediate elections for more than a year, was never going to accept any delay in the election timetable. And it was equally clear that by destroying Falluja in the name of preparing the city for elections, much of the Sunni leadership would be forced to call for an election boycott.

When Kristof asserts that US forces should stay in Iraq to save hundreds of thousands of children from starvation, it`s hard to imagine what he has in mind. Hunger in Iraq is not merely the humanitarian fallout of a war - it is the direct result of the US decision to impose brutal "shock therapy" policies on a country that was already sickened and weakened by 12 years of sanctions. Paul Bremer`s first act on the job was to lay off close to 500,000 Iraqis, and his primary accomplishment - for which he has just been awarded the presidential medal of freedom - was to oversee a "reconstruction" process that systematically stole jobs from needy Iraqis and handed them to foreign firms, sending the unemployment rate soaring to 67%.

And the worst of the shocks are yet to come. On November 21, the group of industrialised countries known as the Paris Club finally unveiled its plan for Iraq`s unpayable debt. Rather than forgiving it outright, the Paris Club laid out a three-year plan to write off 80%, contingent on Iraq`s governments adhering to a strict International Monetary Fund austerity programme. According to early drafts, that programme includes "restructuring of state-owned enterprises" (read: privatisation), a plan that Iraq`s ministry of industry predicts will require laying off an additional 145,000 workers. In the name of "free-market reforms", the IMF also wants to eliminate the programme that provides each Iraqi family with a basket of food - the only barrier to starvation for millions of citizens. There is additional pressure to eliminate the food rations coming from the World Trade Organisation, which, at Washington`s urging, is considering accepting Iraq as a member - provided it adopts certain "reforms".

So let`s be absolutely clear: the US, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry of WTO and IMF conditions, followed by elections designed to transfer as little power to Iraqis as possible. This is what Argentinian writer Rodolfo Walsh, writing before his assassination in 1977 by the military junta, described as "planned misery". And the longer the US stays in Iraq, the more misery it will plan.

But if staying in Iraq is not the solution, neither are easy bumper-sticker calls to pull the troops out and spend the money on schools and hospitals at home. Yes, the troops must leave, but that can be only one plank of a credible and moral antiwar platform. What of Iraq`s schools and hospitals - the ones that were supposed to be fixed by Bechtel but never were? Too often, antiwar forces have shied away from speaking about what Americans owe Iraq. Rarely is the word "compensation" spoken, let alone the more loaded "reparations".

Antiwar forces have also failed to offer concrete support for the political demands coming out of Iraq. For instance, when the Iraqi national assembly condemned the Paris Club deal for forcing the Iraqi people to pay Saddam`s "odious" debts and robbing them of their economic sovereignty, the antiwar movement was virtually silent, save the dogged but undersupported Jubilee Iraq. And while US soldiers aren`t protecting Iraqis from starvation, the food rations certainly are - so why isn`t safeguarding this desperately needed programme one of our central demands?

The failure to develop a credible platform beyond "troops out" may be one reason the antiwar movement remains stalled, even as opposition to the war deepens. Because the Pottery Barn rulers do have a point: breaking a country should have consequences for the breakers. Owning the broken country should not be one of them, but how about paying for the repairs?

A version of this column was first published in The Nation

www.thenation.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Monday, December 27, 2004

Tsunami a Foretaste of Global Warming

The horror of thirty-foot waves caroming across the Indian ocean at 500 miles an hour (the speed of a commercial jet liner!) and then crashing into beaches and shorelines for all the world like liquid Godzilla, crushing sunbathers and carrying hapless villagers off deep into the sea, can scarcely be guessed at for those of us who only see a bit of rubble and ankle-deep flooding, in the aftermath, on the cable television news feeds. On Sunday at least 12,500 to 14,000 lives were abruptly snuffed out in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere in the path of the enormous waves, called tsunami. It was caused by a massive earthquake in the Pacific off Indonesia, of nearly 9 on the 10-point Richter scale--the fourth largest measured in the past century. On the east coast of India, some 500,000 persons were left without electricity or sewerage, surrounded by dead animals and human corpses, some of the latter in trees or atop surviving houses.

The tsunami was caused by an earthquake and was unrelated to climate change. But everyone should realize that global warming contributes to extreme weather events, causing more hurricanes and typhoons and stronger ones. , as Brian McIver of the Daily Record points out: "A less dramatic - but equally effective - cause of giant wave destruction could be triggered by global warming."

Even in the year 2004 extreme weather events caused on the order of $100 billion in damage-- an unprecedentedly high figure and one due to rise.

Giant waves are only one problem with global warming.


A recent documentary on the effects of global warming in Maryland showed:


"According to CCAN, global warming may ultimately damage coastal property, destroy freshwater aquifers and eliminate entire towns and islands. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the altered precipitation patterns associated with climate change could reduce Maryland`s major agricultural crops by 24 to 42 percent. Other negative changes may include a decline in Chesapeake Bay crab and fish harvests, and increases in deaths from urban heat stress and mosquito-borne diseases, according to CCAN."



As Naomi Oreskes pointed out in the Washington Post on Saturday, the scientific literature for the past decade has expressed no doubts about the reality of global warming or of human responsibility for some large portion of it. The only doubts that are raised are in the mass media, for ulterior motives, by non-scientists. Moving to cleaner energy as soon as possible is the only way to prevent future tsunamis that will hit closer to home for Americans.

posted by Juan @ 12/27/2004 06:40:05 AM

Suicide Bomber Kills 9, Wounds 39 Outside Home of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim

A carbomber detonated his payload Monday morning outside the home in Baghdad of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, killing at least 9 persons and wounding 39. Al-Hakim`s mansion, taken over from former senior Baath official Tariq Aziz, is in the Jadiriyah quarter, and serves as party headquarters for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). This party, which was based in Tehran 1982-2003, has joined the group slate, the United Iraqi Alliance, put together under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and al-Hakim places high on the list. This attempt to assassinate al-Hakim seems likely the work of Baathists determined to derail the elections scheduled for January 30.

On August 29, 2003, a huge car bomb in Najaf killed al-Hakim`s older brother, Muhammad Baqir, who had headed SCIRI since 1984. I said at that time that I thought the likeliest perpetrators were Baathists. The al-Hakims directed what the Baath government would have seen as terrorist actions against the regime for nearly two decades from a hostile country, and the Baath is damned if it is going to watch an al-Hakim now become prime minister of the country.

Guerrillas set off another bomb in the Shiite shrine city of Karbala southwest of Baghdad, killing a family of 7 when it destroyed their home.

On Sunday, some 14 Iraqis had been killed in assassinations and bombings around the country.

Guerrillas bombed another pipeline on Sunday, running between Kirkuk and Baiji. The northern pipelines to Turkey have been closed for weeks. They usually pump about 200,000 barrels of petroleum a day.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat: In Baqubah, Iraqi National Guards prevented hundreds of students from holding a peaceful demonstration. Eyewitnesses say they waded into the students and beat them. The Temporary Administrative Law guarantees Iraqis freedom of assembly, but many of its provisions have been suspended by the caretaker Allawi government.

In other news, Iraq`s highest-ranking general rejected on Sunday President Bush`s allegations that Iraqi armed forces deserted from Fallujah. He did admit that some refused to report for duty in the first place. (This latter is not cowardice by the way; many Iraqi soldiers say they dislike the idea of fighting other Iraqis on behalf of the US).

It also seems clear that the suicide bomber that attacked the cafeteria at the US military base near Mosul on Tuesday was a radical fundamentalist who disguised himself in an Iraq National Guard uniform. Some bloggers had been alleging that the incident showed that the US had been right to dissolve the Iraqi army. But the facts belie this claim. Had the army not been dissolved, so many ex-soldiers would not have joined the insurgency out of despair, anger or lack of funds. And the Iraqi army could have been deployed against the Army of Ansar al-Sunnah, whom they then hated.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that the Bush administration has been exploring with Iraqi figures like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the election commission the possibility of a set-aside for Sunni Arabs in the parliament to be elected on January 30. The American overtures have met substantial resistance, but not complete rejection, writes Steven Weisman.

Of course, I heartily endorse this initiative, and had proposed it myself in early December.


posted by Juan @ 12/27/2004 06:35:19 AM

How to Save the Iraqi Elections (Reprint Edition)

The following piece appeared in the Detroit News in early December:


Sunday, December 5, 2004

Bush policies set off skirmish on fate of Iraqi elections

Upcoming voting is headed toward train wreck unless U.S. sets aside legislative seats for Sunnis

By Juan Cole / Special to The Detroit News


The extended train wreck that has been American-dominated Iraq is wending its way toward a decisive intersection, the national elections scheduled for Jan. 30. The Bush administration strategy has been to attack and marginalize political forces that protest the American presence in the country, and to set the elections up on a national basis so as to exclude extremes.

But these two strategies have now backfired, creating a perfect storm of political peril. Security is so bad that voters standing in line at polling stations will likely take mortar or grenade fire, and elections may simply not be practical.

Even if voters navigate those dangers, another shoal lurks beneath their bow. Most of the Sunni Arabs deeply resent the U.S. military presence and reacted with outrage to the assault on Fallujah and the shooting by a Marine of a wounded guerrilla in a mosque. They can now take revenge on Bush by staying home on Election Day.

If the resulting parliament under-represents the Sunnis, the new government will lack legitimacy. The dangers were recognized by 15 small Sunni Arab parties, which recently argued that the elections must be postponed so they could have time to win over their constituents. They are said to have been joined in the plea by the two large Kurdish parties, though some other reports contested this allegation.

The United States and the interim government of Prime Minister Allawi rejected this plea for a postponement, as did over 40 Shiite parties and the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

It is even worse. The new parliament will double as a constitutional convention.

The members of parliament will have to make hard decisions about the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by both Kurds and Arabs, and about the place of religious law in the new state.

To exclude Sunni Arabs from such discussions is a recipe for civil war.

Most Sunni Arabs had been members of or supporters of the Baath Party. The Bush administration fired thousands of Baathists from their jobs, dissolved the Baath army and gave the Sunni Arabs the impression that the Americans intended aggressively to marginalize them. These moves helped stoke the persistent guerrilla war of the past 18 months.

The major post-Baath Sunni parties are religious, and include the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Islamic Party. The popular AMS is urging a boycott of the elections.

Assuming the security problems do not prove fatal to the elections, they can now be salvaged politically only in one way. The interim government, which has already declared martial law, must pass a decree ordering a onetime set-aside of a generous 25 percent of seats for predominantly Sunni Muslim parties.

This sort of quota is regrettable, but it is the only solution to the crisis. It should not form a precedent, but rather should be done as an emergency measure just this once. Once the parliament meets to craft a constitution, it is important that it create an upper house that somehow over-represents the Sunni Arabs and Kurds, so as to prevent a tyranny of the Shiite majority.

The American-designed government, with a one-chamber legislature, ensures permanent Shiite dominance, likely by religious parties, which contains the seeds of future disaster for Iraq.

The Bush administration has committed a series of epochal blunders in Iraq.

Taking the risk that the Sunni Arabs will boycott the Jan. 30 elections, and failing to prepare for the possibility, would be another huge error.

-----------
Juan Cole teaches history at the University of Michigan and is the author of "Sacred Space and Holy War" (IB Tauris, 2002).

posted by Juan @ 12/27/2004 06:30:34 AM

IraqTheModel

On December 12, just before I went off to Japan on a trip, I drew attention to a web log entry by Joseph Mailander at the Martini Republic, which raised questions about the bona fides of a web site run by three Iraqi brothers called IraqTheModel. Mailander had come to be suspicious of the site for various reasons, some of them now known to be wrong. I had been contacted by Mr. Mailander with some of these suspicions a few days previously, and had responded then that I thought some of them were overdrawn. In particular, I demurred from his attempt to link the site to the CIA. I enclose the relevant comments from that message below.

In my own posting on this issue, I did not actively make any allegations against IraqTheModel myself at all. In my own mind, I was merely drawing attention to Mailander`s entry on an informal, "Isn`t this interesting?" basis. In particular, I thought that the Martini Republic posting raised some very interesting issues (that was what I meant about it being very important), most notably about the possibility that the blogging world was open to some sorts of manipulation. Since bloggers often pride themselves in being more honest than the corporate media, Mailander had started me wondering whether there weren`t ways to pump up a site artificially. Coincidentally, Kevin Drum had just published an expose of the way in which CBS News had used a lobbyist on the issue for a "man in the street" interview on privatizing social security.

The only substantive point I made with regard to IraqTheModel myself was that the authors appeared to me not very representative of Iraqi public opinion. That is all right, of course. They are putting forward their own ideas. It is just that if we want to really understand contemporary Iraq, we should understand that few of their co-citizens think as they do.

And then I went abroad, and all hell broke loose in cyberspace, as a number of bloggers attacked my posting (well, OK, they attacked me; I think the phrase "pond scum" was deployed.) It turned out that Mailander`s identification of the ITM web site server as being in Abilene, TX, was innocent and typical of blogspot users.

I was under the gun preparing my lectures, and then was on a whirlwind trip and often did not have good internet access (I blogged only telegraphically for most of the past couple weeks), and it has taken me this amount of time to get back and catch up on the controversy. If I had just been at home in my normal routine I could have responded immediately and no doubt that would have been better. In cyberspace time I am now probably talking about ancient history.

In retrospect, of course, I should have been clearer about my lack of active endorsement for Mr. Mailander`s specific allegations, even as I made clear that what interested me was the issue of how the blogging world might be affected by political "marketing." I don`t doubt Mailander`s good faith, but obviously there were elementary errors in his initial entry. And, if I could take it back, I wouldn`t have linked at all. This is a matter in some ways of not knowing my own strength. Blogging is deceptively informal, sort of like a conversation rather than like formal writing. So it is natural to cross-link among friends and say, `Hey, check this out.` But my weblog has come to be so widely read that this degree of informality is now a luxury I obviously cannot afford, and I will try to be more careful.

The other thing to say, though, is that errors come with this territory. You can`t be out here posting daily and not commit some errors from time to time. When kind readers correct them, I try to put the corrections in brackets, even ex post facto. Indeed, errors are the human condition. Many of the more vitriolic critics of Informed Comment alleged 2 years ago that Iraq was 2-5 years away from having a nuclear bomb, that Iraq was floating in biological and chemical weapons, that Saddam was in bed with al-Qaeda, that Iraqis would universally greet US troops with garlands and sweets, that the Iraq war and aftermath would be a "cakewalk," that the road to peace in Palestine/Israel went through Baghdad, etc., etc. The commentators who made these allegations want to be held harmless from these enormous and highly consequential errors that have gotten large numbers of people killed. But I kept getting these annoying messages that my merely cross-linking to a site had endangered my "credibility." One of the more vehement attacks on my site was written by someone who writes for Tech Central Station, which is in turn published by the Republican lobbying firm, DCI Group. And the first time Jeff Jarvis mentioned me it was to complain in summer of 2003 that I seemed to be seeking out bad news on Iraq-- when in fact, I was just ahead of the curve in seeing the growing guerrilla war; he has never apologized.

It is now being alleged in the rightwing press (which really is a paid-for manipulation of public opinion) that I said that the Ali brothers were connected to the CIA. I never said any such thing. My phrase "certain quarters" referred to, at most, the Republican Party or organizations associated with it. As the email below should make clear, I never thought that charge plausible. Some have suggested that the controversy endangers the brothers` lives. But if meeting with high US officials in Washington and blogging about it does not, nothing would.

(Personally, by the way, I cut the CIA a lot of slack in the post-9/11 world; I don`t like the dirty tricks the Company has sometimes played, but we do need a CIA to fight al-Qaeda, which does want to destroy us. I know some analysts read this site, and I am honored if they feel they learn anything here, and hope it helps the country. So I`m just not the sort of person that would use the CIA rhetorically in a negative fashion.)

So, anyway, I offer this posting as a clarification and also, as a retraction of the comment about the Abilene ISP and any unfounded implication of USG support for the IraqTheModel site. And I apologize to the Ali brothers for the error, and want to stress that I bear them no ill will. I am sorry I was abroad and unable to respond in detail before now.




From: Cole, Juan
Sent: Fri 12/10/2004 4:56 PM
To: Joseph Mailander
Subject: RE: IraqTheModel and Abiline Texas


Dear Joseph:

. . . The CIA ISP is hilarious, but the explanation is certainly correct. A real CIA operation would go out of its way to avoid using that acronym.

The question of how they ended up with an Abilene ISP is a good one

Another issue is artificial visibility. Is the US press being directed to the Iraqi bloggers who are actually popular in the blogosphere, who object to US policy? The US government is one hell of a press agent . . .

cheers Juan


posted by Juan @ [url12/27/2004 06:01:24 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/iraqthemodel-on-december-12-just.html[/url]

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Ich glaube Rummys Auspruch wird der Spruch des Jahres.
`Du gehst mit dem Verteidigungsminister in den Krieg, den du hast, und nicht mit dem, den du haben willst oder dir wünscht zu haben.`
Oder ging es in dem ursprünglichen Spruch um das Material?

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Evolution Shares a Desk With `Intelligent Design`

By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 26, 2004; Page A01

DOVER, Pa. -- "God or Darwin?"

Lark Myers, a blond, 45-year-old gift shop owner, frames the question and answers it. "I definitely would prefer to believe that God created me than that I`m 50th cousin to a silverback ape," she said. "What`s wrong with wanting our children to hear about all the holes in the theory of evolution?"

Charles Darwin, squeeze over. The school board in this small town in central Pennsylvania has voted to make the theory of evolution share a seat with another theory: God probably designed us.

If it survives a legal test, this school district of about 2,800 students could become the first in the nation to require that high school science teachers at least mention the "intelligent design" theory. This theory holds that human biology and evolution are so complex as to require the creative hand of an intelligent force.

"The school board has taken the measured step of making students aware that there are other viewpoints on the evolution of species," said Richard Thompson, of the Thomas More Law Center, which represents the board and describes its overall mission as defending "the religious freedom of Christians."

Board members have been less guarded, and their comments go well beyond intelligent design theory. William Buckingham, the board`s curriculum chairman, explained at a meeting last June that Jesus died on the cross and "someone has to take a stand" for him. Other board members say they believe that God created Earth and mankind sometime in the past ten thousand years or so.

"If the Bible is right, God created us," said John Rowand, an Assemblies of God pastor and a newly appointed school board member. "If God did it, it`s history and it`s also science."

This strikes some parents and teachers, not to mention most evolutionary biologists, as loopy science. Eleven parents have joined the American Civil Liberties Union and filed suit in federal court in Harrisburg seeking to block mention of intelligent design in high school biology, arguing it is religious belief dressed in the cloth of science.

"It`s not science; it`s a theocratic idea," Bryan Rehm, a former science teacher in Dover and a father of four. "We don`t have enough time for science in the classroom as it is -- this is just inappropriate."

This is a battle fought in many corners of the nation. In Charles County, school board members recently suggested discarding biology textbooks "biased towards evolution." In Cobb County, in suburban Atlanta, the local school board ordered that stickers be placed inside the front cover of science textbooks stating: "Evolution is a theory, not a fact." State education boards in Ohio and Kansas have wrestled with this issue, as well.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to settle this question, ruling that Louisiana could not make creationism a part of the science curriculum. The state, Justice William J. Brennan wrote, cannot "restructure the science curriculum to conform with a particular religious viewpoint." (Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, arguing that creationism could be "valuable scientific data that has been censored from the classrooms by an embarrassed scientific establishment.")

Of late, conservative school boards have launched a counteroffensive, often marching under the banner of intelligent design. This theory has lingered on the margins of mainstream scientific discourse with just enough intellectual heft to force its way into some discussions of evolutionary theory.

Essentially intelligent design posits that the human cell, among other organisms, is too finely tuned to have developed by chance. "The human cell is irreducibly complex -- what we find in the cell is stuff that looks strongly like it was designed by an intelligence," said Michael J. Behe, a biology professor at Lehigh University and leading advocate of intelligent design.

Behe acknowledges this theory might lead one to postulate the existence of a supernatural force, such as God. But he said this is unknown and rejects those who would portray him as a creationist. "Our starting point is from science, not from Scripture," Behe said.

Few biologists buy that. There is, they say, a central evolutionary theory embraced by mainstream scientists worldwide: That life on Earth has evolved over billions of years and in fits and starts from one-celled organisms to modern humans. That this theory is pockmarked with unexplained gaps, and subject to debate, is how science is crafted.

"People have an impatience about science," said Kenneth R. Miller, a Brown University biologist and author of the biology textbook used in Dover. "They think it`s this practical process that explains how everything works, but that`s the least interesting part.

"We understand a lot of the mechanisms of evolution but it`s what we don`t understand that makes it exciting."

Even today many residents are not sure how Dover, a former farm hamlet become a bedroom community for York and Harrisburg, came to occupy the ramparts in a century-long war over Darwin`s theories.

In the 18th century, an erudite French shopkeeper settled in this valley and gave the name Voltaire to his village. German and English settlers, a local history notes, soon discovered that Voltaire was "a French atheist" and "a disbeliever in revealed theology" and changed the town`s name.

Dover`s modern politics are resolutely Republican -- President Bush polled 65 percent of the vote here -- and its cultural values are Christian, with an evangelical tinge. To drive its rolling back roads is to count dozens of churches, from Lutheran to United Church of Christ, Baptist, Pentecostal and Assemblies of God.

Many here speak of a personal relationship with Christ and of their antipathy to evolutionary theory (A Gallup poll found that 35 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution). Steve Farrell, a friendly man and owner of a landscaping business, talked of Darwin and God in the Giant shopping center parking lot.

"We are teaching our children a theory that most of us don`t believe in." He shook his head. "I don`t think God creates everything on a day-to-day basis, like the color of the sky. But I do believe that he created Adam and Eve -- instantly."

Back in the town center, Norma Botterbusch talks in her jewelry store, which has been a fixture here for 40 years. "We are a very lenient town," she said. "But why should a minority get to file a lawsuit and dictate school policy? Most of our kids already know who created them."

The evolution revolution in Dover began as a dispute about property taxes. The previous school board spent too much money, and a conservative group defeated them. Last June, board member Buckingham criticized a new biology textbook as "laced with Darwinism." He added, according to the ACLU`s lawsuit, that "our country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such."

Neither Buckingham nor the board president nor the school superintendent responded to requests for interviews.

In October, the Dover school board passed this motion: "Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin`s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of Life is not taught."

Several board members resigned in protest. When the remaining board members chose replacements, they subjected certain candidates to withering questions. "I was asked if I was a liberal or conservative, and if I was a child abuser," recalled Rehm, who was known as an outspoken opponent of intelligent design.

In the end, the York Daily Record reported that the board picked a fundamentalist preacher, a home-schooler who does not send his kids to public school for religious reasons, and two more who in effect pledged to support the board.

Dover`s evolution policy has left many teachers deeply uncomfortable. One science teacher noted that he avoids talking about the origins of life. "We don`t do the monkeys-to-man controversy," he said. "It`s just not worth the trouble."

The Discovery Institute in Seattle, which is regarded as a leader in intelligent design theory, also opposes the Dover school board`s policy in part because it seems to take three steps into old-fashioned creationism. "This theory needs to be debated in the scientific sphere," said Paul West, a senior fellow. "It`s much too soon to require anyone to teach it in high school."

Miller, the Brown University biologist and textbook author, hopes the day that it is taught in high school never arrives. "It`s very clear that intelligent design has become a stalking-horse," Miller said. "If these school boards had their druthers, they would teach Noah`s flood and the 6,000-year-old design of Earth.

"My fear is that they are making real headway in the popular imagination."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Dahr Jamail`s Iraq Dispatches

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000161.…

December 26, 2004
Living in Garbage

The dump is a dusty wasteland. Heaps of Baghdad’s rotting wastes are strewn about several square miles of the battered capital city. Engaged in their futile battle to remove the endless amounts of garbage from streets, blue garbage trucks rumble through the stinky dump, adding their loads of filth.

32 year-old Hattim lives in this wasteland with his family.
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“We are living in a dump. We are living a bad life. We have children, and no school. We have nothing. We are asking the new government to take small care of us. Not big things, just small things. We are transporting water with animals, with donkeys, and it’s not clean water. It’s not clean water at all and we have a lot of diseases.”

Hattim’s family, along with 35 other people, live in houses they’ve built out of old cans of cooking oil. Dried mud is packed between them to keep out the wind and dust.

Inside their makeshift home flies cover everything. A 10 day old baby sleeps nestled in dirty blankets as flies buzz over her tiny head.

Hattim continues, “We lived in the marshes and when Saddam dried the marshes he took our farms and everything and made military camps there. And now, we are living in a dump. The human, which is this holy creature, you can’t imagine living in a dump. Even God doesn’t accept that.”

Flies cover the walls, the ceiling, and buzz incessantly around the family of 6. Hattim’s 40 year-old sister-in-law, Rana, lives in another home made of cans and mud. She enters Hattim’s to ask for some bread.

She holds her hands up towards the flies and says, “The flies are always with us. We have some animals and they live on things in the dump. We have no electricity and no water. Nobody is helping us and we don’t have salaries. Our parents had a farm and they lived in the south. But when they cut the water from the marshes, we started our problems.”
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Outside Hattim collects small wood scraps and pieces of plastic from the refuse in order to make a small fire to warm his home. Two little girls, his nieces with dirt caked on their faces, play with an old piece of tire, throwing it back and forth.

He looks up at them playing before lamenting over his situation.

“My brother has many kids. Some are five and six years old. I don’t have any documents for anything and don’t even have a food ration card. I have an Iraqi identification, which is of course worth nothing.”

One of his relatives, despite the horrible living situation, is happy to have his photo taken while Hattim pauses his discussion.

Hattim says the interim government promised great assistance for his family three months ago.

“They said wait three months and we’ll send you to Mars,” he says to underscore the big promises made by the interim government to help the poor in Baghdad, “No, we don’t want to go to Mars, we just want a place on this earth.”

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at December 26, 2004 12:19 PM

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Neo-fascism in America

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article7553.htm

Some time ago, The Herald newspaper, Glasgow, Scotland, published a letter in which I criticised the war in Iraq and suggested that the neo-cons in the US were a ruling neo-fascist elite. A trail of letters followed with one correspondent stating that I was making a serious error labeling them neo-fascist. He called them “tragically over-zealous apostles of liberal democracy.” Following the lively Herald debate, I was invited by The Surface to contribute this article.

Jim Macgregor

My interest in America began on the day after my 16th birthday; November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was driven along Deeley Plaza to his death. Within days I watched Lee Harvey Oswald being led out to his execution before the assembled media, and I was completely hooked on American politics. Four decades, thousands of books, and a million conspiracy theories later, we still don’t know the truth about those astonishing events in Dallas. Like the all-too-many assassinations played out in front of the rolling cameras, American politics can be difficult to comprehend.

My own comprehension of American politics was helped enormously by a profound little essay, [urlEscaping the Matrix,]http://cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/WE/jun00Matrix.shtml[/url] written by American, Richard K. Moore. [1] Moore, parallels the political situation in America with the Wachowski brothers’ film, The Matrix: “The defining dramatic moment in the film occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises ‘the truth and nothing more.’ Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality - something utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turned out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods. In the Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes.”

In Moore’s Matrix metaphor, doses of ‘red pill’ allow us to comprehend the true reality of what is happening as opposed to an illusion deliberately created by the wealthy, ruling elite. As Morph tells Neo, “The Matrix is the world that was pulled down over your eyes to hide you from the truth… As long as the Matrix exists, humanity cannot be free.” Television and radio stations, news channels and most newspapers are owned by the ruling, wealthy elite who control the matrix. They dispense “blue pills” in the form of matrix propaganda, deliberately formulated to conceal the truth. While there are honourable journalistic exceptions, generally we have to look elsewhere for the ‘red pill’. Thankfully, it is becoming more readily available and less difficult to find. In this article I will quote from, and refer to, numerous ‘red pill’ articles and books.

It has personally taken many years of slow awakening from the matrix narcolepsy for me to find an inverted reality where what I thought was the truth was a dream, and what I have awakened to is the reality of a true nightmare. Too many people believe fascism is only about goose-stepping, jack-booted Nazis. Too many people believe that American democracy is so strong that fascists could never take control of America. If you are sympathetic to those views, I invite you to consider the possibility that you are mistaken - invite you to sample a small dose of ‘red pill’.

My first dose of ‘red pill’ came in the early 1970s when I returned from voluntary service in Central Africa. I had worked alongside American Peace Corps volunteers and would sit with them under the beautiful African night sky, discussing that devastated continent and the reasons for the starvation and death that surrounded us there. On my returned from Malawi, I discovered that a number of those supposedly dedicated Peace Corp volunteers were US intelligence agency personnel. What they were doing in Africa was not, in actual reality, delivering American aid or goodwill, but fermenting huge trouble with their clandestine activities. I later read the ‘red pill’ book, Killing Hope, [2] about US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII and realised it was describing American activities which exhibited the very worst elements of fascism.

Perhaps the only one way to understand fascism in America today is to trace its historical development there over the last century. “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. But if we rise up to meet it head-on, then history need not be re-lived. When we as a people fail, or worse yet, refuse to stand up to the injustice of historical past, then that injustice becomes an ever-present constant in our daily lives.” - Cia Bannar, film maker and human rights activist.

According to the matrix, powerful men of wealth who controlled America in colonial days, were replaced after the revolution by genuinely democratic representatives of the people. Every American school-child is taught that the fifty five “Founding Fathers” prepared a solid foundation of democracy upon which the Great Republic was built, and that Abraham Lincoln’s stirring Gettysburg address on “government of the people, by the people, for the people” meant what it said.

‘Red pill’ reality is very different, however as Richard K. Moore writes [3]: “The legislatures, unfortunately, mostly appointed their delegates [Founding Fathers] from among their local wealthy elite. The delegates then ensconced themselves in secret session and proceeded to betray the charter under which they had been assembled. They discarded the Articles, and began debating and drafting a wholly new document, one that transferred sovereignty to a relatively strong central government. The delegates reneged on the States that had sent them, and took it upon themselves to speak directly for “We the People”. Thus begins the preamble to their Constitution. In effect they accomplished a coup d’etat. They managed to design a system that would enable existing elites to continue to run the affairs of the new nation, as they had before under the Crown, under a Constitution that for all the world seems to embody sound democratic principles. The system was consciously designed to facilitate elite rule and that is how it has functioned ever since.”

It was not until 1850 that most white adult males could vote; a time when the ideal of the “poor boy made good” was coming to be seen as the American dream. One such dreamer was John D. Rockefeller, born in the US in 1839, the son of a quack conman who sold expensive “miracle cures” (Seneca oil) to people with cancer. Rockefeller inherited his father’s business ethics and became a war profiteer during the Civil War. While hundreds of thousands were dying for their cause, he amassed wealth by selling liquor at vast profit to Federal troops. With the proceeds Rockefeller bought into small oil concerns and by 1870, had enough money to set up the Standard Oil Company.

Over the next thirty years, Rockefeller also bought up railroads and banks and acquired a near monopoly of the US petroleum industry. By the turn of the century, he was counted among the richest men in the world. He financed numerous fine churches and institutions, including the University of Chicago. Matrix perception was of an extremely generous, Christian benefactor and philanthropist, but actual ‘red pill’ reality was very different. Journalist Ida Tarbell wrote that Rockefeller was involved in many illegal activities and in her book, The History of The Standard Oil Company, published in 1904, [4] exposed how big corporations were controlling the press and government. “Its power [Standard Oil] in state and federal government, in the press, in the college, in the pulpit, is generally recognized.”

In the early 20th century, President George W. Bush’s great grandfather, Samuel Bush, owned a steel factory producing rail-car parts. His son, Prescot Bush, attended the prestigious Yale University where in his final year in 1917, he was inducted into the secret society known as “The Order of Skull and Bones”. To this day a mere fifteen young men of “good birth” are pre-selected each year to Skull and Bones from the entire 11, 250 student population of Yale. Rockefellers were also members of Skull and Bones.

Skull and Bones has its roots in the teachings of German philosopher, George Hegel. The Nazis loved Hegel’s philosophy and Hitler used it, along with Nietzsche and others, to begin creating his “New World Order.” In the US in the 1920s, Hegelian philosophy was supported by John D. Rockefeller, who funded the notorious Eugenics Records Office, with its idea of mass sterilisation of blacks and other “inferiors” as a means of social control.

Prescot Bush was a member of Skull and Bones with his friend, Roland “Bunny” Harriman, son of the massively wealthy Harriman family. This Harriman - Bush connection is discussed in George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, [5] “The Harrimans would become the sponsors of the Bushes, to lift them onto the stage of world history.”

Several years after leaving Yale, Prescot Bush was made director of Harriman’s bank; Brown Brothers Harriman. It was the largest private investment bank in the world (the bank’s website today boasts reserves of almost $3 billion). In the early 20th century, John D. Rockefeller and his friends, including Harriman, had taken control of American politics and politicians. Using their wealth from banking, oil, railroads and weapons manufacture, Rockefeller and Harriman had politicians in their pocket. They placed individuals such as Samuel Bush in senior government positions, enabling the siphoning off of huge amounts of federal funds.

With World War 1 raging in Europe, large profits were there for the taking. Sam Bush, the rail-car parts manufacturer, with no relevant experience whatsoever in weapons procurement, was made chief of ordnance for the War Industries Board. Bush was handed government control of small arms and ammunition purchasing and liaised with big armaments firms to supply the war effort. Rockefeller owned the Remington Arms Company and received huge government orders from Bush. Remington supplied over half of the ammunition and 69% of the rifles used by the US in World War 1. Tarpley and Chaitkan [5]write: “The US and British arms companies owned by these international financiers, poured out weapons abroad in deals not subject to the scrutiny of any electorate back home. The same gentlemen later supplied weapons and money to Hitler’s Nazis.”

In 1921, the elite founded the American branch of the Council on Foreign Relations - CFR - an organisation which, to this day, controls the world economy and most of its politics. According to its website, CFR is “A non-partisan center dedicated to a better understanding of the world and the foreign policy choices facing the US and other governments.” In ‘red pill’ reality it is a front for the elite to use their wealth to subvert nation states. In the 1930s they invested in German corporations which began building Hitler’s war machine. Walter Lipmann, a young man on President Woodrow Wilson’s team was charged with running the CFR. Lipmann, a man of extreme views, spoke of “the rascal multitude” of the people as “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a herd which has to be controlled by an intellectual specialist class.”

President Wilson also appointed John Edgar Hoover as Assistant Attorney General. Hoover was another man with extreme views and instigated the war on the “red scare” where espionage and sedition acts were used to launch a campaign against radicals and any left wing organizations. Thousands of innocent citizens were arrested and many forcibly shipped to Russia. J. Edgar Hoover was later appointed Director of the national police organization the FBI, and served as such from 1924 until his death in 1972. The US newspaper industry was controlled by the elite and Hoover ensured that the newly emerging radio stations would voice no opinion critical of the government - Hoover controlled the issue of broadcasting licences.

In 1926, Prescot Bush was made vice president of Harriman’s Union Banking Corporation of New York. It was becoming a Bush family affair - President of the bank was Bert Walker (George W. Bush’s maternal great-grandfather). Union Banking had been set up by Harriman in partnership with the immensely wealthy Thyssen family of Germany. Funds were transferred back and forth to Germany through a Thyssen subsidiary bank in Holland. Fritz Thyssen was the prime sponsor of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement.

“Hitler… who promised a “New World Order”… had the backing of banks, industrialists, and transnational corporations, including those controlled or directed by America’s leading families, and the father of George H. W. Bush.” R. Joseph, America Betrayed [6].

Tapley and Chaitkan write [5], “In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the USA. The Harriman International Co was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States. This pact had been negotiated in Berlin between Hitler’s economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht, and John Foster Dulles, international attorney for dozens of Nazi enterprises.”

John Foster Dulles and his brother, Alen Dulles, were the lawyers looking after Bush family fortunes and investments in Nazi Germany. John Dulles would later become the US Secretary of State and the great power in the Republican Party of the 1950s. Allen Dulles would become head of the CIA.

Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. built large oil refineries in Germany for the Nazis and continued to supply them during the Second World War. In October 1942 the Bush banking operations in New York were investigated by the US government under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The capital trading stock of the Union banking Corporation, owned by Prescot Bush, Bunny Harriman and three German Nazi executives, was seized.

A number of prominent and wealthy Americans, including the Bush and Rockefeller families, helped support and build the fascist regimes of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler, with nearly 70 percent of the money that flooded into Germany during the 1930s coming from investors in the US. Henry Ford was building cars and trucks in his German factories for Hitler’s war effort, while simultaneously making huge fortunes at home in America. Hitler awarded Ford the German Grand Cross for his efforts. IBM was similarly involved.

In the inter-war years the Kennedy clan, another of America’s rich elite families, was making huge fortunes on the stock market and through bootlegging. Joseph Kennedy, multi-millionaire father of president to be, John F. Kennedy, was a friend of President Roosevelt and made large contributions to his election funds. Roosevelt appointed Kennedy Ambassador to Britain in early 1938 and while there, he befriended Viscountess Nancy Astor, the Nazi supporter. As fiercely anti-communist as they were anti-Semitic, Astor and Kennedy, like so many of their contemporaries, looked upon Hitler as a possible solution to both these “world problems.”

A small cabal of immensely wealthy families, friends and golf acquaintances who had either financed and armed Hitler or otherwise supported his rise to power, would go on to dictate almost every facet of American politics and global economics in the second half of the 20th century.

In 1951, Prescot Bush reclaimed Union Bank from the US Alien Property Custodian and went off to the Senate as the Republican for Connecticut. (He was re-elected in 1956 and again in 1963.) In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower, yet another old friend and favourite golf partner of Prescot Bush, became President and filled his government with Rockefeller men. His first Secretary of State was John Foster Dulles, the Bush family lawyer from the Nazi days. Brother, Allen Dulles, who had legally represented the Nazi Thyssen bank in Holland, was appointed US Intelligence chief in post war Germany. Back in 1937, Dulles had been hired by Prescot Bush to “cloak” his Union Bank accounts. Effectively, any information in post-war Germany regarding Bush and American complicity with the Nazis was now silenced.

Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon, was groomed for Presidency from early days by the elite. In 1950 Nixon chaired the House Un-American activities committee investigating “The Communist threat” in America and with great relish re-commenced the “red scare” witch hunt of earlier years. This witch hunt, where thousands of decent, honest citizens were hounded unmercifully, was enthusiastically continued by Senator Joe McCarthy.

In the election following Eisenhower’s two terms, Joe Kennedy’s son, John F. Kennedy, defeated Richard Nixon. Kennedy immediately drafted Rockefeller men in to his administration. Dean Rusk, head of the Rockefeller Foundation, was installed as Secretary of State. His vice president, Lyndon Johnson, was a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover.

Kennedy seriously upset plans the elite had to “neutralize” President Castro of Cuba. The elite blamed Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs disaster and told him to “muster his courage” for both a second attempt at invading Cuba, and an escalation in Vietnam. Kennedy appeared reluctant on both counts and fired Allen Dulles director of the CIA and his CIA deputy, Charles Cabell. Cabell’s brother, coincidentally, was mayor of Dallas in 1963 when Kennedy was shot. One commentator wrote, “Kennedy was beginning to act like a man who thought he was President of the United States.” Lyndon Johnson was sworn in immediately after Kennedy’s assassination and, incredible as it now seems, drafted the sacked Allen Dulles onto the controversial Warren Commission to “investigate” Kennedy’s assassination.

Johnson served as President until 1969, when Richard Nixon was installed. (JFK`s brother, Bobby Kennedy, who had a good chance of taking the Presidency in ‘69, was also assassinated.)

Five years later, in 1974, Richard Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign following trumped up charges allegedly organised by Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller, Governor of New York. (Rockefeller had been “elected” Governor in 1958 and re-elected in ‘62, ‘66 and ‘70. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican Presidential nomination in 1960, ‘64 and ‘68.) Nelson Rockefeller’s ego was straining the elite’s most precious asset of anonymity to its limit. He believed the Presidency should be his and, despite being constantly advised otherwise, made every attempt to get it. Nixon, under pressure to nominate him as his Vice President, refused and chose Gerry Ford instead.

Prescot Bush’s son, George W. H. Bush, a Yale Skull and Bones member like his father, was an insider and member of the Nixon administration. Bush, who had his own off-shore oil company in the Gulf of Mexico, was made director of the CIA.

Nixon resigned the Presidency after the Watergate affair blew up. (Numerous commentators now suggest that he had no involvement with the break in at Democratic Party offices and believe that Watergate was nothing more than a contrivance designed by the elite (Rockefeller) to be found and to point the blame at Nixon and bring him down.) Gerald Ford was installed as President of the United States without ever having faced the electorate. He chose Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President. Two unelected individuals were now running the country with Rockefeller now a mere heartbeat away from the position he so coveted. During his time as President, Ford survived two assassination attempts.

Throughout the Nixon and Ford presidencies, Henry Kissinger, a Rockefeller man and influential council member of Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations, was in charge of US foreign policy. Kissinger had been on the private payroll of Rockefeller as his personal “foreign policy adviser” for many years.

Jimmy Carter (Democrat) followed Gerald Ford from 1977-81, then Ronald Reagan (Republican) from 1981-89. Prescot Bush’s son, George W. H. Bush, a Yale Skull and Bones man, followed Reagan from 1989 until ‘93.

Bill Clinton, Democrat, followed Bush from 1993 to 2001 and he too filled his cabinet with the elite’s place-men. Clinton was taught in the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, by his favourite historian, Professor Carroll Quigley. In 1966, Quigley had written a book [7] on the elite’s control of world affairs which had caused them a considerable degree of anxiety. While Quigley’s book was entirely sympathetic to their aims of world domination, the elite were extremely upset that it allowed ordinary people a forbidden glimpse of the workings of the matrix:

“The powers of financial capitalism have another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. The system is controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert… and by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. I know of the operations of the network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life been close to it and many of its instruments… My chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”

The elite reacted quickly when the book was published, ensuring it was pulled from the bookshelves nationwide and “recalled faster than exploding Easter bunny” Although it was never published again, second hand copies are available from Amazon.com.

Following two-term Clinton, came the grandson of Prescott Bush (and son of President George H. W. Bush); Skull and Bones member George Walker Bush. Four years later, Bush became a second term president when he defeated Democrat Senator John F. Kerry. Kerry, almost unbelievably, is yet another member of Skull and Bones.

In the US Presidential elections it matters little to the elite if the successful candidate is Democrat or Republican; indeed it is all part of their absurd deception and pretence of democracy since they control both. The deception does not come cheap; during the most recent presidential primary season, $360 million of elite money went to George W. Bush, and $318 million elite money to John Kerry. (Each received a further $74.6 million from the public purse.) A candidate independent of the elite has no chance whatsoever of reaching the White House. Ralph Nader in 2004, for example, had the relatively paltry sum of $4 million dollars to launch and conduct his campaign.

Interesting though the background of each of the individual millionaire US Presidents might be, the real power in America lies with the Rockefeller dynasty and the three organisations it controls: The Council on Foreign Relations, which helped build the Nazi war machine in the 1930s - Chairman emeritus; David Rockefeller. The Trilateral Commission, founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller. The Bilderberg club formed in 1954 - most active member, David Rockefeller.

These three organisations are interlinked and, in ‘red pill’ reality, work in tandem to achieve world domination by the elite. Members of each have been listed by Robert Gaylon Ross in his book, Who’s Who of the Elite [8]. He writes: “They occupy key positions in government, the mass media, financial institutions, multinational corporations, the military, and the national security apparatus.” The two families who are really in charge are the Rockefellers and, in the UK and Western Europe, the House of Rothschild. In 1998 Rockefeller was reputedly worth $11.5 trillion and Rothschild over $100 trillion.

The Bilderberg club (named after the hotel in which its first meeting was held) is the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. Every member pledges absolute secrecy on what has been discussed at annual meetings. The online Asia Times, 2003, provides a very rare glimpse into the Bilderberg club in a column headed “The Masters of the Universe” [9]: “Expert strategists attend to polish and reinforce a virtual consensus; an illusion that globalization, defined under their terms - that what’s good for banking and big business is good for everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of humankind. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993 were invited to attend and duly ‘approved’ by the club before they took office.

“The club mingles central bankers, defence experts, press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty and international financiers. Guests this year, along with Rumsfeld and Perle (US Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is also a member) included David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain. The Bilderberg does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans, or Africans.” (Prime Minister Tony Blair attended when Shadow Home Secretary and his close friend, adviser and confidant, Peter Mandelson now attends the Bilderberg club. Mandelson, now Britain’s man in Europe, is also a member of Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission.)

David Rockefeller and his long time right hand man, Henry Kissinger, are the major players in this cabal. It has been said of Kissinger that “only the ignoramus and sycophant can glorify this man whose heartlessness and guile wrought terrible agony and human loss in the third world.” A small, but typical example of Kissinger’s contempt for humanity came when he was Secretary of State in the Ford administration in 1976; a time when the slaughter of so-called Marxists in Argentina, and the erasure of much of Argentina’s left, was at its height. Trade union organisers, student activists and their families and sympathisers were systematically tortured and by the end of the dictatorship, about 30,000 people had been disappeared. The US gave both money and high-level political endorsement to the generals in their murderous campaign. Kissinger congratulated the Junta on their “very good results”: “Our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old fashioned view that friends ought to be supported… The quicker you succeed the better.”

In his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchins [10] has pieced together some of the most odious of Kissinger’s actions which “merit the basis of prosecution for crimes against humanity, war crimes and offences against International Law.”

This then, is the man who has had such incredible power and influence in America, indeed the entire world, for the best part of forty years. Perhaps the fact that President George W. Bush appointed him chairman of the commission instructed to investigate the September 11 attacks, tells us something. (Kissinger quickly resigned when he learned it would require giving details of his business connections.)

Today, Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission web pages present the following mission statement on its website [11]: “The Trilateral Commission was formed in 1973 by private citizens of Europe, Japan and North America to help think through the common challenges and leadership responsibility of the democratic industrialised area in the wider world.”

Apart from this matrix lie, the website provides some interesting reading and unwittingly gives us a small dose of ‘red pill’ reality: on the 25th Anniversary meeting on December 1, 1998, tributes and toasts to David Rockefeller were the order of the day. I have edited the worst excesses, but they can be read on the website, if so desired, in their full, sycophantic glory.

George Berthoin, former European Chairman of The Trilateral Commission: “We know, for sure now, that the future will involve more than the three corners of our triangle [North America, Western Europe, Japan]. Technology has abolished time and space as the traditional basis of governance. A new form has to emerge and with more actors. The qualities of innovation we demonstrated for the last twenty-five years are challenged again. The moment is coming when it will be clear to all, in particular to us - friends and members of the Trilateral Commission - that the best, maybe the only way, to defend the interests, traditions, and hopes we cherish will be to place them resolutely within the context offered by the disciplines and opportunities of a genuine world order, genuine because created and recognised by all as fair and legitimate. The first global history of mankind is about to start. A new window is opening. The challenge is clear.”

Henry Kissinger: “David [Rockefeller], he is now over 80, has done great things in his life, but he is a little bit naïve. He believes that any good idea can be implemented. And, by God, you have to be a little bit innocent to do great things. Cynics don’t build cathedrals. David’s function in our society is to recognize great tasks, to overcome the obstacles, to help find and inspire the people to carry them out, and to do it with remarkable delicacy… David, I respect you and admire you for what you have done with the Trilateral Commission. You and your family have represented what goes for an aristocracy in our country - a sense of obligation not only to make it materially possible, but to participate yourself in what you have made possible and to infuse it with the enthusiasm, the innocence, and the faith that I identify with you and, if I may say so, with your family. And so I would like to propose a toast that this be preserved to us for a long time.”

On a separate occasion, David Rockefeller stated: “We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promise of discretion for almost 40 years… It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards world government. The super national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”

Perhaps the best description of how the elite operate comes from the late Senator Barry Goldwater, Presidential candidate of the Republican Party back in 1964. Senator Goldwater, a close friend of both JFK and Joe McCarthy, was considered a saber rattling, extreme right wing conservative. Following his death, the Washington Post wrote: “Unlike nearly every other politician who ever lived, anywhere in the world, Barry Goldwater always said exactly what was on his mind. He spared his listeners nothing.” This eulogy appears to be confirmed in one of Goldwater’s books, With no Apologies, [12] in which he presents an astonishingly frank exposé of the unfettered power and aspirations of the elite:

“The Council on Foreign Relations has placed its members in policy-making with the State Department and other federal agencies. Every secretary of State since 1944, with the exception of James F Byrnes, has been a member of the council. Almost without exception, its members are united by a congeniality of birth, economic status and educational background. … I believe that the Council on Foreign relations and its ancillary elitist groups are indifferent to communism. They have no ideological anchors. In their pursuit of a New World Order, they are prepared to deal without prejudice with a communist state, a socialist state, a democratic state, a monarchy, an oligarchy - it’s all the same to them.

“When we change presidents, it is understood to mean that the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945, three different Republicans have occupied the White House for 16 years, and four democrats have held this most powerful post for 17 years. With the exception of the first seven years of the Eisenhower administration, there has been no appreciable change in foreign or domestic policy. There has been a great turnover in personnel, but no change in policy. Example: during the Nixon years, Henry Kissinger, a council member and Nelson Rockefeller protégé, was in charge of foreign policy. When Jimmy Carter was elected, Kissinger was replaced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a council member and David Rockefeller protégé.

“Whereas the Council on Foreign Relations is distinctly national, representation is allocated equally to Western Europe, Japan and the United States. It is intended to act as the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.

“Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller screened and selected every individual who was invited to participate in shaping and administering the proposed New World Order… The Trilateral organization created by David Rockefeller was a surrogate - its members selected by Rockefeller, its purpose defined by Rockefeller, its funding supplied by Rockefeller… Examination of the membership roster establishes beyond question that all those invited to join were members of the power elite, enlisted with great skill and singleness of purpose from the banking, commercial, political and communications sectors… In my view, the Trilateral Commission represents a skilful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical.

“The Trilateral Commission even selects and elevates its candidates to positions of political power. David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski found Jimmy Carter to be an ideal candidate, for example. They helped him to win the Democratic nomination and the Presidency [1977]. To accomplish their purpose, they mobilized the money power of the Wall Street bankers, the intellectual influence of the academic community - which is subservient to the wealthy of the great tax-free foundations - and the media controllers represented in the membership of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. It was no accident that Brzezinski and Rockefeller invited Carter to join the commission in 1973. But they weren’t ready to bet all their chips on Carter. They made him a founding member of the commission but to keep their options open they also brought in Walter Mondale and Elliot Richardson, a highly visible Republican member of the Nixon administration, and they looked at other potential nominees.”

Goldwater’s testimony is all the more astonishing coming from a man with considerable knowledge of the core of the matrix and who was no radical of the left. Goldwater was the only Republican Presidential candidate not to be the CFR choice for the presidential nomination in the last 50 years.

The elite inner-circle members of the Bilderberg club, Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, conspire to politically, and economically, dominate the entire world under their New World Order, or Globalisation as they now prefer to name it.

Since the Second World War, Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations has filled key positions in virtually every administration. Since Eisenhower, every man who has won the nomination for either party (except Goldwater in 1964) has been directly sponsored by Rockefeller’s CFR.

Before defining the characteristics of fascism, we should look at the neo-conservatives who run the US government on behalf of the elite. In her book, Leo Strauss and the American Right, [13] Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at the University of Calgary, Canada, names current politicians, political advisers, administration and Supreme Court officials, who were followers of the teachings of the fascist Leo Strauss.

Leo Strauss (1899- 1973) was a philosopher at the University of Chicago (built by Rockefeller money) where he taught many of those currently involved in the US administration. Strauss left Nazi Germany in 1934 having been given a Rockefeller Foundation bursary and is considered to be the “fascist godfather” of today’s neo-cons.

According to Jeffery Steinberg in Executive Intelligence review [14]: “A review of Leo Strauss’ career reveals why the label ‘Straussian’ carries some very filthy implications. Although nominally a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany (he actually left for a better position abroad, on the warm recommendation of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt), Strauss was an unabashed proponent of the three most notorious shapers of the Nazi philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. Recent biographies have revealed the depth of Heidegger’s enthusiasm for Hitler and Nazism.

“The hallmark of Strauss’s approach to philosophy was his hatred of the modern world, his belief in a totalitarian system, run by ‘philosophers’ who rejected all universal principles of natural law, but saw their mission as absolute rulers, who lied and deceived a foolish ‘populist’ mass, and used both religion and politics as a means of disseminating myths that kept the general population in clueless servitude.”

Professor Shadia Drury [15] provides a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the neocons “Leo Strauss was a great believer in the efficacy and usefulness of lies in politics. Public support for the Iraq war rested on lies about Iraq posing an imminent threat to the United States - the business about weapons of mass destruction and a fictitious alliance between al-Qaeda and the Iraq regime. Now that the lies have been exposed, Paul Wolfowitz [Straussian] and others in the war party are denying that these were the real reasons for the war.

“The idea that Strauss was a great defender of liberal democracy is laughable. I suppose that Strauss’s disciples consider it a noble lie. Yet many in the media have been gullible enough to believe it. The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty, and that giving them these sublime treasures would be like throwing pearls before swine… A second fundamental of Strauss’s ancients has to do with their insistence on the need for secrecy and the necessity of lies. In his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss outlines why secrecy is necessary. He argues that the wise must conceal their views for two reasons - to spare the people’s feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals. The people will not be happy to learn that there is only one natural right - the right of the superior to rule over the inferior, the master over the slave… and the wise few over the vulgar many.

“I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny.”

Shadia Drury is by no means alone in her desperate concern. Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois law school writes [16]: “I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago’s Political Science Department by Strauss’s foremost protégé, co-author, and literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago… I concur completely with Professor Drury’s devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process by Chicago’s Straussian cabal.

“Chicago routinely trained me and numerous other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte neo-con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago became the ‘brains’ behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1967. Many of his ‘lawyers’ at the Department of Injustice [sic] are members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, and totalitarian Federalist Society (aka ‘Feddies’), which originated in part at the University of Chicago.

“According to his own public estimate and boast before the American Enterprise Institute, President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration… Just recently the University of Chicago officially celebrated its Bush Jr. Straussian cabal. … Only the University of Chicago would have the Orwellian gall to publicly claim that Strauss and Bloom [a Strauss protégé] cared one whit about democracy let alone comprehend the ‘ideals of democracy’.

“Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz or totalitarians like Ashcroft! The neo-con cabal, currently ruling America and in charge of pursuing the New World Order agenda is, according to Professors Drury and Boyle, “a tyranny of warmongers and unscrupulous elites from an intellectual and moral cesspool.”

What are the implications of this “New World Order”, or “Globalization” as it is now called? Richard K. Moore [17] writes: “The course of world events, for the first time in history, is now largely controlled by a centralised global regime. This regime has been consolidating power ever since World War II and is now formalising that power into a collection of centralised institutions and a new system of international ‘order’. Top western political leaders are participants in this global regime, and the strong Western nation state is rapidly being dismantled and destabilised. The global regime serves elite corporate interests exclusively. It has no particular regard for human rights, democracy, human welfare, or the health of the environment. The only god of this regime is the god of wealth accumulation.

“In two centuries the Western world has come full circle from tyranny to tyranny. The tyranny of monarchs was overthrown in the Enlightenment and semi-democratic republics were established. Two centuries later those republics are being destabilised and a new tyranny is assuming power - a global tyranny of anonymous corporate elites. This anonymous regime has no qualms about creating poverty, destroying nations, and engaging in genocide.

“Humanity can do better than this - much better - and there is reason to hope that the time is ripe for humanity to bring about fundamental changes… We can oust the elites from power and reorganise our economies so that they serve the needs of the people instead of the needs of endless wealth accumulation. This is our Revolutionary Imperative. Not an imperative to violent revolution, but an imperative to do something even more revolutionary - to set humanity on a sane course using peaceful, democratic means.”

Bottom line, are the neo-cons driving this agenda neo-fascist? Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, published research on fascism [18] in which he examined the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each fascist State:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarceration of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists; terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military are glamorized.

5. Rampant sexism - The government of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are intertwined - Government in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation are often the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated, or are severely restricted.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassinations of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Benito Mussolini - who knew something about fascism - had a more straightforward definition: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

Abraham Lincoln stated, “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed.”

The small, but ruthless, group of men, the “money power” described by Lincoln, has stolen democracy from the American people. An ever-growing number of informed Americans, however, are fighting a brave, but desperate rear-guard action to retrieve that democracy. Will we give them our total support now, or simply sit back and watch as the entire planet is taken back to the dark ages? “The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.”

Jim Macgregor is a 57 year old retired doctor. For many years he was a family practitioner and visiting Medical Officer to Glenochil Prison, one of Scotland`s high security prisons. Through his prison work, he developed a special interest in miscarriages of justice and is a member of the Miscarriage of Justice Organisation. MOJO (Scotland). You can contact Jim at [e-mail]

References

1. Richard K. Moore, Escaping the Matrix, www.cyberjournal.org
2. William Blum, Killing Hope, US Military & CIA Interventions since World War II, Zed Books, London. www.zedbooks.demon.co.uk
3. Richard K. Moore, Escaping the Matrix - Global Transformation: Why we need it and how we can get it, www.cyberjournal.org
4. Ida Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company, 1904, McClure, Phillips and Co., (out of print). Converted to electronic format by Nalinda Sapukotana, University of Rochester.http://www.history.rochester.edu/fuels/tarbell/MAIN.HTM
5. Webster G. Tarpely & Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorised Biography, (currently in reprint). Electronic format: www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm
6. R Joseph, PhD. America Betrayed: Bush, Bin Laden, and 9/11. University Press.
7. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. Macmillan company 1966. Out of print.
8. Robert Gaylon Ross, Who’s who of the Elite: Members of the Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, Ross International Enterprises.http://www.4rie.com/
9. Pepe Escobar, The Roving Eye, Asia Times online, May 22nd 2003 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EE22Ak03.html
10. Christopher Hitchins, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Verso press, 2001.
11. Trilateral Commission website, www.trilateral.org
12. Barry Goldwater, The Personal and Political Memoirs of United States Senator Barry M. Goldwater, New York: Morrow, 1979.
13. Shadia Drury, Professor of Politics, University of Calgary, Leo Strauss and the American Right, May 1999 Isbn; 0333772296.
14. Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, March 21, 2003.
15. Shadia Drury, May 2003 interview transcript: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5010.htm
16. Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois. 2003 interview, CounterPunch.com, August 2, 2003.
17. Richard K. Moore, www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles.html
18. Dr. Lawrence Britt article in Free Inquiry journal of secular humanist thought http://www.secularhumanism.org

© 2004.Jim Macgregor All rights reserved.

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WASHINGTON OUTLOOK
Bush Sending the Wrong Message as Chaos Smolders in Iraq
Ronald Brownstein

December 27, 2004

Millions of Americans probably learned about last week`s horrific attack on U.S. troops in Mosul while wrapping Christmas presents or stuffing packages into the SUV after a last-minute shopping blitz at the mall.

That jarring juxtaposition may be the perfect symbol for the Iraq war. This grueling, grinding conflict is skittering through American life like a tornado that tears one house to the ground in every neighborhood, while leaving all those around it unscratched.

For the military personnel on the front lines — and their families and friends — the war is exacting bitter costs. For all other Americans, even for the officials whose decisions sent the troops into battle and shaped the conditions under which they are fighting and dying, the war is imposing no discernible consequences. Like the Civil War, when a rich draftee in the North could hire a poor man to take his place, and Vietnam with its loophole-ridden draft, the Iraq war risks being stained by systemic inequity.

Soldiers tend to salute not complain, but this war is straining the military so much that "volunteer service" may no longer precisely describe it. Ordinarily, the Pentagon limits each soldier to one overseas deployment every four or five years. But nearly one-third of the roughly 1 million U.S. troops who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq have been forced to serve more than one tour of combat duty, the Boston Globe reported last month.

Thousands of additional soldiers have seen their tours involuntarily extended through "stop loss" policies that prevent them from leaving the military when they complete their commitment. Reserve and National Guard units accustomed to domestic responsibilities have been placed on extended duty in Iraq.

U.S. troops are facing relentless violence in a war in which progress has proved as elusive as the enemy itself. Each death and injury tears a hole in a circle of family and friends.

Meanwhile, for everyone else in America, the war is proceeding without a cost greater than their unease and sorrow when watching the evening news.

Since the Civil War, Americans have raised taxes to fund all of the nation`s wars. But when Congress returns next month, one of President Bush`s first priorities will be legislation making permanent the huge tax cuts he won during his first term.

Bush`s presidency marks the first time the U.S. has significantly cut taxes while at war. Since the federal budget is already in deficit, that means we are effectively passing the bill for this war onto our children through an increased national debt.

The war`s political consequences are unfolding in a comparable spirit of buck passing. Wars always surprise their planners. But even setting aside the debate over whether the threat from Saddam Hussein merited the invasion of Iraq, it`s clear this war has been complicated by an unusual concentration of mistakes and misjudgments.

The weapons of mass destruction that provided the central justification for the invasion have never been found, and by the best calculation of the CIA, no longer existed. Foreign countries the Bush administration assumed would fall into line after the U.S. moved against Iraq instead refused to provide meaningful help. And after a brilliant campaign against the conventional Iraqi military, the Pentagon has appeared to be blindsided by the persistence and ferocity of the unconventional resistance that followed the fall of Baghdad.

In June 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dismissed the Iraqi insurgency as mere "pockets of dead-enders." Eighteen months later, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens are still dying in large numbers at the hands of those "dead-enders." And the failure to fully plan for the insurgency is still being felt in what many experts consider shortages of combat troops and appropriate supplies (such as armored vehicles).

Yet the only senior administration official who faced any consequences over the Iraq war has been the most prominent skeptic, outgoing Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who was politely but firmly shown the door after Bush`s reelection.

Bush this month awarded the nation`s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to three architects of the war: former CIA Director George J. Tenet, retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks and L. Paul Bremer III, the former top civilian administrator in Iraq.

Bush promoted Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor, to replace Powell. And the president has unwaveringly defended Rumsfeld, even amid calls from Republicans and conservative activists for his resignation.

Each of these officials has served the nation with dedication (if varying results) under difficult circumstances. Yet by honoring and defending them so lavishly while Iraq remains engulfed in violence, Bush seems to be absolving them, and himself, of any responsibility for the chaos.

Like his tax cuts, Bush`s personnel decisions are sending the unfortunate message that no one apart from the soldiers on the ground and their families should pay any price for this war. If the cause in Iraq is as vital as Bush insists, all Americans should contribute.

Through countless acts of individual generosity, Americans have demonstrated their desire to support the troops; it`s unlikely they would rebel if Congress repealed some of Bush`s tax cuts in order to fund the war.

Restoring accountability for policy makers is trickier. The clamor about Rumsfeld overly personalizes fault for an Iraq strategy that Bush had approved; the president bears the ultimate responsibility to find a path with a better prospect of success at a cost America will accept.

Still, Bush is leaving a dangerous impression that on Iraq he values loyalty more than performance. A conspicuous administration shake-up that labels and punishes failure might offer the president his best chance to prompt fresh thinking — if he wants to hear it.

Ronald Brownstein`s column appears every Monday. See past Brownstein columns on The Times` website at latimes.com/brownstein.





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Military Fatalities: Total:1476 , US:1326 , Dez.04:69
Meldungen:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Monday, December 27, 2004
<>War News for Monday, December 27, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Fifteen Iraqis killed and at least 50 wounded by car bomb outside the home of the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country`s most powerful Shiite political group. One US soldier killed and another wounded in roadside bomb explosion in Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqi officials killed in three separate assassination attacks. Three US soldiers injured in roadside bombing of a military convoy in Mosul. (scroll down).

<>Bring ‘em on: One of Turkey’s richest businessmen and an employee kidnapped in vicinity of Basra. Professor at Baghdad University`s medical school shot dead on Haifa street. Governor of eastern Diyala province attacked by roadside bomb, four wounded.

Bring ‘em on: Twenty one ING soldiers abducted between Haditha and Qaim. Five policemen found shot dead in Ramadi.


Let’s hope it never goes badly: Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army`s chief of staff, made a surprise visit to a small group of soldiers here at Forward Operating Base Danger and said in an interview that the war in Iraq was "going pretty well."

Schoomaker was the third top Pentagon official to visit troops here in recent days. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld stopped in Tikrit during his whirlwind Christmas Eve tour on Friday, and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ushered a USO troupe through Iraq earlier this month.


A Brief Pause to Shake Our Heads in Amazement: So…the war in Iraq is “going pretty well.” Uh…ok. I guess the only question that needs to be asked is, ‘For who?’ We can probably rule out the 27 dead, 58 wounded and 23 kidnapped people in the ‘Bring ‘em on’ section...

So who’s it going so `pretty well` for? Let’s look at the news and find out!


Probably not these guys: "Adam" is supposed to be the Iraqi face at a key U.S. military checkpoint south of Baghdad, but he is so fearful for his life that he wears a black ski mask to hide his identity.

Dressed in camouflage fatigues, he is part of an army of translators that serves as a vital link for occupiers short on Arab speakers needed for manning roadblocks, mounting patrols and interrogating suspects<>.

But because of their highly visible jobs, they also face an especially high risk from Iraqi insurgents who have branded them traitors and collaborators and marked them for death.


These guys might not see it that way either: Members of the fledgling Iraqi army and the Iraqi National Guard, who are stationed with U.S. soldiers at this heavily fortified outpost in western Mosul, have come under new suspicion after a man apparently dressed in an Iraqi security forces uniform detonated a bomb in a crowded dining hall Tuesday, killing 22 people and wounding dozens.

As difficult as it is for the Americans who work with them, the Iraqis clearly face even more danger from insurgents. While the U.S. military scrambles to make sure all its vehicles in Iraq are armored, no such plan is in place for Iraqi security forces, who drive soft-skinned Jeeps or crowd into the backs of small pickups. Americans use high-tech weapons, while the Iraqis are armed with old-school Russian AK-47s, some held together with duct tape.

Iraqi troops were on patrols last month when the first of many bodies of their own security forces began turning up along major roadways. Dozens of Iraqi soldiers quit that first day, according to their commander, and many have since fled.

Iraqi soldiers in Mosul said they had friends who were killed by insurgents and had been threatened themselves. One said he disguises himself on patrols and when he goes home; others don`t go home at all anymore.

National Guard Sgt. Mahday Khalil has seen bodies of his comrades in the streets. Still, he and his friends stay in the national guard, he said, "because we have nothing else to do."


<>Or these: While many Texas families spent Sunday snapping up post-Christmas bargains, nearly 500 soldiers on this post enjoyed a last meal with their loved ones before shipping out for a year in Iraq<>.

Most of the soldiers are Army reservists assigned to the 228th Combat Support Hospital. Their ranks include doctors, nurses, X-ray technicians and other medical support specialists<>.

They are ultimately heading to two of Iraq`s most dangerous areas: the northern city of Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein`s hometown in the so-called Sunni Triangle.
<>

Maybe Schoomaker just, you know, redefined ‘going pretty well’: In a week that saw the deadliest single attack on Americans in Iraq - and the first major US contractor to pull out - more and more military experts are warning that drastic changes are needed to both US strategy and American public expectations if there`s to be success there.

Steps once potentially capable of turning the situation around "in all likelihood" would now fail, the ICG says in its new report. "If the [Bush] administration does not take the measure of what has changed ... it may well meet its desired end-date, but at the cost of a highly dangerous end-state." The US hopes Iraq will adopt a new constitution and elect a full legislature by the end of 2005<>.

"Part of the effort has to be to redefine what success means,`` says Malley at ICG. "The original notion that Iraq was going to be a model for the region, of open government, of a liberal, free-market economy, isn`t an achievable goal anymore."<>


Or maybe this made him feel more confident: The only country in the Western Hemisphere besides the United States still fielding soldiers in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq may extend its troop deployment beyond a scheduled return early next year, El Salvador`s president said Saturday<>.

Salvadoran forces have been in Iraq since August 2003, with 380 troops currently serving there. The contingent is scheduled to come home in February after a six-month tour.<>


Now, these guys might agree with him: The deadly suicide attack on a US military base in Mosul this week was an "inside job" carried out by insurgents who are part of the Iraqi armed forces, Asia Times Online has been told.<>

Sources said a strong nexus between Iraqi forces and the resistance is what allowed them to carry out the most devastating attack on US troops since the beginning of the invasion. US forces have imposed a curfew in Mosul and have launched a military operation in the city, but, the sources say, this will have little effect on the problem, for the simple reason that the US-trained Iraqi military is heavily infected with people loyal to the resistance groups.<>


But wait! I found it! Hey, it is going pretty well after all!: The United States is helping the interim Iraqi government continue to make major economic changes, including cuts to social subsidies, full access for U.S. companies to the nation`s oil reserves and reconsideration of oil deals that the previous regime signed with France and Russia.

During a visit here this week, officials of the U.S.-backed administration detailed some of the economic moves planned for Iraq, many of them appearing to give U.S. corporations greater reach into the occupied nation`s economy.

For example, the current leadership is looking at privatizing the Iraqi National Oil Company, said Finance Minister Adil Abdel Mahdi<>.

The government, which is supposed to be replaced after elections scheduled for January, will also pass a new law that will further open Iraq`s huge oil reserves to foreign companies. U.S. firms are expected to gain the lion`s share of access in a process estimated to be worth billions of dollars.<>


That would explain the ‘explosions of joy and relief’…well, explosions, at least: Meanwhile, the words of the Bush regime`s third wise man, Paul Wolfowitz, resonate. Set the Wayback Machine to March 24, 2003: Wolfowitz is being interviewed by the BBC during the invasion of Iraq. Asked about the U.S. "preparation for what comes after," Wolfowitz replies:

"The focus has got to be on removing this criminal regime. Until the regime is gone it`s going to be very hard to do anything. Even in cities that are liberated. I think when the people of Basra no longer feel the threat of that regime, you are going to see an explosion of joy and relief."

Fast forward to April 21, 2004, when five car bombs exploded simultaneously in Basra during rush-hour traffic, killing dozens of people, including 20 children. Exactly how many Iraq civilians died isn`t known because, as General Tommy Franks noted, "We don`t do body counts."


Some Polling Related Item<>s

Shi`a opinion: Iraq`s election body rejected a suggestion in Washington it adjust the results of next month`s vote to benefit the Sunni minority if low turnout in Sunni areas means Shi`ites win an exaggerated majority in the new assembly.

Speaking of "unacceptable" interference, Electoral Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said: "Who wins, wins. That is the way it is. That is the way it will be in the election."


Kurdish opinion: M<>ore than 1.7 million Iraqi Kurds have signed a petition calling for a referendum on independence<>.

A Referendum Movement in Kurdistan spokesman says a delegation from their organisation has travelled to the United Nations headquarters in New York to hand over the petition.<>


Australian opinion: Amid continuing carnage in strife-torn Iraq – and just days after a suicide bomber killed 22 people, including 19 US soldiers, near Mosul – a clear majority of Australians now believe last year`s invasion was not worth the effort<>.

Just 32 per cent of the community believe John Howard`s decision to send troops into Iraq was justified, according to a Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian.

This represents a steep fall from the 46 per cent surveyed in February who believed Australia`s war effort was justified.


<>Commentar<>y

Opinion: So let`s be absolutely clear: the US, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry of WTO and IMF conditions, followed by elections designed to transfer as little power to Iraqis as possible. This is what Argentinian writer Rodolfo Walsh, writing before his assassination in 1977 by the military junta, described as "planned misery". And the longer the US stays in Iraq, the more misery it will plan.<>


Opinion: A great deal has been written about the failure of military strategy in Iraq, but an even more important reason for the failure of the occupation has barely been discussed: the coalition`s economic strategy. Following the Second World War, the Allied forces understood that fascism arose in conditions of unemployment, poverty and desperation. That`s why there was a massive effort to reflate the German economy; by early 1947, unemployment was down to 10 per cent. In Iraq today, unemployment stands at an incredible 60 per cent. For young Sunni men - the main recruiting pool for the insurgency - it has soared to 80 per cent. This is a recipe for rage and rebellion<>.

It would be bad enough if the coalition had simply done nothing to reflate and re-energize the Iraqi economy. Incredibly, the truth is even worse: they have imposed on Iraq a program of ultra-neoliberal reforms that have brought economic collapse to every country they have been inflicted upon. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist and dissident former chief economist at the World Bank, describes the economic policies of the coalition as "a proven and predictable catastrophe". They imposed a form of capitalism more extreme than anything tried in a democratic country: immediate privatization of almost all services (without any debate), non-competitive contracts, and a 15 per cent flat tax. This is not democracy. It is market fundamentalism.<>


Opinion: The war in Iraq was the result of powerful government figures imposing their dangerous fantasies on the world. The fantasies notably included the weapons of mass destruction, the links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the throngs of Iraqis hurling kisses and garlands at the invading Americans, and the spread of American-style democracy throughout the Middle East. All voices of caution were ignored and the fantasies were allowed to prevail<>.

The world is not a video game, although it must seem like it at times to the hubristic, hermetically sealed powerbrokers in Washington who manipulate the forces that affect the lives of so many millions of people in every region of the planet. That kind of power calls for humility, not arrogance, and should be wielded wisely, not thoughtlessly and impulsively<>.

This latest overreach by Mr. Rumsfeld is a sign that the administration, like a hardheaded adolescent, has learned little or nothing from the tragic consequences of its wrongheaded policies. The second term is coming, so buckle up. It promises to be a very dangerous four years.<>


Casualty Report<>s

Local story: Three Maine soldiers wounded in insurgent attack in Mosul.

Local story: Denham Springs, LA, National Guardsman killed in Baghdad.

Local story: Two Maine Army National Guard soldiers killed in Mosul.<>

Local story: Porstmouth, ME, soldier survives blast in Mosul.


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Informed Comment
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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Bin Laden votes in Iraq and Shoots himself in the Foot

Usamah Bin Laden`s latest video was broadcast on al-Jazeera on Monday, in which he commanded Muslims to boycott the January 30 elections in Iraq, and expressed his approval of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi had been a rival of Bin Laden`s in Afghanistan and had earlier declined to share resources with al-Qaeda. But in recent months al-Zarqawi changed the name of his group from Monotheism and Holy war to Mesopotamian al-Qaeda, and pledged fealty to Bin Laden.

In declaring "infidels" all who vote under the "infidel" interim constitution negotiated by Iraqi politicians with US civil administrator Paul Bremer last winter, Bin Laden is seeking to counter the decree of grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani that Iraqis must vote in the upcoming elections or they will be consigned to hell. Bin Laden is arguing, according to the Aljazeera.net in Arabic, that the interim constitution that is the framework for elections is artificial and pagan ("jahili", pertaining to the Age of Ignorance before Islam) because it does not recognize Islam as the sole source of law.

Bin Laden`s intervention in Iraq was hamfisted and clumsy, and will benefit the United States and the Shiites enormously. Most Iraqi Muslims, Sunni or Shiite, dislike the Wahhabi branch of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia, and with which Bin Laden is associated. Nationalistic Iraqis will object to a foreigner interfering in their national affairs.

Zarqawi is widely hated in Iraq because the operations of his group often kill innocent Iraqis as opposed to American troops. The Shiites in particular despise Zarqawi, and are aware of his hopes of provoking a Sunni-Shiite bloodbath in Iraq. (The muted Shiite response to the US assault on Fallujah in November and December derived in large part from a conviction that the city had become a base for Zarqawi and like-minded Salafi terrorists). Zarqawi websites have claimed credit for the assassination in 2003 of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, a respected Shiite leader, which involved descrating the Shiite holy city of Najaf. The mainstream of the Kurds hates Zarqawi, because of his earlier association with the small Kurdish radical Muslim terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, which targeted the two major Kurdish parties.

Bin Laden as much as declared Grand Ayatollah Sistani an infidel. But Sistani is almost universally loved by the 65% of Iraqis who are Shiites, and is widely respected among many Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, as well. Bin Laden, the Saudi engineer, makes himself look ridiculous trying to give a fatwa against the Grand Ayatollah of Najaf. If anything, to have al-Qaeda menacing the Shiites in this way would tend to strengthen the American-Shiite alliance.

If Bin Laden had been politically clever, he would have phrased his message in the terms of Iraqi nationalism. By siding with the narrowest sliver of Sunni extremists, he denied himself any real impact. By adopting Zarqawi, who has killed many more Iraqis (especially Shiites) than he has Americans, he simply tarnishes his own image inside Iraq.

It appears that Bin Laden is so weak now that he is forced to play to his own base, of Saudi and Salafi jihadists, some of whom are volunteer guerrillas in Iraq. They are the only ones in Iraq who would be happy to see this particular videotape.

The only way Bin Laden could profit from this intervention in the least would be if a civil war between Sunni Arabs and Shiites really did break out in Iraq, and if the beleaguered Sunnis went over to al-Qaeda in large numbers. Since the Sunni Arabs are a minority of 20%, they and he would still lose, but for Bin Laden, who is now a refugee and without any strong political base outside a few provinces of Saudi Arabia, to pick up 5 million Iraqi Sunni Arabs, would be a major political victory. His recent videotape calling for the overthrow of the Saudi government suggests that he might hope to use any increased popularity in Anbar province as a springboard for renewed attacks on Saudi Arabia, especially on its petroleum sector.

It is a desperate, crackpot hope. The narrow, sectarian and politically unskilfull character of this speech is the most hopeful sign I have seen in some time that al-Qaeda is a doomed political force, a mere Baader-Meinhof Gang or Red Army Faction with greater geographical reach.

posted by Juan @ 12/28/2004 06:35:33 AM

Iraqi Islamic Party Withdraws
Dispute over Theocracy among Iraqi Shiites

The near assassination on Monday of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a leading Shiite cleric and politician, raised new fears of sectarian strife in Iraq. Al-Hakim himself, however, urged Shiites to concentrate on winning the January 30 elections and to avoid doing anything that would derail them. (I.e. he knows that anti-election Sunni extremists are baiting the Shiites, and he is urging them not to fall for it).

Muhsin Abdul Hamid of the Iraqi Islamic Party withdrew his party ticket from the January 30 elections. He said he was not calling for a boycott, but his party was simply declining to participate because the Sunni Arab minority will be disadvantaged in any polls because of the poor security conditions in their provinces. The IIP withdrawal is a huge blow to the electoral process`s legitimacy, since there are now no major Sunni Islamic groupings in the race, and only small, old-style 1960s Arab nationalist parties are competing for the Sunni Arab vote. The popular Association of Muslim Scholars has called for Sunnis to boycott the elections, a call taken up on Monday by Usamah Bin Laden as well.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US would "urge" Iraqi Sunnis to turn out to vote. He also said that any post-election scheme for ensuring proper Sunni participation, such as increasing the number of seats in parliament and awarding the extra ones to Sunnis as a quota, would have to await the election of the Iraqi parliament itself, since only it could make such new rules. Powell at one point seemed to me to suggest that ensuring Sunni representation at the cabinet level in the executive of the new government would be a sufficient step. But that is simply not true. Since parliament will craft the new permanent constitution, it is essential that Sunni Arabs have a proportionate role in drafting it. (See Andrew Arato`s essay below for one possible solution to this problem.)

Hannah Allam of Knight Ridder reveals that the United Iraqi Alliance, the mega-Shiite list put together under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, nearly collapsed because of an internal dispute among the Shiite parties over theocracy.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) has long backed rule by clerics. The Dawa Party is more lay in character, but does want an Islamic Republic that is ruled by Islamic law and Islamic economics. The Sadr movement claims to be a third way between Khomeinist theocracy and Najaf`s quietism. Many important candidates on the UIA ticket come from these movements. They are opposed by more secular-leaning Shiites, who share the ticket with them.

In his book "Islamic Government," which originated as lectures in Najaf in the late 1960s, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had put forward his theory of the "Guardianship of the Jurisprudent" (in Arabic, wilayat al-faqih). He held that in the absence of a Prophet or appointed vicar of the Prophet (an Imam), the clerics should rule in Islam. Khomeini`s idea was, in this form, a complete innovation in Islamic thought, similar to Lenin`s transformation of Marxism when he posited the intellectuals as the vanguard of the proletariat. Khomeini may indeed have been influenced by Leninism via Iraqi Baathism, as Ervand Abrahamian has speculated. In Khomeini`s system, the clerics are the vanguard of the Imam (Shiites believe the Imam is absent, in a supernatural realm, but will someday return--rather as Christians believe of Christ).

Although Abdul Aziz al-Hakim now denies it, he has long supported Khomeini`s ideology.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani rejected the rule of the jurisprudent in political affairs, for which he is disliked by hardliners in Iran. But he affirms the guardianship of the jurisprudent in "social affairs." That is, he feels the clerics should intervene through their rulings (fatwas) to ensure that Islamic law and Islamic principles are upheld by any Muslim-majority parliament. Obviously, this stance is not the same as a separation of religion and state. Rather, it is simply an insistence that clerics influence the state indirectly, rather than ruling themselves.

SCIRI has for many years accepted the guardianship of the jurisprudent in political affairs. Dawa`s position is closer to that of Khomeini, but the party does hope to implement Islamic law or shariah as the law of the land.

A big victory for the largely Shiite United Iraqi Alliance probably will not lead to clerical rule, though Abdul Aziz al-Hakim said in spring of 2003 that he hoped the Shiite majority would eventually make its will felt. But it is likely to lead formerly rather secular Iraq toward greater implementation of Islamic law or shariah. If the Sunni Arabs boycott in large numbers and end up underrepresented, this situation would magnify the power of the Shiite parties, including the theocratic ones.

posted by Juan @ 12/28/2004 06:20:51 AM

Arato Guest Editorial: The Iraqi Constitution



The Iraqi Constitution: A Modest Proposal

Andrew Arato

Iraq is on the verge of a disaster that is ultimately of our making. The United States has imposed a political process on Iraq characterized by the exclusion of the main representatives of militant, and organized actors fully capable of acting on their own behalf. If elections are held now the constitution-making National Assembly will dramatically under-represent Sunni Arab minority, many of whom are already “negotiating” with weapons in hand.

If elections were postponed however, it is the the Shi’ite Arab majority that might very will explode, and with considerable justification. They too, led by the Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani, have regarded the imposed process and the delay of free elections with anger and suspicion.

The obvious problem is that a legitimate, new constitution in a divided society cannot be made except with the full participation of all major, potentially contentious groups of the country. Iraq missed out on a Hungarian- or South African-type Round Table that could prepare such participation, and now free elections alone can produce the partners in constitution making. But the results of the elections are likely to be seriously distorted because of the insurrection, even assuming that the Shi’ite majority is capable of guarding against electoral fraud and manipulation on the part of the interim government.

Changing the mistaken, single district electoral law might have been the most useful suggestion for avoiding catastrophe, but it is now unfortunately too late. There are, however, alternatives once a constitutional National Assembly is elected that would deal with the same problem of regional or ethnic or party-political under-representation as long as that representation does not drop to zero. The most obvious one is setting up a constitution drafting committee based on party parity, and a qualified majority rule. Constitutions are not actually drafted by plenary sessions, here the probable locus of misrepresentation, but parliamentary committees where that representation can be corrected. I worked on constitution-making in Hungary 1994-96, and in particular on a scheme by which a 75 % governmental majority was greatly reduced to give real participation rights to the opposition, on the drafting committee level. Parliament could only vote on drafts that came out of a committee in which there was almost parity among 5-6 parties. Something like this, less formally but more successfully was done in Spain in 1977.

Let us assume for the sake of argument a National Assembly with 60% for the Shi’ite led block (The Iraqi United Alliance), 20% for the Kurdistan List and 10% for a combination of various authentic Sunni Arab lists, 5% for the governmental list of Allawi, and 5% for various other groupings. In this case, a 15-person committee could be set up having 3 expert members for each of these groupings, with the requirement that positive decisions (preferably on single clauses) be taken by 12 out of 15 members. The majority would still be protected, since nothing could be adopted without its plenary votes. The Kurdish minority could be protected too if in addition the rule were adopted that a final draft requires the support of 80% of the members of the National Assembly.

The combination of these provisions would be preferable even for the Kurds to the three-province veto available in the current interim constitution, the Temporary Administrative Law. As that poorly drafted and hastily imposed document is written, a simple parliamentary majority can apparently adopt a new constitution, while the negative vote of 2/3 of merely three provinces--hence possibly as few as 1/10 of the populatio--can block ratification. This arrangement is entirely unstable, and the leaders of the Shi’ite majority have never accepted it. They could very well repudiate it along with all other restrictions originally imposed by the occupying power.

There is a desperate need therefore to negotiate new and legitimate but less crippling counter-majoritarian limitations in constitution making. There is an even more obvious need for the leaders of the majority to clearly signal their intentions right now to undertake such negotiations after the elections.

Andrew Arato
Professor
The New School University


posted by Juan @ [url12/28/2004 06:03:07 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/arato-guest-editorial-iraqi.html[/url]

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How can religious people explain something like this?

Earthquakes led 18th-century thinkers to ask questions we shy away from
Martin Kettle
Tuesday December 28, 2004

Guardian
The modern era flatters itself that human beings can now know and shape almost everything about the world. But an event like the Indonesian earthquake exposes much of this for the hubris that it is.

Perhaps we have talked so much about our civilisation`s potential to destroy the planet that we have forgotten that the planet also has an untamed ability to destroy civilisation too. Whatever else it has achieved, the Indian Ocean tsunami has at least reminded mankind of its enduring vulnerability in the face of nature. The scale of suffering that it has wreaked - 20,000 deaths and counting - shows that we share such dangers with our ancestors more fully than most of us realised.

An entirely understandable reaction to such an event is to set one`s face against any large questions that it may raise. But this week provides an unsought opportunity to consider the largest of all human implications of any major earthquake: its challenge to religion.

A few days after the 9/11 attacks on New York, I had dinner with the Guardian`s late columnist Hugo Young. We were still so close to the event itself that only one topic of conversation was possible. At one stage I asked Hugo how his Catholicism allowed him to explain such a terrible act. I`m afraid that`s an easy one, he replied.

We are all fallen beings, Hugo declared, and our life in this world is a vale of tears. So some human beings will always kill one another. The attack on New York should therefore be seen not as an act of God, but as an act of fallen humanity. Then he paused, and added: "But I admit I have much more difficulty with earthquakes."

Earthquakes and the belief in the judgment of God are, indeed, very hard to reconcile. However, no religion that offers an explanation of the world can avoid making some kind of an attempt to fit the two together. And an immense earthquake like the one that took place off Sumatra on Sunday inevitably poses that challenge afresh in dramatic terms.

There is, after all, only one big question to ask about an event of such destructive power as the one that has taken place this week: why did it happen?

As with previous earthquakes, any explanation of this latest one poses us a sharp intellectual choice. Either there is an entirely natural explanation for it, or there is some other kind. Even the natural one is by no means easy to imagine, but it is at least wholly coherent.

The tsunami took place, say the seismologists, because a massive tectonic rupture on the sea bed generated tremors through the ocean. These unimaginable forces sent their energy coursing across thousands of miles of water, resulting in death and destruction in a vast arc from Somalia to Indonesia.

But what do world views that do not allow scientists undisputed authority have to say about such phenomena? Where do the creationists stand, for example? Such world views are more widespread, even now, than a secularised society such as ours sometimes prefers to think.

For most of human history people have tried to explain earthquakes as acts of divine intervention and displeasure. Even as the churches collapsed around them in 1755, Lisbon`s priests insisted on salvaging crucifixes and religious icons with which to ward off the catastrophe that would kill more than 50,000 of their fellow citizens.

Others, though, began to draw different conclusions. Voltaire asked what kind of God could permit such a thing to occur. Did Lisbon really have so many more vices than London or Paris, he asked, that it should be punished in such a appalling and indiscriminate manner? Immanuel Kant was so amazed by what happened to Lisbon that he wrote three separate treatises on the problem of earthquakes.

Our own society seems to be more squeamish about such things. The need for mutual respect between peoples and traditions of which the Queen spoke in her Christmas broadcast seems to require that we must all respect religions in equal measure, too. The government, indeed, is legislating to prevent expressions of religious hatred in ways that could put a cordon around the critical discussion of religion itself.

Yet it is hard to think of any event in modern times that requires a more serious explanation from the forces of religion than this week`s earthquake. Voltaire`s 18th-century question to Christians - why Lisbon? - ought to generate a whole series of 21st-century equivalents for all the religions of the world.

Certainly the giant waves generated by the quake made no attempt to differentiate between the religions of those whom it made its victims. Hindus were swept away in India, Muslims were carried off in Indonesia, Buddhists in Thailand. Visiting Christians and Jews received no special treatment either. This poses no problem for the scientific belief system. Here, it says, was a mindless natural event, which destroyed Muslim and Hindu alike.

A non-scientific belief system, especially one that is based on any kind of notion of a divine order, has some explaining to do, however. What God sanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves, struggling for life?

From at least the time of Aristotle, intelligent people have struggled to make some sense of earthquakes. Earthquakes do not merely kill and destroy. They challenge human beings to explain the world order in which such apparently indiscriminate acts can occur. Europe in the 18th century had the intellectual curiosity and independence to ask and answer such questions. But can we say the same of 21st-century Europe? Or are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do such things?

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Artist Stephen Pitt at [urllight-to-dark.com]http://www.light-to-dark.com/Stephen_Pitt_Cartoons.html[/url]

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Er will die Bücher nicht verbrennen, sondern nur vergraben.
Nach dem Kampf gegen die Wissenschaft und Kultur, kommt meist der Kampf gegen die Menschen, die dahinter stehen.
Dazu ein Hinweis auf einen Artikel aus der NYTimes vom 21.12., der auch damit zusammenhängt:
December 21, 2004
U.S. Slips in Attracting the World`s Best Students
By SAM DILLON
Hier im Thread #249751

`We have to protect people`

President Bush wants `pro-homosexual` drama banned. Gary Taylor meets the politician in charge of making it happen
Gary Taylor
Thursday December 9, 2004

Guardian
What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? "Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it." Don`t laugh. Gerald Allen`s book-burying opinions are not a joke.

Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. "Oh no," he laughs. "It`s my fifth meeting with Mr Bush."

Bush is interested in Allen`s opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush`s base. Last week, Bush`s base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers` money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". That`s why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?

No, nothing like that. "It was election day," he explains. Last month, "14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman". Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and "moral values in this country" were "the top of the list".

"Traditional family values are under attack," Allen informs me. They`ve been under attack "for the last 40 years". The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is "Hollywood, the music industry". We have an obligation to "save society from moral destruction". We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from "re-engineering society`s fabric in the minds of our children". We have to "protect Alabamians".

I ask him, again, for specific examples. Although heterosexuals are apparently an endangered species in Alabama, and although Allen is a local politician who lives a couple miles from my house, he can`t produce any local examples. "Go on the internet," he recommends. "Some time when you`ve got a week to spare," he jokes, "just go on the internet. You`ll see."

Actually, I go on the internet every day. But I`m obviously searching for different things. For Allen, the web is just the largest repository in history of urban myths. The internet is even better than the Bible when it comes to spreading unverifiable, unrefutable stories. And urban myths are political realities. Remember, it was an urban myth (an invented court case about a sex education teacher gang-raped by her own students who, when she protested, laughed and said: "But we`re just doing what you taught us!") that all but killed sex education in America.

Since Allen couldn`t give me a single example of the homosexual equivalent of 9/11, I gave him some. This autumn the University of Alabama theatre department put on an energetic revival of A Chorus Line, which includes, besides "tits and ass", a prominent gay solo number. Would Allen`s bill prevent university students from performing A Chorus Line? It isn`t that he`s against the theatre, Allen explains. "But why can`t you do something else?" (They have done other things, of course. But I didn`t think it would be a good idea to mention their sold-out productions of Angels in America and The Rocky Horror Show.)

Cutting off funds to theatre departments that put on A Chorus Line or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may look like censorship, and smell like censorship, but "it`s not censorship", Allen hastens to explain. "For instance, there`s a reason for stop lights. You`re driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop." Who can argue with something as reasonable as stop lights? Of course, if you`re gay, this particular traffic light never changes to green.

It would not be the first time Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ran into censorship. As Nicholas de Jongh documents in his amusingly appalling history of government regulation of the British theatre, the British establishment was no more enthusiastic, half a century ago, than Alabama`s Allen. "Once again Mr Williams vomits up the recurring theme of his not too subconscious," the Lord Chamberlain`s Chief Examiner wrote in 1955. In the end, it was first performed in London at the New Watergate Club, for "members only", thereby slipping through a loophole in the censorship laws.

But more than one gay playwright is at a stake here. Allen claims he is acting to "encourage and protect our culture". Does "our culture" include Shakespeare? I ask Allen if he would insist that copies of Shakespeare`s sonnets be removed from all public libraries. I point out to him that Romeo and Juliet was originally performed by an all-male cast, and that in Shakespeare`s lifetime actors and audiences at the public theatres were all accused of being "sodomites". When Romeo wished he "was a glove upon that hand", the cheek that he fantasised about kissing was a male cheek. Next March the Alabama Shakespeare festival will be performing a new production of As You Like It, and its famous scene of a man wooing another man. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival is also the State Theatre of Alabama. Would Allen`s bill cut off state funding for Shakespeare?

"Well," he begins, after a pause, "the current draft of the bill does not address how that is going to be handled. I expect details like that to be worked out at the committee stage. Literature like Shakespeare and Hammet [sic] could be left alone." Could be. Not "would be". In any case, he says, "you could tone it down". That way, if you`re not paying real close attention, even a college graduate like Allen himself "could easily miss" what was going on, the "subtle" innuendoes and all.

So he regards his gay book ban as a work in progress. His legislation is "a single spoke in the wheel, it doesn`t resolve all the issues". This is just the beginning. "To turn a big ship around it takes a lot of time."

But make no mistake, the ship is turning. You can see that on the face of Cornelius Carter, a professor of dance at Alabama and a prize-winning choreographer who, not long ago, was named university teacher of the year for the entire US. Carter is black. He is also gay, and tired of fighting these battles. "I don`t know," he says, "if I belong here any more."

Forty years ago, the American defenders of "our culture" and "traditional values" were opposing racial integration. Now, no politician would dare attack Cornelius Carter for being black. But it`s perfectly acceptable to discriminate against people for what they do in bed.

"Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it."

Of course, Allen was talking about books. He was just talking about books. He never said anything about pink triangles.
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Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Discussion Topic for Tuesday, December 28, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Does The Bush Administration Want An Iraqi Civil War?

If you start with the premise that the Busheviks invaded Iraq in order to, one, control its resources, and two, have a base to project power throughout the Middle East, then from a pure power politics perspective there are several reasons why they might think a low intensity civil war in Iraq could be advantageous.

First, in a violently divided society, the small but powerful US force can tip the balance one way or another as it suits them.

Second, a population fighting with itself is distracted from fighting directly against the occupiers.

Third, it gives a continual excuse for intervention.

So what do you think? Even for this crowd of Mayberry Machiavellis, does that idea exceed the bounds of cynicism? No, strike that, nothing is too cynical for this bunch. But does it exceed the bounds of competence? That`s a tougher call. I mean, everything that has gone wrong in Iraq, everything that has increased the strains in the social fabric, that has cut the connections between different Iraqi groups, could result from ineptitude rather than from deliberate strategy. And these guys have demonstrated a magnificent, almost sublime, incompetence in everything they`ve tried with the exception of stealing stuff, whether resources, elections, whatever.

So what do you think?

Usual rules - comment on the topic here, use the comments from the news thread for news. Thanks!

.

# posted by matt : 7:07 AM
Comments (2) | Trackback (0)
<>War News for Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Bring ‘em on: Twelve Iraqi police executed in attack in Dijla. Three policemen shot dead outside of Tikrit. Four police and an ING soldier killed in Ishaki. Local police commander assassinated in Baquba. Three ING soldiers and three civilians killed in bombing in Samarra.

B<>ring ‘em on: Militants claim to have executed eight Iraqi employees of American company The Sandi Group. Five ING soldiers killed and twenty six wounded in bombing in Baquba. Five civilians killed and dozens wounded in car bombing in Muradiya. One policeman killed when gunmen attack a station in Mosul. Ten people, including three children, wounded in car bombing in Samarra. Three policemen injured in mortar attack in Mufriq.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqi police killed and three wounded in four separate attacks on police checkpoints in Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: Six wounded in car bombing attack on ING general in Baghdad.


Unfortunate message: For the military personnel on the front lines — and their families and friends — the war is exacting bitter costs. For all other Americans, even for the officials whose decisions sent the troops into battle and shaped the conditions under which they are fighting and dying, the war is imposing no discernible consequences. Like the Civil War, when a rich draftee in the North could hire a poor man to take his place, and Vietnam with its loophole-ridden draft, the Iraq war risks being stained by systemic inequity.

Soldiers tend to salute not complain, but this war is straining the military so much that "volunteer service" may no longer precisely describe it. Ordinarily, the Pentagon limits each soldier to one overseas deployment every four or five years. But nearly one-third of the roughly 1 million U.S. troops who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq have been forced to serve more than one tour of combat duty, the Boston Globe reported last month.

Like his tax cuts, Bush`s personnel decisions are sending the unfortunate message that no one apart from the soldiers on the ground and their families should pay any price for this war. If the cause in Iraq is as vital as Bush insists, all Americans should contribute.


A pity: What puzzled many of us who had listened to Shinseki was the contrast between his emphasis on careful military planning and how shortsighted the administration was in preparing for the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. Before the war, Shinseki`s Army planners were not once consulted by Rumsfeld`s office. The State Department`s planning proposal for postwar Iraq was similarly ignored by the administration.

It was a case of an outside group of civilian neoconservatives moving into the Pentagon and arrogantly taking over the military. Heedless of any advice to the contrary, Rumsfeld`s "shock and awe" attack gained an apparent quick victory at the cost of postwar policy. Some 20 months after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq remains in pieces, with anti-American fervor strong and our military victory tarnished by a stubborn insurgency and the needless brutalities at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

If this is what Rumsfeld`s idea of "transformation" has brought us, it`s a pity we didn`t try Shinseki`s.


Love this first line: U.S. President George W. Bush claims his policy is to promote democracy because democratic countries do not wage aggressive wars.

Most observers think it very unlikely that democracy can be imposed on Iraq, which has no democratic traditions and is, in any case, deeply divided among the Shiite majority, a Sunni minority and a large Kurdish population. It seems improbable that full, free and fair elections can be held in Iraq on Jan. 30, as planned, even if security in the main centers of population can be assured.

The best that can be hoped for is the emergence of an Iraqi regime that can claim a reasonable element of legitimacy. After all that has happened in Iraq since March 2003, it is inevitable that the new regime will be judged according to how it stands up for Iraqi rights and brings together the various elements in Iraq. It will have to be nationalist in its policies, if it is to win the backing of the Iraqi people. Above all it must not be viewed as an American puppet. It must be prepared to criticize and oppose U.S. policies if it considers them not in Iraq`s national interes<>t.


The Iraq you have: The Wasington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIC) said on Wednesday that the US is facing increasingly deadly attacks in Iraq because it has failed to honestly assess facts on the ground.

And in a report published on the same day, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said Iraqi hostility towards the US-led "occupation" means that Washington can no longer achieve its pre-war goals.

The US said its initial objective was to turn Iraq into a model for the region - a democratic, secular and free-market oriented government, sympathetic to US interests, not openly hostile towards Israel, and possibly home to long-term American military bases.

"Washington has to realise - you occupy the Iraq you have, not the Iraq you might wish to have later," said Robert Malley, director of the IGC`s Middle East/North Africa Programme.


The Iraq Civil War

Black hordes: It is unsettling that even some of Allawi`s supporters are contributing to heightened tensions. They have been inciting Iraqis to a level of hatred that had previously been preached only by extremist fringe groups, and are being backed by politicians ranging well into the ranks of moderate groups. Allawi`s defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, has demonized the election alliance headed by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim. "Iran is Iraq`s and the Arab world`s most dangerous enemy," Shaalan told a group of American and military personnel and NATO officers in Baghdad. "We must focus all of our efforts on stopping these advancing black hordes," he said. Shaalan`s words may have reminded some in his audience of Saddam`s anti-Persian propaganda during the Iraq/Iran war. But the central message in Shaalan`s election campaign - that the black-turbaned Shiite mullahs plan to establish a "dictatorship of Islam" -- has long been a standard argument of Washington`s foreign policy hawks.


Triple setback: The drive to hold nationwide elections in Iraq on Jan. 30 may have suffered a triple setback yesterday with the suicide car bombing of a major Shiite leader`s residence, the withdrawal from the race by the main Sunni party and a call to boycott the elections apparently by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

U.S. and Iraqi officials hope the elections to create a new government will cool the country`s simmering political passions and stanch a violent rebellion by Sunni Arabs resentful of their diminished status following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

But the six-week official campaign season appears to have raised sectarian tensions, with recent violence apparently aimed at driving the country`s two Muslim sects into civil war.


The ethnic card: Iraq faces the prospect of civil war as Prime Minister Iyad Allawi`s government loses credibility and violence against U.S. forces increases, according to almost a half dozen former and serving administration officials.

Upcoming January elections will not improve the deteriorating security situation, these sources said, all speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitiveness of the topic.

Plus a new threat has arisen.

"We are starting to play the ethnic card in Iraq, just as the Soviets played it in Afghanistan," said former CIA chief of Afghanistan operation Milt Bearden.

"You only play it when you`re losing and by playing it, you simply speed up the process of losing," he said.


These Are The Real Americans

Families of US troops killed in the offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah are to travel to Jordan next week with $600,000 worth of humanitarian aid for refugees.

The November assault on Fallujah left 71 US military dead, according to the families, and the Iraqi government said more than 2 000 Iraqis had been killed.

"This delegation is a way for me to express my sympathy and support for the Iraqi people," said Rosa Suarez of Escondido in California.

"The Iraqi war took away my son`s life, and it has taken away the lives of so many innocent Iraqis. It is time to stop the killing and to help the children of Iraq"

Regardless of their religious affiliations, these people have more of the true spirit of Christianity in their eyelashes than you can find in the entire so-called religious right.


Casualty Reports

Local story: Oklahoma soldier wounded in Mosul.

Local story: Lincoln County, MT, Marine killed in Al Anbar province.

Local story: Loyal, WI, National Guardsman killed in Samarra.

Local story: Camp Marez bids farewell to four soldiers killed in mess hall bombing.


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ROBERT SCHEER
A Devil`s Island for Our Times
How can we let this evil persist?
Robert Scheer

December 28, 2004

It is time to invade Cuba and put an end to what has become another Devil`s Island in the annals of government-sanctioned torture. The barbaric treatment of political prisoners on the island is made no more palatable by being conducted in the name of an ideology that claims to be liberating the world from its shackles.

Once again, we are witnesses to the ugly truth bound up in that philosophical contradiction that the ends can justify the means: Desecrations of the human body and spirit can never be righteously justified by high-minded appeals to the needs of the masses. Fortunately, a few brave U.S. intelligence agents have managed to penetrate the security of a morally repugnant Cuban gulag and documented both the barbaric acts occurring on the island and their state-sanctioned rationalizations.

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water," wrote an FBI agent who gained access to the prison compound. "Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more."

Also reported by U.S. agents: freezing or very hot cells; feverish prisoners left untreated; loud music and strobe lights directed for long periods at prisoners in solitary confinement; growling dogs used to frighten prisoners.

The prisoners themselves have testified to even worse tortures, their stories smuggled out by lawyers after they had been held incommunicado for years. Beatings that ended in injury and even death. Forced sex acts, often videotaped for use as blackmail. Coerced confessions. Injections of unknown drugs. The prisoners` claims were so outrageous that many of their attorneys did not believe the stories until U.S. government documents corroborated key aspects.

"Now there is no question that these guys have been tortured," said Brent Mickum, a Washington attorney for one of the roughly 10% of detainees at the camp who have finally secured legal representation. "Every allegation that I`ve heard has now come to pass and been confirmed by the government`s own papers."

Even more troubling is that the FBI agents make it clear this is not the work of a few poorly supervised sadists. Their reports refer to what they described as a new — and very much secret — executive order on prisoner treatment by the president at the top of the camp`s chain of command, which allowed for severe interrogation tactics, including "sleep deprivation and stress positions" combined with "loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects and prisoners with hoods on their heads."

So, shouldn`t such leaders who authorize state torture be on trial for war crimes? Ah, but the torturers always tell us, such high-minded thinking does not square with real-world exigencies. The "people" must be protected at all costs! Never mind that the inevitable revelations of such outrages cost immeasurable goodwill around the world in what amounts to a global war for hearts and minds. Short-term pain for long-term gain is always the name of the game. But in this case, there is not even that justification — not a single detainee has been proved in a court of law to be a terrorist.

This Kafkaesque gulag, like others in human history, is an expression of a governing doctrine that defines morality as simply an expression of power: Might makes right. What the system can get away with, it does, unless reined in by the people it claims to represent. The ideology invoked in defense of the indefensible does not matter, for it has by that time been reduced to noble-sounding yet ultimately empty slogans, which clumsily paper over a steady erosion of the sanctity of individual rights.

This is what we can see so clearly at the American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, if only we have the stomach to bear witness. Yes, all of the above is a description of "Gitmo," the colonial-style U.S. prison camp run by American soldiers and paid for with American dollars.

The president who apparently authorized a global reign of prisoner torture in the "war on terror" is our own elected leader, not a convenient caricature of a foreign dictator. The military and legal systems that have looked the other way are our own.

Unfortunately, we look more and more like our enemies every day. On an island invaded, sabotaged and barred from U.S. trade and even tourism in the name of spreading our version of democracy, we have erected a massive torture chamber any deranged dictator would envy.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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The New York Times über:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122804F.shtml
December 26, 2004
China Expands. Europe Rises. And the United States . . .
By FRED KAPLAN

T`S a risky business to predict the decline of the American empire. Ask Paul Kennedy, the Yale historian, who issued such a forecast in his 1987 book, "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers," only to witness an almost immediate American resurgence.
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Yet the signposts, at the end of this year, are ominous. As an economic power, the United States no longer sets the rules, much less rule the game. As a military power, it vastly outguns the rest of the world, but has a harder time translating armed might into influence.

On March 1, the European Union announced that it was raising import tariffs on a long list of American products, and would go on raising them each month until Congress repealed a subsidy for American exporters that had been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization. Congressmen railed against this intrusion but finally gave in. Americans realized that, in the global economy they largely created and for 60 years dominated, they could no longer do whatever they wanted.

Last month, China`s president, Hu Jintao, embarked on a 12-day tour of Latin America, and wound up making commitments to invest $30 billion in the region. China is now Brazil`s second largest trading partner and Chile`s largest export market. In trade, technology, investment, education and culture, China has been displacing the United States all across Asia, and is now starting to do the same in America`s backyard.

There is nothing necessarily alarming about an expansive China or an emergent Europe, except perhaps that they coincide with a growing American dependence on both.

The United States government spent $650 billion more this year than it raised in revenue, and financed the deficit largely by borrowing from foreign central banks, mainly those of Japan and China. They have been willing creditors because American consumers send much of the money right back by purchasing foreign-made products. It`s a neat balancing act, to a point. But the American accumulated debt to foreign investors has now swelled to $3.3 trillion - 28 percent of gross domestic product, nearly double the share of four years ago.

In the 1990`s, the United States admonished Mexico and Argentina to get their economic houses in order. This month, the Chinese premier gave Washington a strikingly similar lecture.

These imbalances are not inherently disastrous. The Chinese get something out of the deal, a ready consumer market for their overheated production lines. If they stop lending to the United States, it would cause a deep recession here, but then Americans could not buy as many of their goods, and the recession would ricochet right back to Asia.

It`s a variation on the old joke: If you owe the bank $1 billion, the bank owns you; if you owe the bank $1 trillion, you own the bank.

But what if another trillion-dollar customer walked into the bank? The bankers might be more willing to foreclose on the debtor, knowing that they could pick up business from the new tycoon.

The European Union, in many respects, is looking more and more like this new tycoon. Its currency, the euro, has risen in value by 35 percent against the dollar in the last three years.

Again, that is not necessarily bad. In theory, a falling dollar makes American exports cheaper, attracting demand that then boosts the dollar; a rising euro crimps European exports, which then lowers the euro; equilibrium is restored. In reality, this process unfolds slowly and shakily: in October, for instance, American exports rose, but American imports soared, too.

A more serious consequence of the dollar`s fall is that the euro has become more rewarding for foreign investors, and they are reacting accordingly. In 2001, Middle Eastern oil-producing countries kept 75 percent of their currency reserves in dollars; now the figure is 61 percent, with much of the rest in euros. Chinese and Russian central bankers are also shifting reserves. This trend, at some point, could set off a spiral: the dollar declines, causing further sell-offs, leading to a further decline, and so on.

When the dollar has fallen in the past, the United States was a net creditor and there was no serious rival currency. Neither condition holds true now. As The Economist recently put it, "Never before has the guardian of the world`s main reserve currency been its biggest net debtor."

Financiers and diplomats are beginning to ask: How much longer will the dollar remain the world`s principal reserve currency? One could also ask, how much longer can the United States remain, as Madeleine Albright put it, "the indispensable country" of world politics?

This year, the United States spent nearly as much on its military as all other countries combined. No other nation possesses, or aspires to, anything like the reach of American armed forces.

Yet, if someday the United States finds that it can no longer count on foreigners to bankroll its deficits, it may also find that it can no longer afford a globe-spanning military. The war in Iraq has already stretched America`s forces to the limit. In the 1970`s and 1980`s, when Pentagon strategists spoke of a two-front war, they envisioned having to fight simultaneously in, say, Germany and Korea. Today, they mean Mosul and Falluja.

About 40 percent of the American troops in Iraq are from the National Guard and Reserves, "weekend warriors" who never figured on serving long combat tours. As a result, Guard recruitment has fallen by 30 percent. If there is no large Guard and Reserve, there is no large Army. In short, not only has the Iraq war been harder than many imagined, it has also made going to war elsewhere a less practical option - and a less credible threat.

The economic trends are worrisome because they stem not just from market forces but also from politics. As T. R. Reid notes in his new book "The United States of Europe," the euro "was specifically designed to challenge the global hegemony of the dollar." Similarly, China`s rivalry with the United States in Asia and Latin America isn`t a side effect of economics; it`s an explicit ambition.

These challenges will take decades to unfold, and may not succeed. China may recoil from its manufacturing boom and its excesses; Europeans could revert to age-old continental tensions. The United States may revive itself through changes in policy.

Meanwhile, power is not transferring so much as dispersing. It may turn out, if trends continue, that no country or bloc of countries possesses the combination of economic and military power needed to reward the good, deter or punish the bad and impose international rules, order and security.

A multipolar world can be a chaotic place. The danger is not so much that the United States may lose power, but that the globe`s new rivals may fail to strike and manage a balance of power. End-of-the-year Cassandras traditionally predict doom, gloom and anarchy. This year they`re looking less preposterous.

Fred Kaplan is the national security columnist for Slate.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 by the Boston Globe
A Year of Living Dangerously
by James Carroll


The turning of the year is one of the great markers. Time runs out on one period and begins anew on a next one. Memory and anticipation meet.

Observing an old ritual, I pull out my thumb-worn appointment book and flip through the soiled pages to recall what 2004 was made of. Going back to last January, the notations fill me with surprise. Could it have been almost a year since that sweet night at the opera? How did all those morning meetings come to so little? Why was I traveling so much?

To glimpse my life whole, week by week, is to recapitulate one of the year`s great feelings -- which was, alas, of being harried. I recognize myself anew as a man at the mercy of this very book. Yet now, its blank places are what leap out at me, the unscheduled hours and days, intervals of home and intimacy of which there was no need, week by week, to be reminded.

In the public realm, the year just past was passionate. The misbegotten war revealed itself explosively, especially at year`s end, but it had already turned the unfolding presidential election into the meaning by which, for many, hope itself was measured.

In Boston, the impossibilities of politics were defined by the counter-drama of baseball. After the World Series, Red Sox fans had to reinvent their understanding of themselves; a people doomed no longer. Such reordering of self-image was a positive version of the negative task with which, after the election, many Americans were then charged -- citizens facing the truth of their status as passengers on a death ship whose course was set without them.

2004 will be remembered not least as the year when the tragedy of Iraq showed itself fully for what it was, and when, nevertheless, those responsible for this catastrophe were recommissioned by voters to carry on.

I confess that, looking back on this recent American past, I find myself deeply saddened. If that note seems unduly grave, or partisan, for this festive week, apologies. In truth, few Americans seem happy with what we are becoming. The expansive sense of historic open-endedness, so palpable across all political divides a mere five years ago, as the year 2000 was dawning, has been replaced by a national claustrophobia, with the growing suspicion that we are hedged in by walls of our own creation.

Yes, fear and a sense of victimhood understandably stalked us in 2001, but instead of shaking those alien feelings off, we used them to construct an emergency garrison, from which we take aim at others, but which, also, is turning out to be our self-made brig.

Iraq, above all, is our prison, the place where America has taken its own self hostage. Thousands and thousands of men, women, and children who meant us no harm are now dead because of our striking out so blindly. And many more are living on the edge of disaster. But we Americans, too, are victims of our mistake. It is not only that options in Iraq seem so limited (How, exactly, do we get out? Well, by getting out), but also that the deathtrap of that war has come to define a vast shrinking of possibility, as the shape of our new century begins to actually show itself.

Only five years ago, the uncharted future was spread before us. We were an optimistic and confident people. Our firm membership in the global community was as clear as the televised sequence of midnight celebrations -- Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg, Paris -- that circled the earth at the glorious millennium. Watching that rotation on an axis of joy, the only "homeland" we wanted was the very planet, and our "security" was everyone`s. The human family was never more aware of itself than that night, and we Americans were never more a part of it.

But this year, what a lonely nation we have become. And to how many fewer peoples are we the tribune of hope. How like exile is our "homeland," and what is "security" if it depends on suspicion of those who are unlike us?

The point of the New Year, traditionally, is to leave such brooding behind, but this broadly felt emotional weight is a warning that great things are at stake in America`s argument with itself. Equally, it is a summons to resolution -- New Year`s resolution -- to do nothing less, at last, than say no to the war in a way that will be heard.

James Carroll`s column appears regularly in the Globe. His most recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."

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Military Fatalities: Total: 1479 , US: 1328 , Dez.04: 72

Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Wednesday, December 29, 2004
<>War News for Wednesday, December 29, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: At least 29 people killed, including seven Iraqi policemen, in bombing ambush in Baghdad. About three quarters of a ton of explosives were detonated when the house was raided by police responding to an anonymous tip.

Bring ‘em on: Turkish truck driver killed near Biddiyah. Female engineer and another person working for the US Army killed near Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: In addition to many deaths reported in yesterday’s post, this article lists: One US soldier and five Iraqi interior ministry commandoes wounded in bomb attack in Samarra. ING casualties in Baquba bombing increased to six killed. Two policemen killed in Shorgat. Iraqi interpreter for the US army killed and an Iraqi businessman with him kidnapped in the same area. Three Iraqi businessmen killed in Suleyman Beg. Iraqi policeman shot and wounded in Ad Dawr. Another policeman killed in Balad. Deputy provincial governor kidnapped and shot to death in Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Renewed fighting between insurgents and US forces in Mosul, including air strikes, after a fuel truck driven by a suicide bomber exploded near an American position, no casualties reported yet. New clashes reported in Samarra. Four policemen and ING soldiers killed in Sufiyah. ING soldier killed in Siniya, where more than 100 Guardsmen walked out after their commander was killed by a car bomb along with several Guards this month.


The continuing failure of the US media: The role of the media in the siege of Falluja has been nearly as extraordinary as the battle itself. The siege began on November 8, but by Nov. 15 the military had declared “victory” and the story disappeared from all the major media. It was as if the Pentagon had simply issued an edict forbidding any further coverage of the conflict, and the press left without protest.

The fact is, the siege is ongoing and the final results are far from certain. A city of 250,000 has been evacuated; as many as 20,000 American servicemen have been engaged in the operation with “the largest concentration of heavy armor in one place, since the fall of Berlin”. The military is proceeding with house-to-house searches and bombing raids are still being conducted on a regular basis. The siege of Falluja continues to be a huge story, despite the fact that the establishment media is nowhere to be found. How do we explain the sudden and complete desertion of the media from the largest operation since the fall of Baghdad? Did Rumsfeld simply tell them to pack their cameras and go home?


Apples to apples: In the three-week battle for Hue, 147 Marines were killed and 857 wounded. In the twin battles for Fallujah, more than 104 soldiers and Marines have been killed and more than 1,100 wounded in a battle that will continue to take lives, like the three Marines who encountered yet another pocket of fighters last week.

Hue and Fallujah provide one of the best generational comparisons of combat because both battles unfolded similarly. Without controlling for any of the advances in medical technology, medical evacuation, body armor, or military technology, U.S. losses in Fallujah almost equal those of Hue. If you factor in the improvements in medical technology alone, then the fight for Fallujah was just as costly (or maybe more so) as that for Hue, as measured by the number of mortal wounds sustained by U.S. troops.


The less visible toll: The psychological toll from the war in Iraq is climbing, according to new research and experts who cite the severe stress of fighting a deadly insurgency. Though the Pentagon says mental health care, including battlefield counseling, is expanding, critics counter that military suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder cases have exposed gaps in how treatment is delivered to soldiers.

"There have been improvements. We have now combat stress teams in Iraq, we have programs for soldiers when they come back," said Stephen Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans advocacy group. "But it`s still the military`s dirty little secret that lives are shattered and often we don`t do enough when the war is over and these people have to deal with the consequences of what they saw and did."


The ever less grand Coalition: All the Ukrainian contingent will be withdrawn from Iraq before the end of 2005, Ukrainian Defence Minister Alexander Kuzmuk stated in the course of his working visit to the Nikolayev garrison.

"We are planning to reduce our contingent by one battalion in 2005. One battalion was already withdrawn in the course of the latest rotation. Next April we shall send to Iraq a reinforced battalion instead of a brigade, and the withdrawal of the entire contingent will be completed before the end of the year,” the minister stated.


"Detainees”: Over 350 foreigners are among about 10,000 detainees being held in US-run prisons in Iraq, Iraq`s Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin Over says.

Mr Amin says 4,691 prisoners were being held in Camp Bucca near the southern port city of Umm Qasr, 3,411 in Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad and 818 in Al-Shuaiba British controlled Basra.

He also says that 104 are being held in Camp Cropper, near Baghdad`s airport, where Saddam and other so-called "high-value" detainees are located<>.


Syria: Syria is responding with a mixture of bravado and denial to mounting accusations by the United States and Iraq that it`s a staging ground for the Iraqi insurgency with key support coming from a half brother of Saddam Hussein and Baath Party leaders here.

The United States succeeded in occupying Iraq, "but it has failed at everything else," Al-Sharaa said Monday. "The problem is that the United States had thought it was making progress in Iraq. But it started to see a change in the past two months and therefore the campaign against Syria comes within the framework of the pressure the occupation forces in Iraq feel."


Other neighbors weigh in: Meanwhile, the Sunni-dominated governments of Iraq`s Arab neighbors have expressed deep unease at elections expected to usher in the first Arab Shiite government. In an editorial Tuesday, the pro-government Egyptian daily Al Ahram echoed concerns Sunni Arab Iraqis would be disenfranchised, which it said would lead to more sectarian violence.

Hossam Zeki, spokesman for the Cairo-based Arab League, has spoken of the potential for a "melting down of the Arab identity in Iraq."

Jordan`s King Abdullah II, in an interview earlier this month with The Washington Post, accused Shiite and Persian Iran of trying to influence the elections, saying Iranians were pouring into Iraq to vote. But Iran also has concerns. Iran`s supreme leader has said the elections will be a sham meant to cement U.S. and British control of Iraq`s resources.


About two months too late: In a historic shift, a majority of Americans express the view that the U.S. made a mistake in going to war against Iraq, according to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll.

The poll, released on Tuesday, shows that 51% now hold this view, with 48% supporting the decision to go to war. In November those numbers were virtually reversed.

In January, 63% approved of the war and 35% disapproved.


Casualty Reports

Local story: Plant City, FL, Marine killed in Al Anbar province.

Local story: Three Virginia soldiers and one Virginia sailor killed in Mosul.

Local story: Minnesota soldier recovers from wounds suffered near Abu Ghraib.

Local story: Gulfport, LA, Seabee killed in Mosul.

Local story: Mount Clemons, MI, Marine killed in ‘non-hostile incident’ in Al Anbar province.


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# posted by matt : 10:19 AM
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Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Discussion Topic for Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Does The Bush Administration Want An Iraqi Civil War?

If you start with the premise that the Busheviks invaded Iraq in order to, one, control its resources, and two, have a base to project power throughout the Middle East, then from a pure power politics perspective there are several reasons why they might think a low intensity civil war in Iraq could be advantageous.

First, in a violently divided society, the small but powerful US force can tip the balance one way or another as it suits them.

Second, a population fighting with itself is distracted from fighting directly against the occupiers.

Third, it gives a continual excuse for intervention.

So what do you think? Even for this crowd of Mayberry Machiavellis, does that idea exceed the bounds of cynicism? No, strike that, nothing is too cynical for this bunch. But does it exceed the bounds of competence? That`s a tougher call. I mean, everything that has gone wrong in Iraq, everything that has increased the strains in the social fabric, that has cut the connections between different Iraqi groups, could result from ineptitude rather than from deliberate strategy. And these guys have demonstrated a magnificent, almost sublime, incompetence in everything they`ve tried with the exception of stealing stuff, whether resources, elections, whatever.

So what do you think?

Usual rules - comment on the topic here, use the comments from the news thread for news. Thanks!

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CRAWFORD, TX (IWR Parody News) - Press Secretary Scott McClellan announced today that President Bush will undergo treatment early next month for his ongoing [urlcharacter disorder]http://www.ministryhealth.net/mh_articles/231_kg_85_character_disorders.html (scroll down for symptoms).

Mr. Bush will be treated as his home in Crawford by the local preacher and snake handler, Reverend Buford Lovejoy, who has a Masters Degree in [urlPhrenology]http://pages.britishlibrary.net/phrenology from the Tijuana Barber College in Mexico.

Mr. Bush recently met Lovejoy at a barbeque at a mutual friend`s house in Crawford and was impressed by the Reverend`s knowledge of Jesus, baseball cards and bumps on the head.

"I could tell right away from George`s heavily cratered head that he was suffering from a classic character disorder.

He`s cocky, arrogant, self-centered, impulsive and never seems to learn from his mistakes at all.

No matter how many times he [urlhits his head on the pavement]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3739515.stm, he still gets back on his mountain bike does it all over again!

Well if George progresses like my average patient, he should recover about the time he receives my first bill or when I move on to blood letting phase of therapy," said Lovejoy as the rattle snake in his hands hissed at reporters.[/url][/url][/url]
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Siehe auch #25052
washingtonpost.com
Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2004;


SPIEGEL ONLINE - 30. Dezember 2004, 12:56
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,334876,00.html

Gefangenentransport

Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A01
Der fliegende Teppich des CIA

Von Joachim Hoelzgen

Die Maschine wird immer dann gesichtet, wenn gefangene Terrorverdächtige in der Welt herumgeflogen werden sollen - oft in Länder, wo sie ohne Rücksicht auf Gesetze vernommen werden können. Jetzt hat eine US-Zeitung das Geheimnis des CIA-Jets gelüftet.

Washinton - Der Anwalt Dean Plakias in Dedham (US-Staat Massachusetts) hat es nicht leicht. Stets muss er im Handelsregister neue Firmen registrieren lassen, ohne in jedem Fall zu wissen, wem sie eigentlich gehören. "Millionen von Unternehmen werden in Massachusetts aufgemacht, die nur auf dem Papier stehen," übertreibt er, um dann rätselvoll hinzuzufügen: "Angelegenheiten von Klienten darf ich nicht erörtern - aus Gründen, die ich selbst nicht kenne."

Bei einer Gesellschaft namens Premier Executive Transport Services, die einen zweistrahligen Jet vom Typ Gulfstream V ihr Eigen nennt, stellt sich jetzt aber ein ebenso geheimniskrämerischer Besitzer heraus: die Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), der Geheimdienst der USA.

Die Gulfstream V der Schlapphüte wird auf bekannten und eher abgelegenen Flughäfen der Welt beobachtet. "Plane spotters" - Flugzeug-Fans, die auf den Airports die Kenn-Nummern von Maschinen notieren - haben den Jet N379 P in Frankfurt, Glasgow und Larnaca auf Zypern gesichtet - am häufigsten aber in Islamabad und Karatschi in Pakistan sowie auf den Flughäfen arabischer Staaten.

Wie eine Art fliegender Teppich kreuzte die N379 P in Riad und Dubai auf, in Kuweit, dem marokkanischen Rabat und auf dem Militärflugplatz Ammans. Aber auch in Taschkent und Baku ist die Gulfstream V schon aufgefallen - und immer wieder landet und startet sie auf dem Dulles International Airport in Washington, offenbar ihre Heimatbasis.

Transportmaschine für Terrorverdächtige

Die Aufgabe der CIA-Maschine ist es, weltweit Terrorverdächtige zu transportieren, vor allem Angehörige des Terrornetzwerks al-Qaida und Krieger des untergegangenen Regimes der Taliban. Die werden als "enemy combatants" ("feindliche Kämpfer") ins Freiluft-Lager von Guantanamo gebracht oder zu Verhören in Länder wie Ägypten, Marokko, Jordanien, Saudi-Arabien und selbst Syrien, dem die USA vorhalten, konsequent gegen die Menschenrechte zu verstoßen.

Die Gefangenenflüge vor allem in solche Länder, in denen die Menschenrechte nur den Rang einer Fußnote besitzen, sind äußerst umstritten. Die World Organization for Human Rights etwa bekämpft den Transport, weil die harschen Verhörmethoden mancher arabischer Drittstaaten in den USA selbst verboten sind. Die Flüge in solche Länder würden gegen die Anti-Folterkonvention der Uno verstoßen, meint der US-Menschenrechtler Morton Sklar.

Zum ersten Mal waren die Gulfstream V und spezielle Methoden des Gefangenentransports dem pakistanischen Journalisten Masood Anwar bekannt geworden. Anwar berichtete im Oktober 2001 von einem Studenten aus dem Jemen, der in Karatschi an Bord der N379 P gebracht wurde - von Männern, darunter amerikanische Soldaten, die durchweg vermummt waren. Der Start mit dem Verdächtigen, der angeblich mit dem Anschlag auf den Zerstörer "Cole" im Hafen von Aden zu tun hatte, geschah in finsterster Nacht: um 2.30 Uhr.

Von einem ähnlichen Fall berichtete im Mai dieses Jahres das schwedische TV-Magazin "Kalla Fakta" (deutsch: "Kalte Fakten"). Wieder waren, diesmal auf dem Stockholmer Flughafen Bromma, Vermummte am Werk. Sie brachten zwei Ägypter in den CIA-Jet, die in Schweden um politisches Asyl gebeten hatten, nun aber in rote Overalls gehüllt waren und zudem Handschellen und Fußfesseln aus Eisen trugen. In Schweden wird nun untersucht, weshalb die Männer nach Ägypten ausgeflogen worden sind.

Flug ins Ungewisse

Das Schicksal der Passagiere ist oft ungewiss. "Wenn man ein richtig ernstes Verhör will, schickt man den Gefangenen nach Jordanien," sagt der Ex-CIA-Beamte Bob Baer. "Wenn jemand gefoltert werden soll, nach Syrien. Und wenn man ihn verschwinden lassen will, dann nach Ägypten." So gilt etwa der Aufenthaltsort eines gewissen Mohammed Madni als unbekannt. Von ihm wurde angenommen, den "Schuhbomber" Richard C. Reid unterstützt zu haben. Auch Madni wurde, und zwar von Indonesien aus, mit der CIA-Maschine nach Ägypten geflogen.

Einen seltenen und manchmal durchaus skurrilen Einblick in die geheime Welt des US-Geheimdienstes und dessen Geheimflügen nahm nun aber die "Washington Post". Die Zeitung hat zunächst den Schleier um die Betreiber des Jets gelüftet, die Premier Executive Transport Services. Die Firma mit nur einem Flugzeug zählte sage und schreibe 325 Manager, die allesamt Postfächer in fünf Postämtern rund um die US-Hauptstadt besaßen.

Ansonsten waren die Jet-Eigner offenbar wohnungslos. Bei 44 Namen gab es weder Adressen, Telefonnummern noch irgendwelche Geschäftsangaben. Die Mehrzahl besaß immerhin eine Sozialversicherungsnummer - die aber alle erst zwischen 1988 und 2003 zugeteilt wurden. Das war schon kurios, denn die Geburtsdaten der vorgeblichen Manager stammten aus den vierziger, fünfziger und sechziger Jahren. Im Jargon der CIA heißt all das "sterile Identität", mit der eine Verbindung zum Geheimdienst verborgen werden soll.

Die Saga der Gulfstream V freilich wird weitergehen: Seit Anfang Dezember hat die Maschine mit interkontinentaler Reichweite (10.900 Kilometer) einen neuen Besitzer: die Firma Bayard Foreign Marketing in Portland (US-Staat Oregon). Sie hat nun nur noch einen Manager, und auch der ist - wie seine Vorgänger - nirgendwo gemeldet und hat nicht einmal ein Telefon.

Und schließlich müssen sich auch die "plane spotters" neu orientieren. Denn die Gulfstream V hat eine neue, bisher noch nicht bekannte Kenn-Nummer.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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Informed Comment
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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Thursday, December 30, 2004

Clashes in Mosul, Samarra

The massive bomb in Baghdad that killed 30 persons and wounded 25 the night of Tuesday- Wednesday turns out to have been an ambush. Guerrillas contacted the Iraqi police, told them the house was a safe house, and when the police approached, they blew it up. They also flattened ten houses around it.

The Guardian also says, "In the southern province of Babil, police said 20 members of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr`s Imam al-Madhi Army militia were detained on suspicion of involvement in planting explosives and attacking police stations in the region."

Guerrillas launched a daring truck bomb attack on US troops in Mosul on Wednesday. The US troops replied with small arms fire and then called in jets to bombard the southern part of the city.

Al-Zaman Students in the Colleges of Science, Engineering and Education at Mosul University demonstrated for the first time Wednesday, demanding that general examinations be postponed for a semester, until early February 2006, instead of being held in summer of 2005. They said that the lack of heating oil made it hard for them to study, and the lack of gasoline made it difficult for many students to get to class.

Al-Zaman: Sources in the police announced that they had discovered the bodies of an Iraqi contractor and a female engineer on the road between Mosul and Tuz, and found the body of a Turkish truck driver in Bid`iyyah just south of Samarra. Two policemen were wounded by guerrillas in the district of Yathrib to the east of Balad.

The National Guards said that they had captured 25 suspects in al-Azamiyah along with weaponry, and another 25 in Mahmudiyah, both districts of Baghdad. They alleged that among those captured in Mahmudiyah were some Syrians. An Egyptian was captured in Karradah, along with pamphlets and grenades. They also said that 8 guerrillas mounted an attack on the National Guards in Rustumiyah, but that they were captured after an exchange of fire. The US military announced that three suspected guerrillas were captured in the district of Balad, and clashes broke out between National Guards and guerrillas in Samarra.

It was announced that two Iraqi children recently led the Marines to a site where roadside bombs were concealed, near Baiji.

Around 12 noon on Wednesday, National Guards and guerrillas clashed in Samarra`s al-Bubaz district, which had witnessed a roadside bomb explosion recently. The National Guards were searching the area near Samarra General Hospital, when guerrillas opened fire on them.

Reuters reported of the Samarra clash that it involved both Iraqi national guards and US troops. The US military announced that two patrols had come under fire. US helicopter gunships were called in, shops closed, and the area was deserted. The previous night, a roadside bomb had wounded one US soldier and five Iraqi policemen in Samarra.

Reuters adds,

"An Iraqi National Guardsman was killed on Wednesday in the Siniya area west of Samarra, an officer in the US-backed force said. Around 110 Guards also resigned after their Siniya commander was killed in a car bomb explosion along with several Guards two weeks ago. The eight-member Siniya village council resigned yesterday following the assassination of its president."



I have noticed a pattern of assassinations of members of provincial and municipal governing councils in recent weeks. Presumably these actions are aimed at derailing the provincial elections also scheduled for January 30. The guerrillas` success in causing the whole governing council of Siniyah to resign, along with over 100 National Guards, seems ominous. In the wake of all those resignations, presumably the guerrillas that had threatened these people are now in control of the village.

The human side of the poor security situation in Iraq is apparent in Jackie Spinner`s article today for the Washington Post on how widespread veiling has been forced on formerly relatively liberated Iraqi women. Spinner`s piece belies claims made earlier this year by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz that the US had improved the situation of women in Iraq.


posted by Juan @ 12/30/2004 06:30:35 AM[url12/30/2004 06:30:35 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/clashes-in-mosul-samarra-massive-bomb.html[/url]

Bush and the Tsunami

The transcript of President George W. Bush`s remarks on the Tsunami is now available. After days of silence and invisibility, Bush finally came out on Wednesday to address perhaps the greatest natural disaster of our times.

He said he had called four heads of state to express his condolences and was coordinating with other countries, and was sending some military logistical help, along with the $35 million in aid now promised (initially it was $15).


QUESTION: Mr. President, were you offended by the suggestion that rich nations have been stingy in the aid over the tsunami? Is this a sign of another rift with the U.N.?

BUSH: Well, I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed.

Take, for example, in the year 2004, our government provided $2.4 billion in food, in cash, in humanitarian relief to cover the disasters for last year. That`s $2.4 billion. That`s 40 percent of all the relief aid given in the world last year was provided by the United States government. We`re a very generous, kind-hearted nation, and, you know, what you`re beginning to see is a typical response from America.
First of all, we provide immediate cash relief to the tune of about $35 million. And then there will be an assessment of the damage so that the next tranche of relief will be spent wisely. That`s what`s happening now.

Just got off the phone with the president of Sri Lanka. She asked for help to assess the damage. In other words, not only did they want immediate help, but they wanted help to assess damage so that we can better direct resources. And so our government is fully prepared to continue to provide assistance and help.

It takes money, by the way, to move an expeditionary force into the region. We`re diverting assets, which is part of our overall aid package. We`ll continue to provide assets. Plus the American people will be very generous themselves. I mean, the $2.4 billion was public money, of course provided by the taxpayers.

But there is also a lot of individual giving in America . . .



This entire spiel was very well rehearsed and mostly wrong.

As The Guardian notes,

Jan Egeland - the United Nations` emergency relief coordinator and former head of the Norwegian Red Cross . . . question[ed] the generosity of rich nations. ``We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries,`` Egeland said Monday. ``And it is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really. ... Even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become.`` Egeland told reporters the next day that his complaint wasn`t directed at any one nation.



So Egeland had not in fact singled out the United States. He was talking about the 30 richest countries generally.

Second, Bush is an MBA, so he knows very well the difference between absolute numbers and per capita ones. Let`s see, Australia offered US $27 million in aid for victims of the tsunami. Australia`s population is about 20 million. Its gross domestic product is about $500 billion per year. Surely anyone can see that Australia`s $27 million is far more per person than Bush`s $35 million. Australia`s works out to $1.35 per person. The US contribution as it now stands is about 9 cents per person. So, yes, the US is giving more in absolute terms. But on a per person basis, it is being far more stingy so far. And Australians are less wealthy than Americans, making on average US $25,000 per year per person, whereas Americans make $38,000 per year per person. So even if Australians and Americans were both giving $1.35 per person, the Australians would be making the bigger sacrifice. But they aren`t both giving $1.35; the Bush administration is so far giving an American contribution of nine cents a person.

The apparent inability of the American public to do basic math or to understand the difference between absolute numbers and proportional ones helps account for why Bush`s crazy tax cut schemes have been so popular. Americans don`t seem to realize that Bush gave ordinary people checks for $300 or $600, but is giving billionnaires checks for millions. A percentage cut across the board results in far higher absolute numbers for the super-wealthy than for the fast food workers. But, well, if people like being screwed over, then that is their democratic right.

Bush`s underlining of the $2.5 billion he says the United States gave in emergency humanitarian aid last year annoyed the hell out of me. He said it was 40% of such monies given by the industrialized world. But the US is the world`s largest economy, and neither on a per capita basis nor as a percentage of GDP is that very much money. Bush said "billion" as though it were an astronomical sum. But he spends a billion dollars a week in Iraq, without batting an eye. That`s right. Two weeks of his post-war war in Iraq costs as much as everything the US spent on emergency humanitarian assistance in 2003 for all the countries in the world.

One reader wrote in,


If the US didn`t have 150,000 troops bogged down in Iraq with hundreds of thousands more either winding down from or preparing for deployment, just think of how many lives we could be saving right this instant by putting hundreds of thousands of the most mobile and most efficient airlift, sealift, rapid emergency management, and medical forces in the world to work throughout the Indian Ocean Basin (and for a fraction of the cost of the war). Instead we`re barely managing a couple warships and 15,000 or so troops, a fraction of what we might have done if the Administration had their priorities straight. Opportunity cost may seem like an abstract economic principle, but it seems there`s nothing quite like the most devastating tidal wave in human history to make it crystal clear. Bush`s War is now costing lives in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, etc, etc, etc.



The US Federal budget in 2004 consists of about $1.8 trillion in receipts and $2.3 trillion in expenditures. The 2003 official development assistance budget was $15 billion (a very large portion of which goes to countries that don`t need the assistance, and is given for strategic reasons). That is about 0.14 percent of the US GDP. Norway, in contrast, spends $2 billion a year on humanitarian assistance, which comes to almost a full 1.0 percent of its GDP. This is the sort of thing that drove Egeland to make his remark. He was even complaining about Norway, which is several times more virtuous than the US on a per capita basis in this regard.

Bush fears the tsunami for two big reasons. If the US government really stepped up to the plate, Bush would not be able to argue for making his tax cuts for the rich permanent.

And, the world public has just seen on its television screens the sort of disasters we can expect if Bush`s denial of global warming continues as US policy. So he has to fall back on silly arguments from meaningless absolute numbers and on vague hopes for private giving. The tsunami says that government is needed to help people. That`s not what Bush wants the US public to believe. But the tsunami is bigger than Bush.

posted by Juan @ [url12/30/2004 06:02:05 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/bush-and-tsunami-transcript-of.html[/url]
Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Tsunami Toll Nearly 70,000 and Rising
Where`s Bush?

The known death toll from the tsunami keeps rising so rapidly that a daily weblog cannot hope to keep up with it. Early Wednesday am Reuters was giving 68,000. The largest number of dead were in Indonesia, then Sri Lanka, then India and then Thailand.

The horrific stories of corpses piled up on beaches or in trees, the neeed to bulldoze them into mass graves to dispel the spectre of disease, the wailing of relatives, the threat of cholera and other epidemics, finally filled the US media on Tuesday, as some sense of the full scale of the catastrophe finally began sinking in. The audio I heard of the wailing of relatives was the hardest to experience. The dead don`t mourn being dead, that is left to the living.

Such catastrophes can have a political impact and can affect security affairs. The failure of the Turkish government to respond in a timely manner to the 1999 earthquake sounded the death knell for the government of then prime minister Bulent Ecevit, and set the stage for the later victory at the polls of the Muslim reform party, Ak.

As John F. Harris and Robin Wright of the Washington Post cannily note, US President George W. Bush has missed an important opportunity to reach out to the Muslims of Indonesia. The Bush administration at first pledged a paltry $15 million, a mysteriously chintzy response to what was obviously an enormous calamity. Bush himself remained on vacation, and now has reluctantly agreed to a meeting of the National Security Council by video conference. If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia (which has suffered at least 40,000 dead and rising).

Indeed, the worst-hit area of Indonesia is Aceh, the center of a Muslim separatist movement, and a gesture to Aceh from the US at this moment might have meant a lot in US-Muslim public relations. Bin Laden and Zawahiri sniffed around Aceh in hopes of recruiting operatives there, being experts in fishing in troubled waters. Doesn`t the US want to outflank al-Qaeda? As it is, the president of the United States is invisible and on vacation (unlike several European heads of state), and could think of nothing better to do than announce a paltry pledge. As Harris and Wright rightly say, the rest of the world treated the US much better than this after September 11.

The Indonesian government itself has an opportunity to gain some good will in troubled Aceh, and appears to have taken a good first step by allowing international aid agencies into the area.

Already the speaker of the provincial parliament in Kerala, India, has been mobbed by angry fishermen. He only escaped by promising to deliver their grievances to the chief minister.

Tamil Nadu, another affected area, is important to the Congress government of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with five cabinet ministers in his government. How he handles the crisis could be important, since Congress came back to power precisely because it was supported by villagers. As of Wednesday, the Indian government was denying that the tsunami would affect over-all economic growth, which was only about 6.6 percent this year, less than the 8 percent PM Singh has said is necessary for the country to develop properly.

posted by Juan @ [url12/29/2004 06:30:03 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/tsunami-toll-nearly-70000-and-rising.html[/url]

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Für alle, die nicht wissen was `stingy` bedeutet: geizig, kleinlich, knausrig.
Und das betrifft alle Industrieländer und nicht nur die USA.
Dort war Bush mal wieder an Peinlichlichkeit nicht zu übertreffen.
Deshalb die Diskussion in den USA. Siehe auch #25088 2.Abschnitt.
Besonders peinlich war die Diskussion hier im Board. Da haben sich die üblichen Verdächtigen als nekrophil herausgestellt.
Manchen ist halt nichts peinlich.
Nur noch peinlicher ist es, dass diese User dieses Forum als Plattform benutzen durften.
Dabei haben sich auch die Mods nach Kräften blamiert.

December 30, 2004
EDITORIAL
Are We Stingy? Yes

President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday`s tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America`s initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations` emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.

We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world`s poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world`s richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That`s less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush`s turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we`ve now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States` recovery effort. Let`s hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Diesen Cartoon als Beispiel.
Nur in den USA findet eine Diskussion in der Richtung statt.
Die Hilfe ist auf 35 Mio $ aufgestockt worden.
Frage. Wieviel kostet ein Tag im Irak?

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Military Fatalities: Total: 1480 , US: 1329 , Dez.04: 73

Weitere Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Thursday, December 30, 2004
War News for Thursday, December 30, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, 14 wounded in heavy fighting in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: ING soldier killed in Baquba ambush.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents overrun Iraqi police station near Tikrit, execute 12 policemen.

Bring ‘em on: Five ING and one US soldier wounded in fighting in Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: British soldiers ambushed in southern Iraq.

CJTF-7 reports a US soldier wounded in Mosul mess hall bombing has died of wounds.

CJTF-7 reports a C-130 crashed on landing in northern Iraq.

Fallujah. “Lakes of sewage in the streets. The smell of corpses inside charred buildings. No water or electricity. Long waits and thorough searches by U.S. troops at checkpoints. Warnings to watch out for land mines and booby traps. Occasional gunfire between troops and insurgents. ‘I thought, “This is not my town,”’ Atiya said Tuesday after going back to the abandoned Baghdad clinic his family shares with nearly 100 other displaced Falloujans. ‘How can I take my family to live there?’”

ING to merge with Iraqi Army.

Rummy Roulette. “But a comparative analysis of U.S. casualty statistics from Iraq tells a different story. After factoring in medical, doctrinal, and technological improvements, infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966—and in some cases more lethal. Even discrete engagements, such as the battle of Hue City in 1968 and the battles for Fallujah in 2004, tell a similar tale: Today`s grunts are patrolling a battlefield every bit as deadly as the crucible their fathers faced in Southeast Asia.”

Medical support. “One key constraint for planners has been the limited number of medical personnel available in a voluntary force to support the 130,000 to 150,000 troops fighting in Iraq. The Army is estimated to have only 120 general surgeons on active duty and a similar number in the reserves. It has therefore sought to keep no more than 30 to 50 general surgeons and 10 to 15 orthopedic surgeons in Iraq. Most have served in Forward Surgical Teams (FSTs) — small teams, consisting of just 20 people: 3 general surgeons, 1 orthopedic surgeon, 2 nurse anesthetists, 3 nurses, plus medics and other support personnel. In Vietnam, only 2.6 percent of the wounded soldiers who arrived at a surgical field hospital died, which meant that, despite helicopter evacuation, most deaths occurred before the injured made it to surgical care. The recent emphasis on leaner, faster-moving military units added to the imperative to push surgical teams farther forward, closer to battle. So they, too, were made leaner and more mobile — and that is their fundamental departure from previous wars.” Thanks to alert reader jgrego for sending in this interesting article from the New England Journal of Medicine.

Frivolous lawsuit. “Six members of the Navy Seals and two of their wives sued The Associated Press and one of its reporters yesterday for distributing photos of the Seals that apparently show them treating Iraqi prisoners harshly.”

Commentary

Editorial: “Even the spinning instincts of the US administration are faltering in the face of such stark realities. In the week before Christmas 24 people died in a bomb attack inside a US army base in the northern town of Mosul while 60 others were killed in car bomb attacks in the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. George Bush, who foolishly proclaimed ‘mission accomplished’ over 18 bloody months ago, was forced to admit that the thousands of Iraqis he had hoped would take over basic security tasks from the US were simply not ready to do so. Hundreds of police and national guard recruits and serving officers have died in the past year. Many are so frightened they now routinely wear masks.”

Editorial: “As thousands of wounded and injured troops return from Afghanistan and Iraq to add to a patient load of aging veterans from previous wars, overall VA funding hasn`t kept pace, even as it`s been increased by $10 billion. The VA in eastern Colorado got $245 million - $1 million less than in 2002.”

Analysis: “This upheaval has been particularly vivid at the Pentagon, where the usual balance between civilian and military authority has been stood on its head. The American system of civilian control of the military recognizes that soldiers` attention must be fixed on winning battles and staying alive, and that the fog of war can sometimes obscure the rule of law. The civilian bosses are supposed to provide coolheaded restraint. Now America has to count on the military to step up when the civilians get out of control.”

Analysis: “He has in considerable measure imposed himself on the uniformed military, but in a way they now hate. Following his ideas about a small, light and ‘agile’ force, he has made one bad tactical and organizational choice after another, with particularly devastating consequences for the army, its reserve forces, the national guard, and the marines. Their manpower resources are being exploited and wasted in a manner that could leave the services damaged and their officers alienated for a generation. This has been the result of the Bush government`s total misjudgment of the Iraq situation; its refusal to enlarge the regular army; its reliance on mobilized reserve forces on extended service in what amounts to the draft of specialist veterans from civilian life; and, since the Iraq occupation turned very unpleasant, ‘stop-loss’ refusal to let people go at the end of their contracts…Iraq is now destroying the professional army the United States recruited to take the place of its citizen army. The new army was intended to serve as the unquestioning instrument of the policies of the elected administration. This administration`s refusal to supply the manpower and means necessary for its vast military and political ambitions is now having its effect on that army. Its politically inspired fear of conscription, the merciless combat rotation policy and systematic use of involuntary extensions of duty its policies impose, are devastating to troops. The incoherence of its policy in the Middle East, and lack of clearly defined objectives, is deeply disquieting to the military leadership. America`s military leaders once again find themselves victims of the policies of appointed ideologues and elected amateurs. As in Vietnam, they have no alternative to propose, except Dresden.”

Opinion: “The transition to President Bush`s second term, filled with backstage betrayals, plots and pathologies, would make for an excellent chapter of I, Claudius. To begin with, Bush has unceremoniously and without public acknowledgement dumped Brent Scowcroft, his father`s closest associate and friend, as chairman of the foreign intelligence advisory board. The elder Bush`s national security adviser was the last remnant of traditional Republican realism permitted to exist within the administration.”

Opinion: “If Bush succeeds in perpetuating a legacy of preemptive war and right-wing domestic policies, America will never be the same again.”

Opinion: “The truth no one really wants to deal with is that this war could very easily be lost by the United States. All the insurgents have to do is hang on another year. All we have to do is what the French and the British did in their colonies: Let themselves be exhausted and finally destroyed by their hubris, their delusions and their arrogant lack of understanding of the local people.” Thanks to alert reader zig for providing this link in yesterday’s comments.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Louisiana Guardsman dies from wounds received in Iraq.

Local story: Oklahoma soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Maine Guardsman wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Alabama soldier wounded in Iraq.



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U.S. Businesses Overseas Threatened by Rising Anti-Americanism

Wed Dec 29,11:26 AM ET

Jim Lobe, OneWorld US

WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec 29 (OneWorld) - The Bush administration`s foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas--according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc.


Brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes, America Online (AOL), McDonald`s, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil are particularly at risk. GMI, an independent market research company, conducted the survey in eight countries December 10-12 with consumers over the internet.

One third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the "war on terror" and the occupation of Iraq, constituted their strongest impression of the United States.

Twenty percent of respondents in Europe and Canada said they consciously avoided buying U.S. products as a protest against those policies. That finding was consistent with a similar poll carried out by GMI three weeks after Bush`s November election victory.

"Unfortunately, current American foreign policy is viewed by international consumers as a significant negative, when it used to be a positive," according to Dr. Mitchell Eggers, GMI`s chief operating officer and chief pollster.

"Some American brands become closely connected to their country of origin and are quintessentially American," he added. "They represent the American lifestyle, innovation, power, leadership, and foreign policy."

Whether the U.S. foreign policy under Bush is affecting the sales of U.S. corporations overseas is being hotly debated by advertising and public relations firms, as well as the companies themselves. Last month, Kevin Roberts, chief executive of advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi, told the Financial Times that he believed consumers in Europe and Asia were becoming increasingly resistant to having "brand America rammed down their throats."

Simon Anholt, author of `Brand America` has also predicted a consumer backlash against U.S. foreign policy. He recently told the British trade magazine, `Marketing Week`, that four more years of Bush`s foreign policy could have grave consequences for U.S. companies` international market share.

"There have already been casual protest brands, such as Mecca Cola, which are primarily political," he told the weekly. "But things are now moving beyond that. For instances, German restaurants are beginning to refuse American Express cards. This is new territory."

Other analysts have been skeptical, arguing that recent declines in sales in France and Germany by McDonald`s, Coca-Cola, and Marlboro were due far more to other factors, including flagging economies in both countries or a simple failure by companies to adapt rapidly enough to consumer tastes.

But the new survey, as well as the one taken by GMI last month, suggests that the unpopularity of U.S. foreign policy may indeed be playing a role, at least for companies that are either strongly identified with the United States or that are perceived as having similar characteristics as its foreign policy.

"American companies are accused of aggressiveness and arrogance because they insist on imposing the American way of doing things on their international markets; they are inflexible," according to Allyson Stewart-Allen, co-author of `Working With Americans,` a business best-seller published by Prentice Hall in 2002.

She argued that the more U.S. companies distance themselves from their U.S. identity, the better they will survive in the international marketplace. "U.S. companies abroad now need to focus on adding yet more value and repositioning their brands to consumers in the intensely competitive global village in which they compete"

"The more aligned they are with those customers--regardless of their U.S.-created DNA--they`ll win." American companies need to focus on alignment with international markets and embrace their market differences and idiosyncrasies.

The survey cited 40 U.S.-based companies and asked consumers who said they were trying to avoid buying U.S. brands to rate each one of them by how closely they were identified with being "American," and whether or not they deliberately avoided buying their products.

The survey then plotted each company`s position on a quadrant divided into "safe" and "insulated" squares at the bottom and "at risk" and "problem squares" at the top.

Those deemed "safe" or "insulated" generally were either not seen as particularly "American" (Visa, Kodak, Kleenex or Gillette), or they apparently lacked real competition (Microsoft, Heinz, and Disney).

Visa was the single best performer: only 17 percent of consumers identified as intending to avoid U.S. brands thought that it was "extremely American," and only 15 percent said they intended to boycott it. Fifty-four percent said they had used Visa at least once in the previous month.

"Problem" companies, on the other hand, included those which more than a third of boycotting consumers said they intended to avoid, and more than 40 percent of consumers said they considered to be "extremely American."

On that scale, Marlboro was found to be the most problematic. Sixty percent of respondents said they avoided the product, while two-thirds said they considered it to be "extremely American." Only McDonald`s had a higher "American" score, at 73 percent, but only 42 percent of respondents said they avoided the Golden Arches.

In contrast to Visa`s performance, 48 percent of boycotting consumers said they would definitely avoid using American Express; 64 percent said they thought the company was "extremely American," and only two percent reported using it during the previous month.

Other problem brands included Exxon-Mobil, AOL, American, Chevron Texaco, United Airlines, Budweiser, Chrysler, Barbie Doll, Starbucks, and General Motors.

The latest poll found that more than two thirds of European and Canadian consumers have had a negative change in their view of the United States as a result of U.S. foreign policy over the last three years. Nearly half believe that the war in Iraq was motivated by a desire to control oil supplies, while only 15 percent believed it was related to terrorism.

Nearly two thirds of European and Canadian consumers also said they believe U.S. foreign policy is guided primarily by self-interest and empire-building, while only 17 percent believe that the defense of freedom and democracy is its guiding principle.

Half of the entire sample said they distrusted U.S. companies, at least in part because of the U.S. foreign policy. Seventy-nine percent said they distrusted the U.S. government for the same reason, while 39 percent said they distrusted the American public.

Fully 87 percent of German, 84 percent of French, and 71 percent of British respondents have negative feelings toward Bush himself. Moreover, British, French and German consumers all felt that the cultural values of the other two countries were closer to their own than "American values."



Copyright © 2004 OneWorld.net.
Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

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Ob das unbedingt ein Kompliment ist, weiß ich nicht.

Euro Trash
Even drug dealers are giving up on the dollar.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004, at 3:20 PM PT

The dollar`s decline against the euro shows no sign of ending. Clearly, currency traders have made a long-term judgment about the relative value of the currencies of the Old and New Worlds. That sounds bad enough. But now there are signs that we`re losing some of the most devoted fans of the greenback: drug dealers, Russian oligarchs, and black-market traffickers of all kinds.

James Grant,of Grant`s Interest Rate Observer, whose animadversions about the dollar and other subjects are as droll as they are pricey, highlighted the latest indignities to befall the once-mighty dollar in his Dec. 17 issue. (Alas, it`s not available on the Web.)

People the world over—central banks, companies, and individuals—like to hold the dollar. It`s stable, liquid, easily convertible, and never goes out of style. The dollar is popular in the official global economy—the money that changes hands through computer terminals, checks, and wire transfers. But it has also been extremely popular in the world`s vast cash economy. For American tourists, Chinese smugglers, Ukrainian arms dealers, and African dictators, the dollar has long been the currency of choice. The fearful and shady, those who subsist on tourism, and residents of countries with unstable domestic currencies love the greenback. Citing Federal Reserve estimates, Grant writes that "between 55% and 70% of the $703 billion of U.S. currency outstanding circulates outside the 50 states."

The United States benefits greatly from the fact that the dollar is the world`s reserve currency. Many of the $100 bills circulating throughout the globe are essentially loans that we never have to pay back. Americans use them to buy goods, services, or other currencies. But many of those bills never return to our shores to be redeemed for anything we make or produce. Instead, they stay under mattresses in Bogotá, circulate in Iraq, and are stashed in bank accounts around the world.

But among a subset of global cash connoisseurs, the dollar is losing ground to the euro—and it has nothing to do with concerns over U.S. multilateralism. First, the euro zone has been expanding with the addition of new countries and the continued integration between Eastern and Western Europe. So there are simply more people who accept and use euros now. Since 2002, the growth rate of euros in circulation has far outpaced that of dollars. Add in the euro`s recent strength against the dollar, and the case for Eastern Europeans and euro-neighbors to use euros becomes more compelling. In the 1990s, the dollar was remarkably popular in Russia, where residents had long been deprived of coveted Western imports. But between January 2002 and August 2004, Grant notes, the percentage of private Russian currency transactions employing the dollar fell from 94.1 percent to 84 percent while the euro`s share rose from nothing to about 15 percent.

Finally, in the past two years, euros have also become easier to carry, store, and hide than dollars. Generally, the largest denomination of U.S. currency readily available is the $100 bill. But in the past two years, the European Central Bank has started to print 200-euro and 500-euro bills. These larger bills thus allow for the concentration of wealth in smaller packages. At today`s rates, a 500-euro note is worth $682.

So if you wanted to, say, hide cash by swallowing it temporarily, euros would the obvious (and more comfortable) way to go. And indeed, as Grant notes, in October a drug mule traveling from Spain to Colombia was found to have an unexpected form of contraband in his stomach: $197,000 in euro notes. The same month, Fidel Castro declared that the dollar, which is tolerated as a means for Cuban-Americans to support their relatives in Cuba, was officially currency non grata and that the euro was most welcome.

For most products, losing international drug cartels and corrupt Third World dictators as customers would seem to be a desirable outcome. But these guys represent part of our long-standing and faithful base. If you think pundits are fretting about the slumping dollar now, just imagine what might happen if we start to lose the arms dealers.
Daniel Gross (www.danielgross.net) writes Slate`s "Moneybox" column. You can e-mail him at [e-mail].

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111504/

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Man liest, es geht Bush um die UNO. Er ist nicht damit einverstanden, dass die UNO die Verteilung der Gelder für die flutgeschädigten Länder verwaltet und verteilt.
Bush und die Neocons bemühen sich seit Wochen Kofi Annan mit obskuren Geschichten abzuschießen.
Und da kann der Bush-Neocon Clan nicht damit übereinstimmen, dass die UN eine führende Rolle bei der Bewältigung der Katastrophe übernimmt.
Für eine Naturkatastrophe kann meist niemand verantwortlich gemacht werden, für Politiker schon.

Published on Thursday, December 30, 2004 by The Nation
Bush Fails a Global Test
by John Nichols


George Bush ended 2004 on a sour note.

But at least he maintained his record as the most disingenuous president since Richard Nixon.

When other world leaders rushed to respond to the crisis caused by last Sunday`s tsunamis in southern Asia, George Bush decamped to his ranch in Texas for another vacation. For three days after the disaster, the only formal response from the White House was issued by a deputy press secretary. Finally, after a United Nations official made comments that seemed to highlight the disengaged nature of the official U.S. reaction to one of the worst catastrophes in human history, the president appeared at a hastily-scheduled press conference to grumble about how critics of his embarrassing performance were "misguided and ill-informed."

Bush bragged about the U.S. commitment of $35 million to help respond to a tragedy that has cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced millions of people in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Somalia and other countries.

What the president did not say is that this initial commitment is less than the planned expenditure for his Jan. 20 inauguration: $40 million.

It was, as well, less than the immediate commitment by smaller and less wealthy nations such as Spain, which has already promised to provide $68 billion.

The president`s missteps have been noted by the rest of the world, and by diplomatic observers at home. Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Bush had missed an opportunity to display humanitarian, moral and diplomatic leadership in the world. Reflecting on the administration`s response, Derek Mitchell, an expert on Asian affairs at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "I think politically they`ve done poorly."

At a time when the U.S. image abroad has been battered by the president`s unilateral decision to order the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration should have been sensitive to the need to respond quickly and effectively to a disaster of this magnitude. But that did not happen. Bush failed to engage at the critical point and then peddled the lie that the U.S. is in the forefront of providing humanitarian aid.

Thirty other developed nations commit greater proportions of their gross domestic products to humanitarian projects than does the U.S. In fact, the entire U.S. commitment for humanitarian aid in 2004 -- $2.4 billion -- was about the same amount as the U.S. spends every ten days to maintain the occupation of Iraq. The contrast between the Bush administration`s spare-no-expense approach to Iraq and its penny-pinching response to the crisis in southern Asia is devastating for America`s image abroad.

But it is not too late to respond in a more appropriate manner.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, a longtime advocate for a more responsible U.S. policy regarding humanitarian aid, has suggested that the U.S. should rescind a portion of the reconstruction aid that has been budgeted for use in Iraq. Of an estimated $18.4 billion allocated for that purpose through December, only about $2 billion has been spent.

Leahy has already attracted some interest in his proposal from Congressional Republicans. Hopefully, this will influence the administration to dramatically increase its commitment to emergency relief and redevelopment aid.

What is the appropriate commitment? Over the critical period of the next several months, the U.S. should provide at least as much money to rebuilding southern Asia as it does to maintain the occupation of Iraq – a figure Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last year put at roughly $3.9 billion a month but that is, in reality, much higher. Committing as much to aiding southern Asia as is now being spent to occupy Iraq would signal that the U.S. wants to rejoin the world community.

Committing dramatically less – as appears to be the president`s intent -- will confirm the impression that the U.S. is more interested in spending money on a military misadventure than on a necessary reconstruction.

Copyright © 2004 The Nation

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Bill Schorr, United Media 02/24/03
Habe ich beim Blättern gefunden. Da fällt Schnee in der Hölle, weil D nicht mit in den Krieg ziehen will.

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January 2, 2005
FRANK RICH
Washington`s New Year War Cry: Party On!
By FRANK RICH

ON the fourth day `til Christmas, the day that news of the slaughter at the mess tent in Mosul slammed into the evening news, CBS had scheduled a special treat. That evening brought the annual broadcast of "The Kennedy Center Honors," the carefree variety show in which Washington`s top dogs mingle with visitors from that mysterious land known as the Arts and do a passing (if fashion-challenged) imitation of revelers at the Oscars. This year, like any other, the show was handing out medals to those representing "the very best in American culture," as exemplified by honorees like Australia`s Dame Joan Sutherland and Britain`s Sir Elton John. Festive bipartisanship reigned. Though Sir Elton had said just three weeks earlier that "Bush and this administration are the worst thing that has ever happened to America," he and his boyfriend joined the president and Mrs. Bush in their box. John Kerry held forth in an orchestra seat below.

"The Kennedy Center Honors" is no ratings powerhouse; this year more adults under 50 elected to watch "The Real Gilligan`s Island" on cable instead. But I tuned in, curious to see how this gathering of the capital`s finest might be affected by the war. The honors had actually been staged and taped earlier in the month, on Dec. 5. That day the morning newspapers told of more deadly strikes by suicide bombers in Mosul and Baghdad, killing at least 26 Iraqi security officers, including 8 in a police station near the capital`s protected Green Zone. There were also reports of at least four American casualties in other firefights.

But if anyone at the Kennedy Center so much as acknowledged this reality unfolding beyond the opera house, it was not to be found in the show presented on television. The only wars evoked were those scored by another honoree, John Williams, whose soundtrack music for "Saving Private Ryan" and "Star Wars" was merrily belted out by a military band. (Our delicate sensibilities were spared the sight of an actual "Private Ryan" battle scene, however, lest the broadcast risk being shut down for "indecency.") The razzle-dazzle Hollywood martial music, the what-me-worry Washington establishment, the glow of money and red plush: everything about the tableau reeked of the disconnect between the war in Iraq and the comfort of all of us at home, starting with those in government who had conceived, planned, rubber-stamped and managed our excellent adventure in spreading democracy.

Ordinary people beyond Washington, red and blue Americans alike, are feeling that disconnect more and more. On the same day that CBS broadcast the Kennedy Center special, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 70 percent of Americans believed that any gains in Iraq had come at the cost of "unacceptable" losses in casualties and that 56 percent believed the war wasn`t "worth fighting" - up 8 percent since the summer. In other words, most Americans believe that our troops are dying for no good reason, even as a similar majority (58 percent) believes, contradictorily enough, that we should keep them in Iraq.

So the soldiers soldier on, and we party on. As James Dao wrote in The New York Times, "support our troops" became a verbal touchstone in 2004, yet "only for a minuscule portion of the populace, mainly those with loved ones overseas, does it have anything to do with sacrifice." Quite the contrary: we have our tax cuts, and a president who promises to make them permanent. Such is the disconnect between the country and the war that there is no national outrage when the president awards the Medal of Freedom to the clowns who undermined the troops by bungling intelligence (George Tenet) and Iraqi support (Paul Bremer). Such is the disconnect that Washington and the news media react with slack-jawed shock when one of those good soldiers we support so much speaks up at a town hall meeting in Kuwait and asks the secretary of defense why vehicles that take him and his brothers into battle lack proper armor.

Much has been made of this incident, yet it hardly constituted big news. It`s no secret to anyone, including Donald Rumsfeld, that the troops have often been undersupplied. Dana Priest of The Washington Post heard soldiers asking the defense secretary "similar questions about their body armor" when traveling with him a year ago. In October, 23 members of an Army Reserve unit disobeyed a direct order to deliver fuel, partly because they decided that the vulnerability of their trucks made the journey tantamount to a suicide mission. As far back as last spring, Stars and Stripes was reporting that desperate troops were using sandbags as makeshift vehicle armor. Even now, reports The Los Angeles Times, National Guard soldiers are saying they have been shipped to war from Fort Bliss with "chronic illnesses, broken guns and trucks with blown transmissions."

When Mr. Rumsfeld told Specialist Thomas Wilson in Kuwait that the only reason the troops lacked armor was "a matter of production and capability," he was lying. The manufacturers that supply the armor were quick to respond that they had been telling the Pentagon for months that they could increase production, in the case of one company (ArmorWorks in Arizona) by as much as 100 percent. But that news was quickly drowned out by cable and talk radio arguments over whether Mr. Wilson should or should not have consulted with an embedded reporter about the phrasing of his question. Soon Mr. Rumsfeld was off to Iraq for a P.R. tour (message: I care) in which he used troops as photo-op accessories and thanked a soldier for asking a softball question "not planted by the media." Washington could go back to worrying about more pressing domestic problems, like how to cook the books so that Social Security can be fixed cost-free.

The truth is that for all the lip service paid to supporting the troops, out of sight is often out of mind. Even the minority that remains gung-ho about the war in Iraq is quick to blame the grunts for anything that goes wrong. Specialist Wilson, Rush Limbaugh said, was guilty of "near insubordination" for his question in Kuwait; the poor defense secretary "was set up," whined The New York Post. The same crowd tells us that a few low-level guards are solely responsible for the criminal abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and in Guantánamo Bay, not any policy-setting higher-ups who may be sitting in that audience at Kennedy Center. President Bush even tried to pass the buck for his premature aircraft carrier victory jig to the troops, telling the press months later that "the `Mission Accomplished` sign, of course, was put up by the members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished." Of course.

Back then, the Pentagon projected that our military occupation of Iraq would end in December 2004. But two days after appearing in the box at the Kennedy Center Opera House, the president donned a snappy muted green "commander in chief" jacket - a casual Friday version of the full "Top Gun" costume he`d worn on the Lincoln - to address marines at Camp Pendleton in California who were going to war, not coming home. (Slate reported this week that "nearly one-quarter of U.S. combat dead in 2004 were stationed in Camp Pendleton.") It was the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and Mr. Bush drew the expected analogy: "Just as we defeated the threats of fascism and imperial communism in the 20th century, we will defeat the threat of global terrorism." But three years into it, can we win a war that most of the country senses has gone astray in Iraq and that the party in power regards as a lower priority than lower taxes?

The ethos could hardly have been more different during the World War II so frequently invoked by Mr. Bush. As David Brinkley recounted in his 1988 history, "Washington Goes to War," the Roosevelt administration`s first big push "was a tremendous voluntary program to reduce the deficit, encourage saving, trim spending and thus curb inflation - the sale of war bonds." Though bonds would not in the end pay for the war - that would require the sacrifice of paying taxes - F.D.R. believed that his campaign "would give the public a sense of involvement in a war being fought thousands of miles away, a war so distant many Americans had difficulty at times remembering it was there at all." Gen. George Marshall, the Army`s chief of staff, took it on himself to write notes by hand to the family of each man killed in battle until the volume forced the use of Western Union telegrams.

Well, Mr. Rumsfeld has sworn he`ll stop delegating condolence letters to his Autopen. But otherwise the contrast between the Washington that won World War II and the Washington fighting a war in Iraq is so striking it can even be found in the cultural lineage of the Kennedy Center show. That show`s producer, as it happens, is George Stevens Jr., the son of the great Hollywood filmmaker George Stevens. In his day, the elder Stevens created his own wartime Washington entertainment: a glorious 1943 romantic comedy, "The More the Merrier" (just out on DVD), set in the newly mobilized capital, that, though fiction, is in itself a striking document of the difference between then and now. While it portrays a patriotic Washington as frivolously beset by party animals, bureaucrats and lobbyists as today`s, there`s an underlying ethos of shared sacrifice, literally down to the living arrangements necessitated by a housing shortage. It might as well be a different civilization.

Washington`s next celebration will be the inauguration. Roosevelt decreed that the usual gaiety be set aside at his wartime inaugural in January 1945. There will be no such restraint in the $40 million, four-day extravaganza planned this time, with its top ticket package priced at $250,000. The official theme of the show is "Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service." That`s no guarantee that the troops in Iraq will get armor, but Washington will, at least, give home-front military personnel free admission to one of the nine inaugural balls and let them eat cake.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Best Quotes Of 2004
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"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation. ... You ever heard of a need to blow some steam off?"(Time, May 17)
[/TABLE] -- Rush Limbaugh, radio talk-show host, on the behavior of the U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners.

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"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."
[/TABLE] -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 11).

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"I`m now in favor of Bush`s tax cuts."
[/TABLE]-- Reigning "Jeopardy" champ Ken Jennings, when Alex Trebek asked what had changed since he started winning on the game show (Entertainment Weekly, July 4).

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"That`s my oldest. People never believe this, but he was a perfect child. College was another matter. But when he was a little boy, he`d put on his cowboy outfit and pretend he was Roy Rogers. He`d entertain himself for hours fighting the bad guys -- or, as he called them, the axis of evil."
[/TABLE]-- Barbara Bush, describing her son, President Bush (San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 24).

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"Go f**k yourself!"(Time, July 2).
[/TABLE] -- Vice President Dick Cheney to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.,while both were on the floor of the Senate for the annual group photograph

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"Like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people."
[/TABLE] -- Paul O`Neill, fired treasury secretary, on the lack of dialogue in President Bush`s cabinet meetings (U.S. News and World Report, Jan. 19).

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"The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." (Time, Aug. 23).
[/TABLE]-- President Bush on John Kerry`s proposal to rescind tax cuts for the wealthy .

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"I do want my life back to normal, because it`s hard. It`s so hard. But at the same time I`m like, wow, I get to go to New York. I get to go to Hollywood. I get to hang out with people like Britney and Leonardo."
[/TABLE]-- Jessica Lynch, former Iraq POW, on her life a year after her rescue (Time, April 12).

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Informed Comment
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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Mehr Artikel von heute:
http://www.juancole.com/
Friday, December 31, 2004

Pipes Favors Concentration Camps

[urlThat the Revisionist-Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes has fond visions]http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/10529596.htm?1c[/url] of rounding up Muslim Americans and putting them in concentration camps isn`t a big surprise. That a mainstream American newspaper would publish this David-Dukeian evil is. Of course, this is also a man that President Bush appointed to a temporary vacancy at the United States Institute of Peace, after the Senate understandably balked at a regular appointment for him.

Pipes`s little project requires him to attempt to justify the interment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. I hope Asian-Americans realize that a key wing of the Republican Party, i.e. the Neoconservatives, wishes them ill.

If the yahoos in the Red States ever start putting people in concentration camps, I think we may be assured that they won`t stop with the Muslims or the Asians, and Mr. Pipes will come to have reason to regret his imprudence and, frankly, his demonic implication.

posted by Juan @ [url12/31/2004 06:25:57 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/pipes-favors-concentration-camps-that.html[/url]

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Letzte Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Friday, December 31, 2004
War News for Friday, December 31, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi border guards assassinated in Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Thirty insurgents attack police checkpoint in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Four Baghdad police stations attacked with small arms, RPG fire.

Bring ‘em on: Gas pipeline destroyed near Basra.

Bring ‘em on: ING soldier killed by insurgents near Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Mortar attack ignites blaze at Baghdad refinery.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi civilians killed in ambush near Shorgat.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, 15 wounded in yesterday’s fighting in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: One ING soldier killed, four wounded in Samarra ambush.

Bring ‘em on: British troops ambushed by roadside bomb near Amarah.

Bring ‘em on: US patrol ambushed near ad Duluiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents destroy Mosul telephone exchange.

All 700 election workers in Mosul resign after insurgent threats.

Bush’ Folly. “Key measures of the level of insurgent violence against American forces in Iraq, numbers of dead, wounded and insurgent attacks, show the situation has gotten worse since the summer. While those numbers don`t tell the full story of the conflict in Iraq, they suggest insurgents are growing more proficient, even as the size of the U.S. force increases and U.S. commanders succeed in soliciting more help from ordinary Iraqis.” All sorts of interesting indicators in this article.

Graphic display of failure.

Rummy’s Army. “More than 100 members of the 571st Medical Company left Fort Carson Thursday morning as their unit headed back to Iraq for a second one-year tour of duty. The helicopter medical evacuation unit suffered the most casualties of any Fort Carson company in Iraq last year, losing seven soldiers in two crashes of its helicopters.”

Dickhead can’t take a joke. “A Lake Elsinore man allegedly chased down and shot a soldier home on leave from Iraq early Thursday, after catching him with a group toilet-papering his yard and other homes in the neighborhood. Aubrey Weldon, 34, a construction worker, was so angry about his Riverside County neighborhood being festooned with toilet paper that he chased down the group in his truck on the 29000 block of 3rd Street, started fighting with them and then pulled out a handgun and opened fire at 12:30 a.m., said Sgt. Earl Quinata of the Riverside County Sheriff`s Department.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Virginia soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Oklahoma soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Alabama soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois Guardsman wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Three Maine Guardsmen wounded in Iraq.

Awards and Decorations

Local story: Arkansas soldier decorated for valor in Iraq.


Note to Readers

I intended to post a rant about Lieutenant AWOL’s reaction to the tsunami disaster in Asia, but Helena and Rude Pundit both expressed the outrage I feel better than I could.

Instead, I want to thank matt for picking up my slack and running this blog on days when I can’t post. I like the Discussion Topic threads matt posted, and judging from reader responses I think most readers liked them, too. In fact, I should have the comments thread from the last Discussion Topic bronzed and mounted on a plaque due to all the thoughtful and well-reasoned posts from readers.

As matt once observed in an email to me, a world-wide community of thoughtful, informed and intelligent readers has developed around this blog. The site gets an average of about 1,500 visitors every day, with a little over a half-million visits since I started.

Last month I created a new blog called Reader Contributions. I suspect most of you have noticed it already. My original intention was to solicit original material from readers in order to tap into the pool of talent that reads this blog every day and give you a forum to express your opinions and observations to a wider audience.

I’m not sure how I’ll manage the Reader Contribution page, but if you want to send in material or suggestions for Discussion Topics, email me. I’ve only got two editorial rules: 1. Don’t be an asshole, and 2. Spell check your material before you send it. (I work for a living.)

I started a new Discussion Topic on the RC page this morning: Where are you from?


YD



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DER SPIEGEL 1/2005 - 31. Dezember 2004
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,335059,00.html

USA

Bruderkrieg der Spione

Von Georg Mascolo

Neuanfang bei den amerikanischen Geheimdiensten: Weil Washingtons Agenten sich im Kampf gegeneinander erschöpften, soll ein Aufseher die Rivalen zur Zusammenarbeit zwingen. Dass er Erfolg haben wird, scheint wenig wahrscheinlich.

Für Agenten wie Michael Scheuer gibt es keinen Platz mehr bei der CIA. Mit seinen 52 Jahren hätte er noch Jahre bis zur Pensionierung arbeiten müssen, aber seit sieben Wochen ist der mit Orden und Ehrungen überhäufte Experte arbeitslos.

Inzwischen jedoch ist Scheuer zum berühmtesten Aussteiger des Landes geworden, Zeitungen und Fernsehanstalten reißen sich um ihn. "Meine 15 Minuten Ruhm sind angebrochen", sagt er, "hoffentlich hört man auf mich."

Mit seinem grauen Bart und der Cordhose sieht Scheuer eher aus wie ein Universitätsprofessor. 22 Jahre hat er der CIA als Fachmann für den Islam gedient. Er hat als einer der Ersten die tödliche Bedrohung durch al-Qaida erkannt. Drei Jahre lang leitete Scheuer die Abteilung "Alec", eine hochgeheime Einheit, die den Terror-Paten Osama Bin Laden jagen und, wenn möglich, töten sollte.

Schnell wird klar, warum Scheuer mit der Regierung aneinander geraten musste. Obwohl er ruhig spricht, wählt er seine Worte mit kaum gebremster Wut. Ist der von Präsident George W. Bush ausgerufene Krieg gegen den Terror überhaupt eine angemessene Reaktion auf die Gefahr? "Amerika hat noch immer nicht verstanden, warum es eigentlich bedroht ist", sagt er. "Die Radikalen hassen nicht uns, sie hassen unsere Außenpolitik." Und die ist seiner Meinung nach von "imperialer Überheblichkeit" geprägt.

Ob das einen Gegner wie Bin Laden beeindrucken kann? "Der Qaida-Chef hat es geschafft, aus der falschen Politik einer Hand voll amerikanischer Politiker eine machtvolle Allianz gegen unser Land zu schmieden. Ein brillanter Stratege." Und dann setzt er noch eins drauf: "Wäre er auf unserer Seite, würde er im Weißen Haus zu Abend essen." Hat der Krieg gegen Saddam Hussein den Kampf gegen den Terrorismus vorangebracht? Scheuer antwortet mit tiefer Verachtung: "Wenn Bin Laden Christ wäre, hätte er sich so etwas zu Weihnachten gewünscht."

Scheuer verließ die CIA, als der Streit um seinen Bestseller immer heftiger wurde. Als "Anonymus" hatte er eine böse Abrechnung mit dem Anti-Terror-Kampf der USA verfasst. Das Weiße Haus verlangte, Scheuer solle endlich den Mund halten.

Doch der denkt gar nicht daran. Der Ex-Agent ist ein Querdenker, ein Provokateur, ein Betriebsunfall für jede Bürokratie. Den Posten als Bin-Laden-Jäger verlor er 1999, nachdem er seinen Chefs schriftlich bescheinigt hatte, dass sie den Terror-Ideologen unterschätzten und nicht genug unternähmen, um ihn auszuschalten. Ein Jahr lang saß er abgeschoben und arbeitslos in der Bibliothek, las, wozu er Lust hatte.

Nach dem 11. September 2001, als alles zu spät war, haben seine Vorgesetzten ihn dann so schnell es ging in die Terrorismusabteilung zurückgeholt, weil niemand so viel über den Feind wusste wie er. Und weil er - leider - Recht behalten hatte.

Scheuer hatte sich nicht geändert. Völlig undiplomatisch sagte er immer noch, was er dachte, und er verlangte überdies, das auch aufschreiben zu dürfen. Scheuers Devise lautete: Ich muss das Land vor den Terroristen beschützen und nicht den Präsidenten vor seinen Kritikern.

CIA-Regeln erlauben jedem Angestellten die Veröffentlichung eines Buchs, solange keine geheimen Informationen preisgegeben werden. Doch die Bush-Regierung hat solche Freiheiten de facto außer Kraft gesetzt. Im Weißen Haus des Texaners wird Widerspruch weder geschätzt noch verziehen. "Früher hat man solche Leute wie mich ausgehalten", resigniert Scheuer.

Doch weil nun alles neu werden soll in der Welt der amerikanischen Geheimdienste, wird Scheuers Expertise eben doch gebraucht, wenn schon nicht von der Regierung, dann eben von den Medien, und so ist er trotz seines ruhmlosen Abgangs ein gefragter Mann. Kurz vor Weihnachten hat Präsident Bush die größte Geheimdienstreform der amerikanischen Geschichte durch seine Unterschrift Gesetz werden lassen. "Wir sind jetzt in der Lage, einen zweiten 11. September zu verhindern", jubelte der demokratische Senator Joe Lieberman, ein Geheimdienstexperte, der wie so viele Amerikaner an die revolutionäre Kraft des Neuanfangs glaubt.

Der "Intelligence Reform Act" soll eine Art Wiedergeburt für einen der größten Spionageapparate werden, den je ein Staat unterhielt: Dazu gehören nicht nur die CIA oder der Abhördienst NSA mit seinen weltumspannenden Lauschkapazitäten; die Teilstreitkräfte der USA verfügen genauso über eigene Geheimdienste wie etwa das Außen-, das Finanz- oder das Energieministerium. 15 Dienste sind es insgesamt mit 200.000 Angestellten und einem Jahresetat von 40 Milliarden Dollar. Gemessen an solchen Zahlen müssten Amerikas Spionage und Gegenspionage eigentlich unbezwingbar sein. Die Geheimen verfügen über eine gigantische Maschinerie mit einigen der größten und leistungsfähigsten Computer der Welt, die jeden Tag Abermillionen Telefongespräche auffangen und E-Mails lesen können. Ihre Aufklärungssatelliten sind angeblich in der Lage, noch aus dem Weltall die Nummernschilder von Autos zu entziffern. Die neueste Generation ihrer Himmelsspäher ist so beeindruckend wie das Weltraumteleskop Hubble. Statt ins All können sich deren Kameras auf jeden Fleck der Erde richten.

Und doch hat dieser Apparat in jüngster Zeit schmählich versagt. Kein Agent im Hauptquartier der Aufklärer hat etwas von den Vorbereitungen für die Anschläge auf das World Trade Center und das Pentagon mitbekommen; andererseits haben Geheimdienstanalysen das Waffenarsenal des Irak zu einer monströsen Bedrohung hochstilisiert, die in Wahrheit gar nicht vorhanden war. Monatelang mussten die US-Parlamentarier in Untersuchungsausschüssen des Kongresses eine peinliche Parade der Pleiten aufarbeiten.

Da hatten die elektronischen Spürhunde der NSA nicht bemerkt, dass einer der Attentäter des 11. September nur zwei Meilen von ihrem Haupttor entfernt in einem Internet-Café saß und mit Qaida-Mitgliedern chattete. Da wollte die CIA, in fundamentaler Verkennung der Lage, den US-Truppen Fähnchen für die Iraker mitgeben, weil die angeblich ein unstillbares Verlangen danach hätten, die Befreier zu bejubeln. Die "Oh-mein-Gott-das-darf-nichtwahr-sein-Ausschüsse" nannten die Par- lamentarier ihre Untersuchungsgremien. Auf dem Parteitag der Republikaner in New York baten Politiker gar um höheren Beistand für Amerikas offenbar von Gott verlassene Spione: "Allmächtiger, schenke den Geheimdiensten Weisheit."

Amerikas Dienste versagten, als das Land sie am dringendsten brauchte. Die einzelnen Agenturen hätten mehr gegen- als miteinander gearbeitet, befanden die Abgeordneten. Scheuer kennt unzählige Beispiele aus eigenem Erleben. Bevor er der CIA den Rücken kehrte, verfasste er an seinem Schreibtisch in Langley einen wütenden Bericht für den Kongress.

Eine bittere Bilanz: Da forderte Scheuer im Dezember 1996 Militärhilfe an, um Kommandoeinsätze gegen Bin Laden in dessen Versteck am Hindukusch zu planen. Es dauerte 18 Monate, dann kamen zwei Offiziere - Experten für Iran, ohne jede Afghanistan-Erfahrung.

Später erfuhr Scheuer, dass die Konkurrenz von der NSA seit Jahren die Nummer 00873-682505331 abhörte - Bin Ladens privates Satellitentelefon. Er verlangte

die Transkripte. Hört ihn doch selbst ab, kam die patzige Antwort der Kollegen. Fortan hingen zwei US-Dienste in der Leitung, wenn Bin Laden zum Hörer griff. Scheuers CIA, technisch nicht so hochgerüstet wie die Lauschbehörde, war weniger erfolgreich und konnte nur die Hälfte der Gespräche abfangen. Doch die NSA weigerte sich weiterhin, die fehlenden Aufzeichnungen herauszugeben.

Weil sich so etwas nicht wiederholen soll, wird es künftig im Reich der 15 Geheimdienste nur noch einen Herrscher geben. "Director of National Intelligence", DNI, heißt dessen Stelle im neuen Gesetz. Washingtoner Politiker nennen den künftigen Alleinherrscher im Spionage-Imperium den "Geheimdienstzaren". Anfang dieses Jahres will Präsident Bush ihn ernennen.

Dabei ist der Umbau seiner Schattenwelt keineswegs Amerikas erster Versuch, mit der Zusammenlegung ursprünglich konkurrierender Großbehörden für mehr Sicherheit zu sorgen. Das nach dem 11. September geschaffene Heimatschutzministerium vereinte die Küstenwache, die Einwanderungsbehörde und noch 20 weitere Behörden unter einem Dach. Dass eine solche Zusammenlegung ein deutliches Mehr an Sicherheit gebracht hätte, mag inzwischen nicht einmal mehr der Präsident behaupten.

Scheuer glaubt, dass es dem Geheimdienstzaren nicht besser ergehen wird. "Ihm wird der Einblick fehlen, was die einzelnen Dienste wirklich tun, und genau das ist entscheidend." Ausnahmsweise ist er in dem Punkt einmal mit seinen ehemaligen Chefs einig. "Geschwindigkeit und Beweglichkeit bringen Erfolg im Krieg gegen den Terrorismus, aber nicht mehr Bürokratie", sagt der ehemalige CIA-Chef George Tenet, der im Juni 2004 zurückgetreten ist. Robert Gates, einer seiner Vorgänger, höhnt sogar: "Ich fürchte, der Zar ist ein Eunuch."

Der wichtigste Grund für die Rivalität der Geheimdienste ist der Streit zwischen den Agenten, die sich dem Weißen Haus verpflichtet fühlen, und denen, deren Dienstherr der Pentagon-Chef ist, dem allein acht Agenturen unterstehen, für die er bislang 80 Prozent des Gesamtetats beanspruchte. Jeden Nachmittag, auf einer Fünf-Uhr-Konferenz, kam es zum Streit um die Ressourcen: Wollte die CIA, die dem Weißen Haus untersteht, den iranischen Mullahs und ihrem geheimen Atomprogramm nachspionieren, wollten die Militärs ihre Satelliten lieber die Flugverbotszonen im Irak beobachten lassen. Forderte die CIA Abhöraktionen gegen die saudi-arabischen Stiftungen, die Geld an Extremisten schleusten, warnte das Pentagon: Wir dürfen Kuba nicht vergessen.

Wer immer als neuer Zar ernannt wird - als Kandidaten gelten der neue CIA-Chef Porter Goss, Thomas Kean, ein geheimdiensterfahrener Republikaner, oder dessen demokratisches Pendant Lieberman -, wird viel zu tun haben. Denn in dem neugeschaffenen Imperium herrscht weiterhin Krieg. Vor allem Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld wittert die Chance, die schwer angeschlagene CIA weiter zu entmachten. Einen ersten Erfolg hat er erzielt: Seine Soldaten dürfen 25 Millionen Dollar an Spitzel auszahlen, die bei der Terroristenjagd behilflich sind. Das war bisher Vorrecht der CIA. Überdies hat Rumsfeld dem Präsidenten vorgeschlagen, die Jagd auf Terroristen künftig ganz den Spezialeinheiten seiner Streitkräfte anzuvertrauen.

Im CIA-Hauptquartier in Langley geht es deshalb in diesen Tagen mindestens so sehr um Rache wie um Reform. Ein "Klima von Boshaftigkeit und Rachsucht" hat James Pavitt ausgemacht, der gerade seinen Abschied als CIA-Vize genommen hat.

Langleys Agenten fürchten, dass sie allein für die Pannen der vergangenen Jahre verantwortlich gemacht werden. Das wäre in der Tat ungerecht, wie gerade der Fall der angeblichen Massenvernichtungswaffen des Irak beweist. Auf der einen Seite, so erklärt etwa Senator Bob Graham, ehemaliger demokratischer Vorsitzender des Geheimdienstausschusses, "hatte die CIA wirklich keine Ahnung, andererseits wollte die Regierung unbedingt Beweise". Inzwischen sind CIA-Einschätzungen so zurückhaltend, dass sie als Mahnungen an das Weiße Haus gelten können, künftig dichter bei der Wahrheit zu bleiben.

Zwischen Agenten der Langley-Behörde und der Regierung ist ein Kleinkrieg entbrannt. Verkündet Bush Erfolgsmeldungen über Amerikas Engagement im Irak, sickern prompt CIA-Analysen nach außen, die ein ganz anderes Bild zeichnen. So wurde kurz vor der Präsidentenwahl ein Geheimdienstdokument bekannt, welches die Gefahr eines Bürgerkriegs beschwor. Für die Zeit vor den Wahlen im Zweistromland rechnet die Langley-Behörde mit einer bedrohlichen Zunahme der Selbstmordanschläge.

Solche Indiskretionen hatten das Weiße Haus überzeugt, dass noch viele Zweifler wie Scheuer bei der CIA in Lohn und Brot stehen. Der Bush-Freund Goss soll dafür sorgen, dass sie endlich verschwinden. "Wir unterstützen die Regierung", hat der CIA-Chef in einer E-Mail an alle Mitarbeiter die neue Linie verkündet. Zum Aufräumen hat Goss seine ehemaligen Mitarbeiter aus dem Kongress mitgebracht, deren rüdes Vorgehen ihnen den Spitznamen "Hitlerjugend" eingetragen hat.

Seitdem die Schocktruppen des neuen CIA-Chefs die Macht in Langley übernommen haben, treffen sich immer mehr alte CIA-Kämpen im "Center for Career Transition" wieder, in dem Ausscheidende auf das Leben nach dem Geheimdienst vorbereitet werden.

Es gingen gerade die Besten, warnt Milt Bearden, ehemals der Afghanistan-Experte und eine der Legenden des Dienstes: "Das Universum steht Kopf."

Denen, die sich dem neuen Regime anpassen, verspricht die Bush-Administration goldene Zeiten. Das Weiße Haus will den Etat für Agenten vor Ort um 50 Prozent erhöhen - damit könnte die CIA mehr Spione anheuern, als sie selbst haben wollte. "Normalerweise bringt selbst der Weihnachtsmann nur das, was auf dem Wunschzettel steht", lästert Philip Zelikow, der ehemalige Direktor des wichtigsten Untersuchungsausschusses im Kongress über die Hintergründe des 11. September.

Für Scheuer gibt es keinen Weg zurück. Er will an einer Universität Studenten beibringen, dass weder der Geheimdienstzar noch mehr Geld oder mehr Agenten Amerika sicherer machen werden, wenn nicht noch etwas anderes hinzukomme. Solange es Extremisten gebe, welche die USA hassen, werden sie mit Informationen nicht helfen. Und weil dieser Hass zu immer mehr Gewalt führe, müsse etwas unternommen werden, damit er sich nicht weiter ausbreitet - etwas, was so ziemlich das Gegenteil des Irak-Kriegs sein müsste.

Denn so, wie die Dinge jetzt liegen, sagt Scheuer, hat "der Krieg gegen den Terrorismus noch gar nicht richtig begonnen".

© DER SPIEGEL 1/2005

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Ein seltsames Wettrennen. Auf der einen Seite ist es O.K., wenn es dazu führt, dass mehr Geld für die Flutopfer gegeben wird.
Anderseits ist es peinlich, wenn dadurch versucht wird die UNO auszuhebeln. Denn das Thema UN ist für die USA noch nicht vom Tisch.

Ich hoffe, dass es dem Geld nicht so geht wie vielem Geld was im Fernsehen telefonisch zugesagt wird, besonders wenn die Namen schön werbewirksam im Laufband über den Fernseher laufen, das nachher nie ankommt, oder dem Geld, von dem die NYTimes am 30.12. im Leitartikel (#25090) berichtetet, das von Bush werbewirksam auf seiner Afrikareise für die AIDS-Hilfe zugesagt wurde:
And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.
Laut des gleichen Artikels werden die US-Bürger glauben gelassen According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; (Es sind 0,14%-0,25% des GDP, je nach Berechnung).
Dabei sind die Amerikaner bei Spenden sehr großzügig, nur bei allem zeigt sich immer wieder, dass der normal interessierte US-Bürger unwissend gehalten wird.

January 1, 2005
DIPLOMACY
U.S. Vows Big Increase in Aid for Victims of Asian Disaster
By DAVID E. SANGER and WARREN HOGE

CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 31 - President Bush announced Friday that he would increase emergency aid to stricken areas of Asia to $350 million from $35 million, and said the United States would probably add more resources as the scope of what he called an "epic disaster" became clearer.

At the United Nations, Jan Egeland, the emergency aid coordinator, said the new American money had increased the overall amount donated to nearly $1.2 billion from 40 nations, with new pledges continuing to come in hourly. "I`ve never, ever seen such an outpouring of international assistance in any international disaster, ever," he said.

Mr. Bush`s ninefold increase in the amount of aid was the second time this week that the United States had committed more money to the effort, and it came after criticism that the president, who has stayed on his 1,600-acre ranch all week and spoken publicly about the disaster once, had reacted too slowly.

President Bush reacted angrily on Wednesday to a suggestion from Mr. Egeland that the leading economies of the world had been stingy in providing foreign aid generally, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent much of the week defending the speed with which the United States was responding to the calamity.

In a written statement on Friday, Mr. Bush said he decided on the increase after Mr. Powell and the director of the Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, told him that "initial findings of American assessment teams on the ground indicate that the need for financial and other assistance will steadily increase in the days and weeks ahead."

As recently as Thursday, a senior State Department official deeply involved in the rescue efforts said Washington had not received any word from any assessment team asking for more money. But the official added that when such requests came in, he was certain the money would be available.

Mr. Powell was visibly annoyed later on Thursday when asked about other nations, with far smaller economies, which had initially committed more funds than the United States. "I don`t know yet what the United States` contribution will be," he said on ABC`s "Nightline," "and what we have to do is make a needs assessment and not just grasp at numbers or think we`re in some kind of an auction house where every day somebody has to top someone else."

Asked about the new, higher figure at the United Nations on Friday after he met with Secretary General Kofi Annan, Mr. Powell said he had received information in the morning from Mr. Natsios that justified the rise. "What I wanted to do is to make sure that I had a basis to go to the president and make the recommendation that he commit this amount of money, and not just that each day everybody was trying to play, `Can you top this ?` " he said.

With the newly announced commitment, the United States moves from the middle of the pack of countries that have announced aid to the region to the top. The $350 million is more than three times the amount committed by Britain, and it is $100 million more than the World Bank`s contribution so far.

A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said that the $350 million would come "from existing accounts," but that the administration might have to ask Congress next month to replenish emergency funds. But he dismissed suggestions by Democrats, including Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, that the United States could draw on some of the $16 billion authorized for Iraq reconstruction that has not been spent.

"It`s not coming from Iraq money, if that`s what you are asking," Mr. Duffy told reporters.

White House officials are clearly sensitive about the charge that they responded too slowly, and Mr. Bush listed Friday a series of actions the United States had already taken. They included the dispatch of an aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, and an amphibious ship carrying a Marine expeditionary unit. But the ships are not in position, and several officials said the distance they have to travel would cost precious time.

The United States surrendered its bases in the Philippines more than a decade ago, and one senior American diplomat in Asia noted Thursday that "we`re all paying the price for that a bit" because those bases would have put American forces closer to the destruction at the tip of Sumatra.

In his statement, Mr. Bush noted that the United States had created a coordination "core group" with Australia, India and Japan.

"I am confident many more nations will join this core group in short order," Mr. Bush said in his statement. "Reports of strong charitable donations are also very encouraging and reflect the true generosity and compassion of the American people."

Mr. Powell sought to allay suspicions at the United Nations that in setting up the core group, the United States was competing for leadership of the relief effort with the world organization, with which the administration has had strained relations.

"We created the core group earlier in the week because we saw a need for a coordination mechanism to be created rather quickly and rested on countries that were nearby in the region with assets, experience and capability that could be brought to bear right away," he said. Its ultimate purpose, he added, was to bring international organizations "into play under the overall supervision and leadership of the United Nations."

Mr. Powell plans to leave for Indonesia and Sri Lanka on Sunday along with the president`s brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida. Mr. Bush said he was sending his brother because the series of hurricanes that hit Florida had given him a particular expertise in disaster relief. There was also symbolism in sending a member of his family who has instant access to the president.

Lionel Rosenblatt, president emeritus of Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that he thought the visit by Mr. Powell would help to free up needed resources but said that it was a mistake not to include a high-level United Nations representative. "We see in places like Aceh that they are still without any sort of relief presence yet and it may involve opening airports, bulldozing new airstrips and bringing in other help, and those are the kinds of problems that Powell can begin to solve with a phone call that would take the normal machinery days to turn around," he said.

"But I also think it is imperative to take a very senior member of the U.N. along," he added, "so that the U.N. leadership of the relief system remains intact and indeed enhanced."

Traditionally, Mr. Bush appears around New Year`s at the one coffee shop in this single-stoplight town a few miles from his ranch, sometimes holding an impromptu news conference by the gas pumps outside. But Mr. Bush never left the ranch on Friday. His spokesman said he was entertaining friends.

The question about donation levels also sparked a new spat with France. The French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, wrote a letter to Mr. Natsios saying he was "surprised to learn of the shocking and uncalled for comments you thought fit to make during an interview" on Wednesday on Fox news.

Mr. Natsios had observed that France was not a major donor to other nations, saying "they do not tend to be dominant figures in aid." He praised Britain, Japan, the European Union, Canada and Australia.

Mr. Levitte disputed that assessment, saying that France, with an economy a fraction of the size of the United States`, had already given about $28 million for tsunami relief, or only $7 million less than the United States until its announcement on Friday. "I would be interested in learning your reasons for misguidedly impugning France this way," he wrote.

David E. Sanger reported from Crawford, Tex., for this article and Warren Hoge from the United Nations.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Saturday, January 01, 2005

Happy New Year

May 2005 bring us all more peace, good will, prosperity, and spiritual fulfilment than did 2004. Maybe it will be the year that we finally see some of the artificial barriers broken down, that divide Christians and Muslims, Jews and Arabs, Turks and Armenians, Americans and Iraqis. They`re all just human beings, after all, with the same basic desires, anxieties and hopes.

posted by Juan @ 1/1/2005 06:47:12 AM

Split among Shiites on Elections
9 Iraqis Killed in Bombings, Shootings

A suicide bomber killed 7 persons at Siniyah near Baiji, five of them national guardsmen. Another national guard was found dead near Fallujah, a warning pinned to his body against cooperating with the US.

Clashes and desultory fighting continued in Samarra north of Baghdad between US forces and Sunni Arab guerrillas.

Al-Hayat:

A clear contradiction has appeared between the positions of key Shiite leaders with regard to the upcoming elections. One of the representatives of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called the postponement of the elections "an unimaginable catastrophe." Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr said he would not participate in them "even if they were to lead to the withdrawal of the Occupiers."

The Kurds threatened to boycott the elections if the government insisted on its plan to allow "transplanted" Arabs in Kirkuk to vote in that city.

Shaikh Abdul Zahrah al-Suway`di, Friday prayers leader for the al-Muhsin Mosque in Shiite Sadr City (East Baghdad), read a statement from Muqtada al-Sadr saying, "I as an Iraqi will not participate in the elections, and will not enter into this political game at all." He added, "Refusing to participate in in the elections gets you branded an enemy of democracy, and if you participate in them you find that you have been caught in their game in such a way that you cannot escape." He said he would not participate "even if that would lead, as they allege, to the departure of the occupaying forces from Iraq, which is my demand and wherein lies my own security."

In Najaf, Shaikh Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, the representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim) stressed the necessity of holding the elections, calling upon the Sunni Arab parties to rethink their refusal to participate. In the Great Mosque of Fatimah, he gave a sermon before dozens of worshippers, saying "We hope that our brethren in the Iraqi Islamic Party and the other Sunni parties will study the subject with greater earnestness. It is not right to tie the fate of the entire Muslim community to one person named Bin Laden or to a mythical person named Zarqawi, because those do not wish Iraq well." He wondered, "Why should they allow themselves to be defeated by that terrorist so quickly?"

In Karbala, DPA reported that Shaikh Ahmad Safi, the representative of Sistani there, said that the elections were a "fateful matter" for the Iraqi people, and that there was a consensus that they needed to be held. Their postponement, he said, would mean "the creation of an unimaginable catastrophe." He added, "The Shiite religious leadership shepherds all Iraqis of all stripes without distinction, and this means that, in the final analysis, it takes on the burden of being father, spiritual guide and educator."

Nine Iraqis were killed in violent incidents around the country, including four children. US forces announced the capture of 49 suspected guerrillas in Duluiyyah in Babil province.

The Zarqawi group claimed credit for two attacks on US troops carried out on Wednesday in Mosul. Videotape surfaced of the guerrillas who implemented the attacks, wearing white (a sign of being suicide bombers). A man in black read a communique from "Mesopotamian al-Qaeda".


posted by Juan @ 1/1/2005 06:28:08 AM

Bush Responds to Criticism on Tsunami

The Bush administration scrambled to repair the diplomatic damage done by the relative insouciance with which it had confronted the massive tsunami of last Sunday. The administration raised the aid now promised to an initial pledge of $350 million, and Bush arranged to send his brother Jeb with Secretary of State Colin Powell on a visit to the region. In Asia I think this gesture will be well received, since the brother of the president, himself a governor, will be seen as an important envoy.

I suspect Colin Powell was the architect of this about-face, and it makes you wonder whether future gaffes will be as swiftly or easily corrected by Condi Rice, Powell`s successor who is known to be much less independent of the president.

Meanwhile, a controversy raged about whether Bush`s promise of an ad hoc coalition of four nations to deal with the calamity was intended to undercut the United Nations. The UN has long experience in these matters and a standing bureaucracy ready to go; assembling ad hoc coalitions for every purpose may please American multilateralists, but it is highly inefficient.

Al-Jazeerah reports that Qatar has pledged $25 million to the relief efforts, and Saudi Arabia an initial $10 million. Other Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran, have already sent airplanes full of relief aid.

Pakistan sent money to India, its old enemy. Islamabad also sent emergency aid to Indonesia.

India mobilized its navy not only to aid its own citizens, but to help Indonesia as well.

It is very odd that nations cooperate to help each other in the face of natural disasters. But when they become angry over some minor dispute, they are perfectly happy to inflict far more damage on each other than mother nature ever did. Pakistan and India were seriously contemplating using nukes on each other as recently as 2002. Now Islamabad is sending rupees to Delhi, and Delhi is expressing gratitude.

Now that nukes are becoming so common, humanity has to find a way to move into permanent cooperative and helping mode. War is gradually becoming unthinkable. The massive tsunami`s toll has now risen to 150,000, but an Indo-Pak nuclear exchange would have killed 10 million.

posted by Juan @ [url1/1/2005 06:21:02 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/bush-responds-to-criticism-on-tsunami.html[/url]

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Wir sollten nicht vergessen, das der Irakkrieg in der Zwischenzeit schon mehr als 100 000 Menschen das Leben gekostet hat.
Lancet(britische Ärzteorganisation) hat bis zu 100 000 zivile Opfer gezählt. Dazu kommen die toten irakischen Soldaten.

Die Koalitionssoldaten werden nur gezählt:
Latest Fatality: Dec 31, 2004
Das Jahr 2004: 905.
Die meisten Opfer 11.04: 141 und 04.04: 140
Die wenigsten 02.04: 23
Military Fatalities: Total: 1483 , US: 1332 , Dez.04: 76

Die letzten Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Bush planned Iraq war from the start, former treasury chief …
Detroit News, MI - 1-12-04
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February 2004






Bush`s military files still missing (not in action)
Miami Herald, FL – 2-10-0
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March 2004






Administration agrees to let Rice testify publicly
San Francisco Chronicle, CA - 3-30-04
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April 2004






Woman Fired Over Coffin Photo
WCCO, MN - 4-22-04
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May 2004






Abu Ghraib Photos bring our agony into focus
USA Today
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June 2004






[urlHandling of Enron tapes reignites dispute between state, FERC]http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20040620-9999-1b20ferc.html
San Diego UnionTribune-Jun 20, 2004[/url]
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July 2004






[urlGentler Bush pushes `peace` presidency]http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-bush21.html
Chicago Sun Times, IL - 7-21-04[/url]
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August 2004






[urlRumsfeld escapes blame in `whitewash` Abu Ghraib report]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/15/wrum15.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/15/ixworld.html
Telegraph.co.uk 7-16-04[/url]
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September 2004






[urlRepublicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible]http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/politics/campaign/24bible.html
New York Times - 9-24-04[/url]
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October 2004






[urlBush’s grudge match: Prez got mad, plans to get even]http://news.bostonherald.com/election/view.bg?articleid=48074
Boston Herald, 10-8-04[/url]
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November 2004





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December 2004






[urlSoldiers challenge Pentagon policy extending enlistments]http://www.ktvotv3.com/Global/story.asp?S=2654764
KTVO, Mo[/url]
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[url2004 Retrospective from AllHatNoCattle.com]http://www.allhatnocattle.net/12-31-04_tsunami_bush.htm[/url]

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January 1, 2005
Evangelical Leader Threatens to Use His Political Muscle Against Some Democrats
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

COLORADO SPRINGS - James C. Dobson, the nation`s most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators "in the `bull`s-eye` " if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.

In a letter his aides say is being sent to more than one million of his supporters, Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist and founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, promises "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if President Bush fails to appoint "strict constructionist" jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees.

Dr. Dobson recalled the conservative efforts that helped in the November defeat of Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate minority leader who led Democrats in using the filibuster to block 10 of Mr. Bush`s judicial nominees.

"Let his colleagues beware," Dr. Dobson warned, "especially those representing `red` states. Many of them will be in the `bull`s-eye` the next time they seek re-election."

He singled out Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Bill Nelson of Florida. All six are up for re-election in 2006.

James Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the new Democratic leader, said Democrats had allowed 204 judicial appointments to move forward in Mr. Bush`s first term.

"James Dobson needs to take a moment to focus on the facts," Mr. Manley said. He called Dr. Dobson a "front for the White House."

Ralph G. Neas, president of the liberal group People for the American Way, which has often opposed conservative court nominees, said, "Mr. Dobson`s arrogance knows no limits." He added: "This is the kind of tactic that ultimately backfires. These senators have served their constituents well and have courageously voted their consciences. I don`t think they will take kindly to threats from Mr. Dobson, and I don`t think the voters will either."

Dr. Dobson`s activities represent a new level of direct partisan engagement on his part. Unlike other conservative Christian leaders, Dr. Dobson owes his grass-roots following primarily to his partly clinical, partly biblical advice on matters like marriage and child-rearing. Before supporting Mr. Bush, he had never endorsed a presidential candidate.

In the aftermath of the election, some of Dr. Dobson`s allies are warning their fellow evangelicals not to be seduced by political deal-making. In "an open letter to the Christian church" last month, Charles W. Colson, the born-again Nixon aide and another influential Christian conservative, warned against listing demands of the president or other elected officials.

"To think that way demeans the Christian movement," Mr. Colson wrote with his associate Mark Earley. "We are not anybody`s special interest group."

In an interview in his office in Colorado Springs, Dr. Dobson acknowledged that his plunge into partisan politics had irrevocably changed his public image. "I can`t go back, nor do I want to," he said. "I will probably endorse more candidates. This is a new day. I just feel a real need to make use of this visibility."

He said that despite initial concerns, his political activities did not appear to have diverted donations from Focus on the Family. He created a sister lobbying organization during the last election, and the two organizations` combined budgets grew to a projected $146 million in 2004, from about $130 million in 2003, with a target of $170 million for 2005.

Dr. Dobson said he was prepared for some disappointments from Mr. Bush. For example, he said, when the president says the country is not ready to overturn the Supreme Court precedents supporting abortion rights, "it bothers me a lot." But Dr. Dobson said he was confident that the president would appoint socially conservative nominees for the courts.

He said of Mr. Bush, "He does not take the bully pulpit and use it effectively." He added, "But when the chips are down, he does the right thing."

Dr. Dobson said he was concentrating his political activities mainly on the court. "The next battle will be over the replacement for Rehnquist," he said, referring to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is being treated for thyroid cancer. "That is not something we can just yawn about."

He said he was hoping that Mr. Daschle`s defeat would scare other Democrats. Dr. Dobson said he had been working for Mr. Daschle`s defeat since August 2003, when he attended a rally to support Roy S. Moore, then chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, in his unsuccessful legal battle to keep a monument to the Ten Commandments in his courthouse. The crowd`s reaction demonstrated the depth of popular resentment of liberal court decisions, Dr. Dobson said.

Spokesmen for all but one of the senators Dr. Dobson mentioned declined to comment or did not return phone calls.

David DiMartino, a spokesman for Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, said the senator was already an opponent of abortion rights and had never supported a filibuster of one of Mr. Bush`s appellate nominees.

"Dr. Dobson knows that," Mr. DiMartino said. "The senator and Dr. Dobson have discussed it before. The fact that the media has the letter before the targeted senators indicates his intention has more to do with the media than with persuading anybody in the Senate."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Da hier im Forum danach gefragt wird, was die einzelnen Länder gespendet haben.
D sieht da ziemlich geizig aus.
Und das auch bei privaten Spenden.
Die US-Amerikaner spenden viel. Zahlen sind wegen der Zersplitterung schlecht zu bekommen. Aber 100 Mio $ dürften es sein lt. LATimes.
Auch viele große US-Firmen spenden Millionenbeträge.
Was ist mit den deutschen Firmen?

U.N. says $2 billion pledged so far for tsunami crisis
- The Associated Press
Saturday, January 1, 2005

(01-01) 13:23 PST (AP) --

A partial list of the countries and organizations pledging aid for tsunami victims, based on U.N. data and official announcements by the nations. The United Nations said Saturday that about $2 billion has been promised so far.

* Japan: $500 million.

* United States: $350 million

* World Bank: $250 million

* Britain: $95 million

* Sweden: $75.5 million

* Spain: $68 million

* China: $60 million

* France: $57 million

* Australia: $46.7 million

* Canada: $33 million

* Germany: $27 million

* European Commission: $45 million

* Switzerland: $21.9 million

* Denmark: $18,1 million

* Norway: $16.6 million

* Portugal: $11 million

* Qatar: $10 million

* Saudi Arabia: $10 million

* Singapore: $3.6 million

* New Zealand: $3.5 million

* Finland: $3.3 million

* Kuwait: $2 million

* United Arab Emirates: $2 million

* Ireland: $1.4 million

* Italy: $1.3 million

* Turkey: $1.25 million

* Czech Republic: $750,000

* Iran: $627,000

* South Korea: $600,000

* Hungary: $411,000

* Greece: $397,000

* Luxembourg: $265,000

* Monaco: $133,000

* Mexico: $100,000

* Nepal: $100,000

* Estonia: $42,000


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/200…
©2004 Associated Press

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January 1, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Ends of the World as We Know Them
By JARED DIAMOND

Los Angeles — NEW Year`s weekend traditionally is a time for us to reflect, and to make resolutions based on our reflections. In this fresh year, with the United States seemingly at the height of its power and at the start of a new presidential term, Americans are increasingly concerned and divided about where we are going. How long can America remain ascendant? Where will we stand 10 years from now, or even next year?

Such questions seem especially appropriate this year. History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly. That shouldn`t come as much of a surprise: peak power usually means peak population, peak needs, and hence peak vulnerability. What can be learned from history that could help us avoid joining the ranks of those who declined swiftly? We must expect the answers to be complex, because historical reality is complex: while some societies did indeed collapse spectacularly, others have managed to thrive for thousands of years without major reversal.
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When it comes to historical collapses, five groups of interacting factors have been especially important: the damage that people have inflicted on their environment; climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading partners; and the society`s political, economic and social responses to these shifts. That`s not to say that all five causes play a role in every case. Instead, think of this as a useful checklist of factors that should be examined, but whose relative importance varies from case to case.

For instance, in the collapse of the Polynesian society on Easter Island three centuries ago, environmental problems were dominant, and climate change, enemies and trade were insignificant; however, the latter three factors played big roles in the disappearance of the medieval Norse colonies on Greenland. Let`s consider two examples of declines stemming from different mixes of causes: the falls of classic Maya civilization and of Polynesian settlements on the Pitcairn Islands.

Maya Native Americans of the Yucatan Peninsula and adjacent parts of Central America developed the New World`s most advanced civilization before Columbus. They were innovators in writing, astronomy, architecture and art. From local origins around 2,500 years ago, Maya societies rose especially after the year A.D. 250, reaching peaks of population and sophistication in the late 8th century.

Thereafter, societies in the most densely populated areas of the southern Yucatan underwent a steep political and cultural collapse: between 760 and 910, kings were overthrown, large areas were abandoned, and at least 90 percent of the population disappeared, leaving cities to become overgrown by jungle. The last known date recorded on a Maya monument by their so-called Long Count calendar corresponds to the year 909. What happened?

A major factor was environmental degradation by people: deforestation, soil erosion and water management problems, all of which resulted in less food. Those problems were exacerbated by droughts, which may have been partly caused by humans themselves through deforestation. Chronic warfare made matters worse, as more and more people fought over less and less land and resources.

Why weren`t these problems obvious to the Maya kings, who could surely see their forests vanishing and their hills becoming eroded? Part of the reason was that the kings were able to insulate themselves from problems afflicting the rest of society. By extracting wealth from commoners, they could remain well fed while everyone else was slowly starving.

What`s more, the kings were preoccupied with their own power struggles. They had to concentrate on fighting one another and keeping up their images through ostentatious displays of wealth. By insulating themselves in the short run from the problems of society, the elite merely bought themselves the privilege of being among the last to starve.

Whereas Maya societies were undone by problems of their own making, Polynesian societies on Pitcairn and Henderson Islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean were undone largely by other people`s mistakes. Pitcairn, the uninhabited island settled in 1790 by the H.M.S. Bounty mutineers, had actually been populated by Polynesians 800 years earlier. That society, which left behind temple platforms, stone and shell tools and huge garbage piles of fish and bird and turtle bones as evidence of its existence, survived for several centuries and then vanished. Why?

In many respects, Pitcairn and Henderson are tropical paradises, rich in some food sources and essential raw materials. Pitcairn is home to Southeast Polynesia`s largest quarry of stone suited for making adzes, while Henderson has the region`s largest breeding seabird colony and its only nesting beach for sea turtles. Yet the islanders depended on imports from Mangareva Island, hundreds of miles away, for canoes, crops, livestock and oyster shells for making tools.

Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Pitcairn and Henderson, their Mangarevan trading partner collapsed for reasons similar to those underlying the Maya decline: deforestation, erosion and warfare. Deprived of essential imports in a Polynesian equivalent of the 1973 oil crisis, the Pitcairn and Henderson societies declined until everybody had died or fled.

The Maya and the Henderson and Pitcairn Islanders are not alone, of course. Over the centuries, many other societies have declined, collapsed or died out. Famous victims include the Anasazi in the American Southwest, who abandoned their cities in the 12th century because of environmental problems and climate change, and the Greenland Norse, who disappeared in the 15th century because of all five interacting factors on the checklist. There were also the ancient Fertile Crescent societies, the Khmer at Angkor Wat, the Moche society of Peru - the list goes on.

But before we let ourselves get depressed, we should also remember that there is another long list of cultures that have managed to prosper for lengthy periods of time. Societies in Japan, Tonga, Tikopia, the New Guinea Highlands and Central and Northwest Europe, for example, have all found ways to sustain themselves. What separates the lost cultures from those that survived? Why did the Maya fail and the shogun succeed?

Half of the answer involves environmental differences: geography deals worse cards to some societies than to others. Many of the societies that collapsed had the misfortune to occupy dry, cold or otherwise fragile environments, while many of the long-term survivors enjoyed more robust and fertile surroundings. But it`s not the case that a congenial environment guarantees success: some societies (like the Maya) managed to ruin lush environments, while other societies - like the Incas, the Inuit, Icelanders and desert Australian Aborigines - have managed to carry on in some of the earth`s most daunting environments.

The other half of the answer involves differences in a society`s responses to problems. Ninth-century New Guinea Highland villagers, 16th-century German landowners, and the Tokugawa shoguns of 17th-century Japan all recognized the deforestation spreading around them and solved the problem, either by developing scientific reforestation (Japan and Germany) or by transplanting tree seedlings (New Guinea). Conversely, the Maya, Mangarevans and Easter Islanders failed to address their forestry problems and so collapsed.

Consider Japan. In the 1600`s, the country faced its own crisis of deforestation, paradoxically brought on by the peace and prosperity following the Tokugawa shoguns` military triumph that ended 150 years of civil war. The subsequent explosion of Japan`s population and economy set off rampant logging for construction of palaces and cities, and for fuel and fertilizer.

The shoguns responded with both negative and positive measures. They reduced wood consumption by turning to light-timbered construction, to fuel-efficient stoves and heaters, and to coal as a source of energy. At the same time, they increased wood production by developing and carefully managing plantation forests. Both the shoguns and the Japanese peasants took a long-term view: the former expected to pass on their power to their children, and the latter expected to pass on their land. In addition, Japan`s isolation at the time made it obvious that the country would have to depend on its own resources and couldn`t meet its needs by pillaging other countries. Today, despite having the highest human population density of any large developed country, Japan is more than 70 percent forested.

There is a similar story from Iceland. When the island was first settled by the Norse around 870, its light volcanic soils presented colonists with unfamiliar challenges. They proceeded to cut down trees and stock sheep as if they were still in Norway, with its robust soils. Significant erosion ensued, carrying half of Iceland`s topsoil into the ocean within a century or two. Icelanders became the poorest people in Europe. But they gradually learned from their mistakes, over time instituting stocking limits on sheep and other strict controls, and establishing an entire government department charged with landscape management. Today, Iceland boasts the sixth-highest per-capita income in the world.

What lessons can we draw from history? The most straightforward: take environmental problems seriously. They destroyed societies in the past, and they are even more likely to do so now. If 6,000 Polynesians with stone tools were able to destroy Mangareva Island, consider what six billion people with metal tools and bulldozers are doing today. Moreover, while the Maya collapse affected just a few neighboring societies in Central America, globalization now means that any society`s problems have the potential to affect anyone else. Just think how crises in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq have shaped the United States today.

Other lessons involve failures of group decision-making. There are many reasons why past societies made bad decisions, and thereby failed to solve or even to perceive the problems that would eventually destroy them. One reason involves conflicts of interest, whereby one group within a society (for instance, the pig farmers who caused the worst erosion in medieval Greenland and Iceland) can profit by engaging in practices that damage the rest of society. Another is the pursuit of short-term gains at the expense of long-term survival, as when fishermen overfish the stocks on which their livelihoods ultimately depend.

History also teaches us two deeper lessons about what separates successful societies from those heading toward failure. A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions. That`s why Maya kings, Norse Greenlanders and Easter Island chiefs made choices that eventually undermined their societies. They themselves did not begin to feel deprived until they had irreversibly destroyed their landscape.

Could this happen in the United States? It`s a thought that often occurs to me here in Los Angeles, when I drive by gated communities, guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools. By doing these things, they lose the motivation to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security and public schools. If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people, gates will not keep the rioters out. Rioters eventually burned the palaces of Maya kings and tore down the statues of Easter Island chiefs; they have also already threatened wealthy districts in Los Angeles twice in recent decades.

In contrast, the elite in 17th-century Japan, as in modern Scandinavia and the Netherlands, could not ignore or insulate themselves from broad societal problems. For instance, the Dutch upper class for hundreds of years has been unable to insulate itself from the Netherlands` water management problems for a simple reason: the rich live in the same drained lands below sea level as the poor. If the dikes and pumps keeping out the sea fail, the well-off Dutch know that they will drown along with everybody else, which is precisely what happened during the floods of 1953.

The other deep lesson involves a willingness to re-examine long-held core values, when conditions change and those values no longer make sense. The medieval Greenland Norse lacked such a willingness: they continued to view themselves as transplanted Norwegian pastoralists, and to despise the Inuit as pagan hunters, even after Norway stopped sending trading ships and the climate had grown too cold for a pastoral existence. They died off as a result, leaving Greenland to the Inuit. On the other hand, the British in the 1950`s faced up to the need for a painful reappraisal of their former status as rulers of a world empire set apart from Europe. They are now finding a different avenue to wealth and power, as part of a united Europe.

In this New Year, we Americans have our own painful reappraisals to face. Historically, we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that`s no longer viable in a world of finite resources. We can`t continue to deplete our own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the world.

Historically, oceans protected us from external threats; we stepped back from our isolationism only temporarily during the crises of two world wars. Now, technology and global interconnectedness have robbed us of our protection. In recent years, we have responded to foreign threats largely by seeking short-term military solutions at the last minute.

But how long can we keep this up? Though we are the richest nation on earth, there`s simply no way we can afford (or muster the troops) to intervene in the dozens of countries where emerging threats lurk - particularly when each intervention these days can cost more than $100 billion and require more than 100,000 troops.

A genuine reappraisal would require us to recognize that it will be far less expensive and far more effective to address the underlying problems of public health, population and environment that ultimately cause threats to us to emerge in poor countries. In the past, we have regarded foreign aid as either charity or as buying support; now, it`s an act of self-interest to preserve our own economy and protect American lives.

Do we have cause for hope? Many of my friends are pessimistic when they contemplate the world`s growing population and human demands colliding with shrinking resources. But I draw hope from the knowledge that humanity`s biggest problems today are ones entirely of our own making. Asteroids hurtling at us beyond our control don`t figure high on our list of imminent dangers. To save ourselves, we don`t need new technology: we just need the political will to face up to our problems of population and the environment.

I also draw hope from a unique advantage that we enjoy. Unlike any previous society in history, our global society today is the first with the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of societies remote from us in space and in time. When the Maya and Mangarevans were cutting down their trees, there were no historians or archaeologists, no newspapers or television, to warn them of the consequences of their actions. We, on the other hand, have a detailed chronicle of human successes and failures at our disposal. Will we choose to use it?

Jared Diamond, who won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," is the author of the forthcoming "Collapse: How Societies Choose or Fail to Succeed."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Zwei Artikel aus `Foreign Affairs` Beide zu lang, um sie in vollem Umfang einzustellen
Der erste Artikel von Gaddis `the dean of Cold War studies`
Grand Strategy in the Second Term
In his first four years, George W. Bush presided over the most sweeping redesign of U.S. strategy since the days of F.D.R. Over the next four, his basic direction should remain the same: restoring security in a more dangerous world.
by John Lewis Gaddis

Zu Gaddis:
Grand old policy
A scholar argues that Bush`s doctrine of preemption has deep roots in American history
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/02/08/g…

2.Artikel:
Dobbins hat für Clinton und auch für Bush im Peacekeeping gearbeitet. Sein Buch: `America`s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (2003)`
[urlIraq: Winning the Unwinnable War]http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050101faessay84102/james-dobbins/iraq-winning-the-unwinnable-war.html[/url]
By losing the trust of the Iraqi people, the Bush administration has already lost the war in Iraq. Moderate Iraqis can still win it, but only if they wean themselves from Washington and get support from elsewhere.
by James Dobbins

Mehr zu Dobbins:,
Ein Interview mit Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/stake/do…

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Überlebensbericht einer Amerikanerin nach dem Seebeben:

"... Die amerikanische Regierung hat mir einen Telefonanruf angeboten, eine Zahnbürste, ein Taschenbuch und einen vorläufigen Paß. Kein Hotel, kein Essen, kein Rückflug. Mir wurde gesagt, daß ich einen Kredit bekommen könnte, wenn ich drei Leute benennen könne, die für mich bürgen. Die Prozedur würde nur ein paar Tage dauern. Ich war allein, verletzt (oberflächlich - aber ich sah schlimm aus), besaß nichts, hatte kein Geld, und meine Regierung bot mir ein Buch.

Ich bin sicher einer der Menschen in Thailand, die am meisten Glück hatten. Laut Lokalnachrichten sieht es aus, als ob es in meiner Stadt eine Überlebensrate von 60 Prozent gab. Pearl" http://www.boingboing.net/

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This can`t go on forever - so it won`t

Global economic forecasters tend to be upbeat. But not this year
Joseph Stiglitz
Saturday January 1, 2005

Guardian
The beginning of each year is high season for economic forecasters. With few exceptions, Wall Street economists try to give as upbeat an interpretation as the data will allow: gloom-and-doom forecasts do little to sell stocks. But even the salesmen are predicting a weaker American economy in 2005 than in 2004.

The biggest global economic uncertainty is the price of oil. Oil producers failed to anticipate the growth of demand in China. Supply side problems in the Middle East (and Nigeria, Russia, and Venezuela) are also playing a role, while George Bush`s misadventure in Iraq has brought further instability.

High oil prices are a drain on America, Europe, Japan, and other oil-importing countries. America`s oil-import bill over the past year alone is estimated to have risen by around $75bn. If there were any assurance that prices would remain permanently above even $40 a barrel, alternative energy sources would be developed. But we are now in the worst of all worlds - prices so high that they damage the global economy, but uncertainty so severe that the investments needed to bring prices down are not being made.

Meanwhile, the world`s central bankers have been trained to focus exclusively on inflation. Many will recall how oil-price increases in the 1970s fuelled rapid inflation, and will want to show their resolve not to let it happen again. Interest rates will rise, and one economy after another will slow. The march towards higher interest rates has already begun in the US and elsewhere.

For the past three years, falling interest rates have been the engine of growth, as households took on more debt to refinance their mortgages and used some of the savings to consume. Central bankers are hoping that this will not play out in reverse - that higher interest rates will not dampen consumption. Hope may not be enough. House prices could well decline; at the very least, the rate of increase is likely to slow down.

This is only one of the uncertainties facing the US economy. Clearly, some of the growth in 2004 was due to provisions that encouraged investment in that year - when it mattered for US electoral politics - at the expense of 2005. Then there are America`s huge fiscal and trade deficits, which jeopardise future American generations` well being, and represent a drag on the current US economy.

As one of my predecessors as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Herb Stein, famously put it: "If something can`t go on forever, it won`t." But no one knows how, or when, it will all end. Indeed, President Bush `s election promises include partial privatisation of social security and making his earlier tax cuts permanent, which, if adopted, will send the deficits soaring to record levels. What, exactly, this will do to business confidence and currency markets is anybody`s guess, but it won`t be pretty.

As a result, an even weaker dollar is a strong possibility, which will further undermine the European and Japanese economies. Moreover, America`s gains will not balance Europe`s losses: the uncertainty is bad for investment on both sides of the Atlantic.

Europe, for its part, is finally beginning to recognise the problems with its macro-economic institutions, particularly a stability pact that restricts the use of fiscal policy and a central bank that focuses only on inflation, not on jobs or growth. But there is a good chance that institutional reforms will not come fast enough to lift the economy in 2005.

China - and Asia more generally - represents the bright spot on the horizon. It may be too soon to be sure, but prospects for taming the excessive exuberance of a year ago appear good, bringing economic growth rates to sustainable levels that would be the envy of most other countries.

By contrast, the world`s other major economies will probably not begin performing up to potential in the next 12 months. They are all caught between the problems of the present and the mistakes of the past: in Europe, between institutions designed to avoid inflation when the problem is growth and employment; in America, between massive household and government debt and the demands of fiscal and monetary policy; and everywhere, between America`s failure to use the world`s scarce natural resources wisely and its failure to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East.

· Joseph Stiglitz is professor of economics at Columbia University and a Nobel prize winner

© Project Syndicate

www.project-syndicate.org
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Für alle, die nicht genug kriegen können von den kleinen bunten Bildchen. Auch gut geeignet zum verteilen.
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IWR Top 30 Parodies of 2004!
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!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

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"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- Pres. Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
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Soldier Killed by Roadside Explosion

Baghdad, Iraq – One Task Force Baghdad Soldier was killed and another injured by an improvised explosive device at approximately 3:45 p.m. Jan. 1, north of the Iraqi capital.

The name of the Soldier killed is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

The incident is under investigation.

Das ist wohl die Nummer 1 in 2005!
Mit diesem Seitenkopf stirbt es sich doch gleich viel leichter.
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/media-information/January/050101k.ht…
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/oif2/iraqifreedom2.htm


Friday Night Cat Blogging







Sunday, January 02, 2005
War News for Sunday, January 2, 2005

Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed fighting in al-Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Sniper kills one, wound s one inside Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Bring ‘em on: Nineteen Iraqis killed, six wounded in car bomb attack near Balad.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi policeman assassinated in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqis beheaded in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents execute five captured Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi government officials assassinated in incidents near Khalis and Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: One ING soldier killed, six wounded by roadside bomb near Mahmoudiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Pipeline ablaze near Bahbahan.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, one wounded by roadside bomb near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two ING soldiers killed, six wounded in mortar attack near Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police officer assassinated near Kirkuk.

Elections. “But six weeks before the historic vote, a U.S. official said, fewer than 1 percent of eligible Iraqis have responded to a voter-registration drive, forcing authorities to look for other ways to build up voter lists.”

Bush’s Gulag. “Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.”

Commentary

Editorial: “The Pentagon is beginning to resemble a desperate farmer who feeds his starving family the seed corn meant for sowing next year`s crop. To keep enough boots on the ground now, it is sacrificing the ability to retain the leaders of tomorrow. As overdeployment has become chronic, promising young officers are opting not to re-enlist. When new crops of young people graduate from school, they will be less willing to combine their civilian careers with service in the Army National Guard; recruitment is already down almost 30 percent. The Regular Army is hurting too. Despite enlistment bonuses, it has had to speed up its reporting schedules, sending new recruits straight into basic training. This growing crisis is not due to a lack of preparedness on the part of military brass, but to the ideology on which preparedness was based. Before Iraq, Pentagon dogma - supported by most Republican politicians and many conservative Democrats - held that United States troops were war fighters. Peacekeeping and nation-building were jobs for Old Europe. Well, that was then.”

Opinion: “The truth is that for all the lip service paid to supporting the troops, out of sight is often out of mind. Even the minority that remains gung-ho about the war in Iraq is quick to blame the grunts for anything that goes wrong. Specialist Wilson, Rush Limbaugh said, was guilty of ‘near insubordination’ for his question in Kuwait; the poor defense secretary ‘was set up,’ whined The New York Post. The same crowd tells us that a few low-level guards are solely responsible for the criminal abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and in Guantánamo Bay, not any policy-setting higher-ups who may be sitting in that audience at Kennedy Center. President Bush even tried to pass the buck for his premature aircraft carrier victory jig to the troops, telling the press months later that ‘the `Mission Accomplished` sign, of course, was put up by the members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished.’ Of course.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: New Mexico sailor wounded in Iraq.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:23 AM
Comment (0) | Trackback (0)

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Und hier weiss man wofür gestorben wird!

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Baghdad Burning
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Sunday, January 02, 2005

New Year and Elections...

We spent New Year at home (like last year). It was a very small family gathering and E. and I tried to make it as festive as possible, under the circumstances. We agreed, amongst ourselves in the area, to have the generator turned on from 10 pm until 2 am so we could ride out 2004 on a wave of electricity.

The good part of the evening consisted of food. Food is such a central issue for an Iraqi occasion- be it happy or sad. We end up discussing the food before anything else. For us, it was just some traditional Iraqi food and some junk food like pop-corn, corn chips, and lots of candy.

We sat watching celebrations from different parts of the world. Seeing the fireworks, lights, droves of laughing and singing people really emphasizes our current situation. It feels like we are kind of standing still while the world is passing us by. It really is difficult to believe that come April, two years will have passed on the war and occupation. On most days, an hour feels like ten and yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly difficult to get a good sense of passing time. I guess that is because we measure time with development and since things seem to be deteriorating in many ways, it feels almost as if we`re going backwards, not forwards.

On the other hand, the whole tsunami/earthquake crisis also had a dampening affect on celebrations this year. It is a tragedy that will haunt the area for decades. To lose so many people so swiftly and violently is horrific. Watching all that chaos and death kind of makes you feel that maybe Baghdad isn`t the absolute worse place to be.

We had our own fireworks as we began the New Year countdown. At around 10 minutes to 2005, the house shook with three colossal explosions not too far away. It came as something of a surprise at that particular moment and my cousin`s two young daughters, after the initial fright, started giggling uncontrollably. E. clapped his hands and began to yell, "Yeah- FIREWORKS!! Goodbye 2004!!", which was followed by a sort of impromptu dance by the kids.

The elections are set for the 29th. It`s an interesting situation. The different sects and factions just can`t seem to agree. Sunni Arabs are going to boycott elections. It`s not about religion or fatwas or any of that so much as the principle of holding elections while you are under occupation. People don`t really sense that this is the first stepping stone to democracy as western media is implying. Many people sense that this is just the final act of a really bad play. It`s the tying of the ribbon on the "democracy parcel" we`ve been handed. It`s being stuck with an occupation government that has been labeled `legitimate` through elections.

We`re being bombarded with cute Iraqi commercials of happy Iraqi families preparing to vote. Signs and billboards remind us that the elections are getting closer...

Can you just imagine what our history books are going to look like 20 years from now?

"The first democratic elections were held in Iraq on January 29, 2005 under the ever-watchful collective eye of the occupation forces, headed by the United States of America. Troops in tanks watched as swarms of warm, fuzzy Iraqis headed for the ballot boxes to select one of the American-approved candidates..."

It won`t look good.

There are several problems. The first is the fact that, technically, we don`t know the candidates. We know the principal heads of the lists but we don`t know who exactly will be running. It really is confusing. They aren`t making the lists public because they are afraid the candidates will be assassinated.

Another problem is the selling of ballots. We`re getting our ballots through the people who give out the food rations in the varying areas. The whole family is registered with this person(s) and the ages of the varying family members are known. Many, many, many people are not going to vote. Some of those people are selling their voting cards for up to $400. The word on the street is that these ballots are being bought by people coming in from Iran. They will purchase the ballots, make false IDs (which is ridiculously easy these days) and vote for SCIRI or Daawa candidates. Sunnis are receiving their ballots although they don`t intend to vote, just so that they won`t be sold.

Yet another issue is the fact that on all the voting cards, the gender of the voter, regardless of sex, is labeled "male". Now, call me insane, but I found this slightly disturbing. Why was that done? Was it some sort of a mistake? Why is the sex on the card anyway? What difference does it make? There are some theories about this. Some are saying that many of the more religiously inclined families won`t want their womenfolk voting so it might be permissible for the head of the family to take the women`s ID and her ballot and do the voting for her. Another theory is that this `mistake` will make things easier for people making fake IDs to vote in place of females.

All of this has given the coming elections a sort of sinister cloak. There is too much mystery involved and too little transparency. It is more than a little bit worrisome.

American politicians seem to be very confident that Iraq is going to come out of these elections with a secular government. How is that going to happen when many Shia Iraqis are being driven to vote with various fatwas from Sistani and gang? Sistani and some others of Iranian inclination came out with fatwas claiming that non-voters will burn in the hottest fires of the underworld for an eternity if they don`t vote (I`m wondering- was this a fatwa borrowed from right-wing Bushies during the American elections?). So someone fuelled with a scorching fatwa like that one- how will they vote? Secular? Yeah, right.

- posted by river @ 2:40 PM

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Published on Saturday, January 1, 2005 by the Independent/UK
We Must Resist America`s Attempts to Undermine the United Nations
President Bush`s Proposal is Likely to Complicate Rather than Help International Efforts to Aid the Victims of the Tsunami Disaster
by Clare Short


The Indian Ocean earthquake and its aftermath have taken the lives of more than 120,000 people, and displaced and impoverished very many more. Because of the speed and reach of global communications, and the involvement of Western tourists, people across the world have seen the pictures and responded with great generosity. Public opinion has forced governments into an auction of promises - although, of course, the funds will mostly come from existing aid budgets and imply no overall increase in available resources.

But it did not take long for the debate to turn to criticism of the United Nations. Commentators have suggested that the UN is failing in Darfur, failed in Rwanda, should have dealt better with Saddam Hussein and has no moral authority because of corruption in the oil for food program.

All of these claims are, at best, hopelessly ill informed. It is the Security Council which is responsible for the failure to send sufficient peace-keepers to stop the violence in Darfur, the Security Council that refused to act to prevent the Rwandan genocide and the Security Council that prolonged sanctions in Iraq. And it was the Security Council`s Sanctions Committee, which was dominated by the US and the UK, that failed to take action against the widespread reports of corruption in the oil for food program.

These failures are the responsibility of the permanent members of the Security Council and not of the UN agencies or its systems for responding to humanitarian emergencies. But these criticisms are tossed about by a hungry media which instantly picks up and spreads the most outrageous criticisms and thus undermines confidence in, and respect for, the UN. And President Bush, visibly irritated by a comment from the UN Undersecretary General for humanitarian affairs that wealthy countries were "stingy" towards impoverished nations, announced a new co-ordination mechanism for international action.

In the middle of an extremely complex emergency, he tells us that the US, Australia, Japan and India will co-ordinate the international response. None of these countries has a strong record in responding to international emergencies, although India takes pride in its capacity to deal with its own problems. This proposal is likely to complicate rather than help international coordination Efforts are now under way to try to ensure that the coalition of four will work with the UN, but it is hard to see where the proposal came from, apart from yet another US attempt to snub the UN.

I find this growing appetite for UN bashing very worrying. In a period of growing international disorder, humanitarian crisis and environmental threat, there is a major push by the world`s strongest power to undermine the only system we have for taking co-ordinated action to enforce peace, respond to humanitarian crisis and reach environmental agreements.

There is no doubt that the slow and bureaucratic UN system, that helped prevent the Cold War turning hot, requires reform to respond to current needs. But Kofi Annan, who was appointed as the reforming Secretary General favored by the US, has delivered major reform. If we undermine the only legitimate international system we have, we are left with a world in which might is right and where we diminish our ability to respond to the problems of poverty, disorder and environmental degradation that are a major threat to our future.

Those who seek to undermine the UN role in the international humanitarian system would be wise to pause to consider the scale of the crisis that the system is required to manage in the disorder of the post-Cold War world. On any day during the last decade, humanitarian organizations have been trying to get relief to people in up to 50 places around the world. More than four million people have been killed in violent conflicts since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Natural disasters, even before this catastrophe, have caused the deaths of more than 150,000 in eight years. At any point in the last decade, more than 100 million people will be living lives blighted by conflict and natural disaster. Around 35 million people were displaced from their homes. Overwhelmingly, those affected by the disasters live in developing countries.

In the face of this growing need, spending on humanitarian systems has doubled from 1990 to reach as much as $6billion per annum. This spending amounts to 20 cents out of every $1,000 of GDP in the OECD countries whose average per capita income increased from $21,000 to $28,000 over the last decade.

Spending on humanitarian crises comes from aid budgets, and takes about 10 per cent of the total OECD aid spend. At a time of calls for increased co-ordination, less and less of the money available has been channeled through UN mechanisms. The result has been a proliferation of actors and an allocation system where the emergencies that can grab media attention obtain funding while others are marginalized and neglected. In addition, there has been a politicization of humanitarian relief in Afghanistan and Iraq. This has led to a growing loss of life among humanitarian workers and an undermining of the sacred humanitarian principle of impartiality.

Despite all of this, there has been a considerable investment in improving UN co-ordination and a big improvement in effectiveness. The system can, of course, be improved further, but without the UN, we will go back to each country flying in whatever they fancy with chaos at airports and surpluses and shortages of crucial supplies. And with the announcement of the Colin Powell-Jeb Bush tour, we see the first group of politicians flying in to grab headlines and get in the way.

In fact, the most important humanitarian response starts in the country itself. Chances of survival in any emergency depends on action in the first 24-48 hours, and in this time scale the response is local. Thus, strengthening local capacity in crisis-prone regions is the priority.

The Red Cross and the Red Crescent have been working across the world to help build this capacity in local associations, and there has been an increased effort to build regional co-operation. This is crucial work because we are set to face growing numbers of humanitarian crises, with the growth of disorder and the increased turbulence in weather patterns that comes with global warming. On top of this, growing population means more people living on marginal land and, therefore, higher numbers of casualties in any emergency.

Of course, more crises in Florida or Japan mean some loss of life and the costs of reconstruction, but wealthy countries minimize casualties and quickly recover. It`s the poor of the world who are bearing the brunt of the mounting crises. They are more vulnerable to begin with and find it more difficult to recover.

At a time when the world faces terrible challenges, of poverty, disorder and environmental degradation, there is a real danger that the US government is consistently undermining the only legitimate system of international co-operation that we have. And because the UK sees the US alliance as its foreign policy priority, we are increasingly part of the problem rather than the solution.

The author was International Development Secretary, 1997-2003

© 2005 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

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Ein Trost für alle Geschädigten.

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WAR PROFITEERS

http://www.corporatepolicy.org/topics/topten2004list.htm

The Center for Corporate Policy`s Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004

1) AEGIS

In June, the Pentagon`s Program Management Office in Iraq awarded a $293 million contract to coordinate security operations among thousands of private contractors to Aegis, a UK firm whose founder was once investigated for illegal arms smuggling.

An inquiry by the British parliament into Sandline, Aegis head Tim Spicer`s former firm, determined that the company had shipped guns to Sierra Leone in 1998 in violation of a UN arms embargo. Sandline`s position was that it had approval from the British government, although British ministers were cleared by the inquiry. Spicer resigned from Sandline in 2000 and incorporated Aegis in 2002.

The Aegis contract has stirred up considerable controversy, even in the shadowy world of private military contractors. A protest by rival bidder Dyncorp - whose bid was deemed unacceptable by the Army - was dismissed by the General Accountability Offfice, which concluded that Dyncorp "lacked standing to challenge the integrity of the awardee (Aegis)." Spicer`s defendants point out that there is no provision in contract law to deny a contract based on a bidder`s "colorful" past.

Critics say that`s just the problem. U.S. and international law have failed to address the role of PMCs in Iraq, resulting in a near-total lack of accountability that epitomizes what`s wrong with the corporate takeover of Iraq.

"Who gives the orders? Where do contractors fit in the chain of command? Who is responsible if things go wrong?" Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) asks.

Not only do PMCs fall outside the Military Code of Justice but, thanks to another order passed by Paul Bremer (CPA order #17), it`s not clear that they could be prosecuted under Iraq`s own laws. That`s because the order grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq`s laws, even if they injure or kill an innocent party.

2) BearingPoint

Critics find it ironic that BearingPoint, the former consulting division of KPMG, received a $240 million contract in 2003 to help develop Iraq`s "competitive private sector," since it had a hand in the development of the contract itself.

According to a March 22 report by AID`s assistant inspector general Bruce Crandlemire, "Bearing Point`s extensive involvement in the development of the Iraq economic reform program creates the appearance of unfair competitive advantage in the contract award process."

BearingPoint spent five months helping USAID write the job specifications and even sent some employees to Iraq to begin work before the contract was awarded, while its competitors had only a week to read the specifications and submit their own bids after final revisions were made.

"No company who writes the specs for a contract should get the contract," says Keith Ashdown, the vice president of Washington, DC-based Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"BearingPoint was selected through a transparent and competitive bidding process to undertake the challenging Economic Governance project in Iraq," says BearingPoint`s John LaPlace. "We were pleased to be selected to lead this work, just as we were pleased to be selected through competitive bids to lead similar large reform efforts in Afghanistan, Montenegro, Kosovo and other countries around the world."

Neither Crandlemire nor other critics have ever said that BearingPoint broke the law. But the company`s ties to the Bush administration (according to the Center for Responsive Politics, BearingPoint employees gave $117,000 to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns, more than any other Iraq contractor) is an example of "crony contracting" that undermines the legitimacy of those who might claim to be working to establish competitive markets in the "newly liberated" country.

3) Bechtel

Schools, hospitals, bridges, airports, water treatment plants, power plants, railroad, irrigation, electricity, etc. Bechtel was literally tasked with repairing much of Iraq`s infrastructure, a job that was critical to winning hearts and minds after the war.

According to the company`s contract, "the U.S. government envisions a post-war reconstruction effort as a highly visual symbol of good faith toward building trust for economic, social and cultural efforts as well as for political stability in the region."

To accomplish this, the company hired over 90 Iraqi subcontractors for at least 100 jobs. Most of these subcontracts involved rote maintenance and repair work, however, and for sophisticated work requiring considerable hands-on knowledge of the country`s infrastructure, the company bypassed Iraqi engineers and managers.

Although Bechtel is not entirely to blame, the company has yet to meet virtually any of the major deadlines in its original contract. In October, according to AID, the CPA had restored only 4,400 MW of electrical generating capacity target, falling short of its goal of 6,000 MW by end of June (AID`s goal was 9.000, a level that existed in the country before the first gulf war). According to a June GAO report, "electrical service in the country as a while has not shown a marked improvement over the immediate postwar levels of May 2003 and has worsened in some governorates."

Some of the delay is obviously due to the difficulties of getting employees and materials safely to project sites.

4) BKSH & Associates

Chairman Charlie Black, is an old Bush family friend and prominent Republican lobbyist whose firm is affiliated with Burson Marsteller, the global public relations giant. Black was a key player in the Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign and together with his wife raised $100,000 for this year`s reelection campaign.

BKSH clients with contracts in Iraq include Fluor International (whose ex-chair Phillip Carroll was tapped to head Iraq`s oil ministry after the war, and whose board includes the wife of James Woolsey, the ex-CIA chief who was sent by Paul Wolfowitz before the war to convince European leaders of Saddam Hussein`s ties to al Qaeda). Fluor has won joint contracts worth up to $1.6 billion.

Another client is Cummins Engine, which has managed to sell its power generators thanks to the country`s broken infrastructure.

Most prominent among BKSH`s clients, however, is the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader Ahmed Chalabi was called the "George Washington of Iraq" by certain Pentagon neoconservatives before his fall from grace. BKSH`s K. Riva Levinson was hired to handle the INC`s U.S. public relations strategy in 1999. Hired by U.S. taxpayers, that is: Until July 2003, the company was paid $25,000 per month by the U.S. State Department to support the INC.

BKSH has also represented other foreign governments, including Columbia and Equatorial Guinea. In July, O`Dwyer`s, the public relations industry trade publication, reported that BKSH would represent the new government of Haiti (established after a U.S.-supported coup that had thrown Jean Bertrand Aristide out) "on a pro bono basis."

"We`re not looking to make any money off these people," Black explained. "It`s a very poor country. We`re just trying to do what we can to help out.">

O`Dwyer`s has also reported that Levinson is now representing Radio Sedaye Iran (Radio Voice of Iran), a Beverly Hills-based network that advocates regime change in Iran.

5) CACI and Titan

Although members of the military police face certain prosecution for the horrific treatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, so far the corporate contractors have avoided any charges.

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba reported in an internal Army report that two CACI employees "were either directly or indirectly responsible" for abuses at the prison, including the use of dogs to threaten detainees and forced sexual abuse and other threats of violence. Another internal Army report suggested that Steven Stefanowicz, one of 27 CACI interrogators working for the Army in Iraq, "clearly knew [that] his instructions" to soldiers interrogating Iraqi prisoners "equated to physical abuse."

The Army says it has referred cases involving unidentified employees of CACI to the Department of Justice. Through his attorney, Stefanowicz denies any wrongdoing.

"The CACI personnel performing services in Iraq were at all times subject to the military chain of command and took their orders from military personnel," CACI officials responded to intense scrutiny of its involvement in the atrocities in a statement released in July. "While these advisors provide valuable insight and advise to the military intelligence officers they serve, they do not issue orders or exercise operational control of interrogation activities."

"Titan`s role in Iraq is to serve as translators and interpreters for the U.S. Army," company CEO Gene Ray said, implying that news reports had inaccurately implied the employees` involvement in torture. "The company`s contract is for linguists, not interrogators."

But according to Joseph a. Neurauter, a GSA suspension and debarment official, CACI`s role in designing its own Abu Ghraib contract "continues to be an open issue and a potential conflict of interest."

Nevertheless, the GSA and other agencies conducting their own investigations have yet to find a reason to suspend the company from any new contracts. As a result, in August the Army gave CACI another $15 million no-bid contract to continue providing interrogation services for intelligence gathering in Iraq; In September, the Army awarded Titan a contract worth up to $400 million for additional translators.

The companies` apparent success in waging an aggressive damage-control campaign has been aided by heavy-hitting lobbyists. For CACI: former representatives Vin Weber (R-MN) and Vic Fazio (C-CA), as well as Edward Kutler, an aide to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In addition, CACI has retained a firm managed by former House Speaker Bob Livingston (R-LA), among others. Titan`s impressive stable of lobbyists includes Michael Herson and Van Hipp, who once worked at the Pentagon under then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

"It is patently clear that these corporations saw an opportunity to build their businesses by proving they could extract information from detainees in Iraq, by any means necessary. In doing so they not only violated a raft of domestic and international statutes but diminished America`s stature and reputation around the world," says Susan Burke, an attorney who joined with the Center for Constitutional Rights to file a RICO lawsuit against CACI and Titan in June.

Another national security concern has snagged at least one Titan employee already. One of Titan`s translators, Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, was arrested after visiting his family in Egypt with classified information contained on computer disks that he had taken with him from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mehalba has been in jail, awaiting trial ever since.

Meanwhile, allegations of bribery association with Titan`s operations in Saudi Arabia and other countries have wrecked an anticipated $2 billion buyout by Lockheed Martin.

6) Custer Battles

At the end of September, the Defense Department suspended Custer Battles (the name comes from the company`s two principle founders - Michael Battles and Scott Custer) and 13 associated individuals and affiliated corporations from all federal contracts for fraudulent billing practices involving the use of sham corporations set up in Lebanon and the Cayman Islands.

The CPA caught the company after it left a spreadsheet behind at a meeting with CPA employees. The spreadsheet revealed that the company had marked up certain expenses associated with a currency exchange contract by 162 percent.

Robert Isakson, a company employee, drew attention to the problem by filing a false claims action against the company. Isakson also alleged that Custer`s "war profiteering ... contributed to the deaths of at least four Custer Battles employees."

In a prepared statement, company attorneys suggested that the government`s decision to not participate in Isakson`s case is evidence that the charges are baseless, and that "the individuals [involved] filed this claim solely as a last ditch effort to achieve a competitive edge over CB."

The suspension was the first for any company in association with its work in Iraq. The FBI and the Pentagon inspector general`s Defense Criminal Investigative Services are both conducting ongoing investigations.

7) Halliburton

In December Congressman Waxman (D-CA), announced that "a growing list of concern`s about Halliburton`s performance" on contracts that total $10.8 billion have led to multiple criminal investigations into overcharging and kickbacks.

In nine different reports, government auditors have found "widespread, systemic problems with almost every aspect of Halliburton`s work in Iraq, from cost estimation and billing systems to cost control and subcontract management." Six former employees have come forward, corroborating the auditors` concerns.

Another "H-bomb" dropped just before the election, when a top contracting official responsible for ensuring that the Army Corps of Engineers follows competitive contracting rules accused top Pentagon officials of improperly favoring Halliburton in an early-contract before the occupation. Bunnatine Greenhouse says that when the Pentagon awarded the company a 5-year oil-related contract worth up to $7 billion, it pressured her to withdraw her objections, actions that she said were unprecedented in her experience.

Halliburton spokesperson Beverly Scippa says that while she cannot comment on the allegations until specific charges are filed, any suggestion that the company`s involvement made it difficult for other companies to fairly compete are "absolutely untrue," pointing to a earlier GAO report that found that Halliburton/KBR was "the only contractor DOD had determined was in a position to provide the services within the required time frame given prewar planning requirements."

But others, including Waxman, believe that Greenhouse`s version of events corroborates existing evidence that the contracting process was biased toward Vice President Dick Cheney`s old company.

Pentagon officials referred the matter to the Pentagon`s inspector general, a move that critics say effectively buried the issue.

(For everything you want to know about Halliburton and more visit Halliburton Watch).

8) Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin remains the king among war profiteers, raking in $21.9 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2003 alone. With satellites and planes, missiles and IT systems, the company has profited from just about every phase of the war except for the reconstruction. The company`s stock has tripled since 2000 to just over $60.

Lockheed is helping Donald Rumsfeld`s global warfare system (called the Global Information Grid), a new integrated tech-heavy system that the company promises will change transform the nature of war. In fact, the large defense conglomerate`s sophistication in areas as diverse as space systems, aeronautics and information and technology will allow it to play a leading role in the development of new weapons systems for decades to come, including a planned highly-secure military Internet, a spaced-based missile defense system and next-generation warplanes such as the F-22 (currently in production) and the Joint Strike Fighter F-35.

When it comes to defense policy, Lockheed`s network of influence is virtually unmatched. E.C. Aldridge Jr., the former undersecretary of defense for acquisitions and procurement, gave final approval to begin building the F-35 in 2001, a decision worth $200 billion to the company. Although he soon left the Pentagon to join Lockheed`s board, Aldridge continues to straddle the public-private divide, Donald Rumsfeld appointed him to a blue-ribbon panel studying weapons systems.

Former Lockheed lobbyists and employees include the current secretary of the Navy, Gordon England, secretary of transportation Norm Mineta (a former Lockheed vice president) and Stephen J. Hadley, Bush`s proposed successor to Condoleeza Rice as his next national security advisor.

Not only are Lockheed executives commonly represented on the Pentagon various advisory boards, but the company is also tied into various security think tanks, including neoconservative networks. For example, Lockheed VP Bruce Jackson (who helped draft the Republican foreign policy platform in 2000) is a key player at the neo-conservative planning bastion known as the Project for a New American Century.

9) Loral Satellite

In the buildup to the war the Pentagon bought up access to numerous commercial satellites to bolster its own orbiting space fleet. U.S. armed forces needed the extra spaced-based capacity to be able to guide its many missiles and transmit huge amounts of data to planes (including unmanned Predator drones flown remotely by pilots who may be halfway around the world), guide missiles and troops on the ground.

Industry experts say the war on terror literally saved some satellite operators from bankruptcy. The Pentagon "is hovering up all the available capacity" to supplement its three orbiting satellite fleets, Richard DalBello, president of the Satellite Industry Association explained to the Washington Post. The industry`s other customers - broadcast networks competing for satellite time - were left to scramble for the remaining bandwidth.

Loral Space & Communications Chairman Bernard L. Schwartz is very tight with the neoconservative hawks in the Bush administration`s foreign policy ranks, and is the principal funder of Blueprint, the newsletter of the Democratic Leadership Council.

In the end, the profits from the war in Iraq didn`t end up being as huge for the industry as expected, and certainly weren`t enough to compensate for a sharp downturn in the commercial market. But more help may be on its way. The Pentagon announced in November that it would create a new global Intranet for the military that would take two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build. Satellites, of course, will play a key part in that integrated global weapons system.

10) Qualcomm

Two CPA officials resigned this year after claiming they were pressured by John Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for technology security to change an Iraqi police radio contract to favor Qualcomm`s patented cellular technology, a move that critics say was intended to lock the technology in as the standard for the entire country.

Iraq`s cellular market is potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues for the company, and potentially much more should it establish a standard for the region. Shaw`s efforts to override contracting officials delayed an emergency radio contract, depriving Iraqi police officers, firefighters, ambulance drivers and border guards of a joint communications system for months.

Shaw says he was urged to push Qualcomm`s technology by Rep. Darrell E. Issa, a Republican whose San Diego County district includes Qualcomm`s headquarters. Issa, who received $5,000 in campaign contributions from Qualcomm employees from 2003 to 2004, sits on the House Small Business Committee, and previously tried to help the company by sponsoring a bill that would have required the military to use its CDMA technology.

"Hundreds of thousands of American jobs depend on the success of U.S.-developed wireless technologies like CDMA," Issa claimed in a letter to Donald Rumsfeld. But the Pentagon doesn`t seem to be buying the argument. The DoD`s inspector general has asked the FBI to investigate Shaw`s activities.

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Was ist San Francisco und der Norden Kaliforniens gegen Montana. Montana an der Grenze zu Kanada war mir bis jetzt nur dadurch aufgefallen, dass es tagsüber keine Geschwindigkeitbegrenzung gibt und mehr Rinder als Menschen.
Nun darf dort auch aus gesundheitlichen Gründen straffrei gekifft werden und Hemp auch angebaut werden.
Und kein Bush muß erfolglos die National Garde losschicken, wie Vater Bush, im nördlichen Kalifornien Anfang der 90er.

January 2, 2005
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
What Color Is Montana?
By WALTER KIRN

It happened in November in Montana. Having contracted cancer from his lifelong smoking habit, and suffering from the nausea and loss of appetite that are typical side-effects of chemotherapy, a Marlboro man type (with the blessing of his neighbors, who`d voted to help the ailing old cowboy seek relief from a once-illegal plant) struck a match on his boot heel, cupped the flame, brought it to his lips and lighted a joint.

This development surprised some people.

The people it most surprised were not Montanans, or even Westerners, but Eastern media types -- the folks who`d been on TV since the election speechifying about ``the values gap`` dividing red and blue America. These analysts had reached a consensus that was sweeping in its implications and, if you thought about it for very long, staggering in its simple-mindedness. There are two kinds of voters, the formula said: the easygoing coffeehouse artistes who dwell on the coasts and in small parts of the North, and the uptight white-chapel patriots who live in the South, the middle and the West (or, as geographers put it, ``almost everywhere``).

Because of its location relative to the Mississippi River and because it voted overwhelmingly for President Bush, my home state, Montana, was colored red and tossed on a pile with Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and all those other cattle lands where men are still men, legend has it, and women let them be, leading to rigid behavior in the voting booth. Democrats? Hate `em. Environmental laws? Them spotted owls are mighty tasty. Firearms? Handy for shooting them spotted owls. Gay marriage? Don`t know; I`ll have to ask my preacher. Ah, those predictable red Westerners. They`re either standing and saluting, kneeling and praying or lying down and breeding.

POLITICS OF THE SEED Statewide marijuana initiatives, 2004 Montana: Allow patients to use, possess and grow their own medical marijuana without fear of arrest or jail. Yes: 62 percent | No: 38 percent Alaska: Remove criminal penalites for marijuana use and sale by adults 21 and older and prompt the state Legislature to tax and regulate marijuana. Yes: 44 percent | No: 56 percent Oregon: Strengthen Oregon`s existing medical marijuana law by allowing registered patients to purchase marijuana at nonprofit, state-regulated dispensaries. Yes: 42 percent | No: 58 percent Source: Marijuana Policy Project

But sitting and puffing weed? It didn`t quite fit -- which might have been partly why unruly Montana (which until a few years ago had no daytime speed limit and still permits motorists to drink while driving as long as they`re not intoxicated) blurred the national political color code by legalizing medical marijuana at the same time it backed the Republican president. As for the other questions put before them, Montanans didn`t just split their ballots; they shredded them. They elected their first Democratic governor in 16 years, upheld a prohibition on toxic mining practices, broke the Republicans` hold on the state Legislature but also amended the state Constitution to ban gay marriage.

One problem with political science is that its laboratories are unsecured, allowing real people to roam around inside them, spitting in test tubes and fiddling with computers. Montanans, and Westerners in general, are especially mischievous in this regard. For starters, they`re fond of circumventing the bigwigs by legislating through popular initiatives -- a fondness that may explain why of the 11 states where doctors can prescribe cannabis to patients, 9 are in the West. This tendency toward what might be called ``vigilante democracy`` can make a hash of organized party politics and of electoral models that link past behavior to future results. That`s why Arnold Schwarzenegger runs California now.

In Montana, the new Democratic governor, a beefy-looking rancher named Brian Schweitzer, challenged what had become over the years a smug and clubby conservative power structure by choosing a Republican running mate who showed no more reverence for his party`s orthodoxies than Schweitzer showed for his. Schweitzer`s display of independence worked, and red Montana, like red Wyoming, red Arizona and red Kansas, installed a blue leader, thus turning his state purple -- a color the Eastern analysts seem blind to, but which Westerners recognize as the color of sagebrush and, as the song says, of mountain majesties (whatever those are).

Purple is also the color of certain strains of marijuana, particularly the more potent ones. Most Montanans, I`d wager, don`t know this from experience, despite having passed last November`s initiative with a 62 percent majority -- the largest in the history of such votes. And since neither party discussed the issue much during the campaign season, it seems fair to conclude that Montana`s decision resulted from independent thinking by thousands of voters. That`s not supposed to happen anymore. People vote with their congregation, right? Or against those who belong to congregations.

What were Montanans` reasons for busting out of their assigned political corral? My guess is that they had lots of little private reasons -- Grandpa just won`t eat since he got lung cancer; the Beatles smoked dope, but they sure did write great songs; the stuff can`t be any worse for you than Vioxx -- and a handful of larger, more thoughtful reasons linked to concerns about personal liberty, prescription-drug costs and states` rights. When added together, these reasons yielded an outcome: keep your hands off the Marlboro man; the fellow`s sick!

For journalists and political professionals, case-by-case outcomes that arise from a welter of motivations won`t pay the bills, though. They need every election to have a moral -- and, ideally, a chart that supports the moral as well as their authority to propound it. The source of their power is their mania for order, which is why a state like Montana, where people distrust order (and sometimes resist it just because they can), makes such nonsense of their lovely maps. Soon, of course, even this Western ornery streak will be classified and given a color -- at which point Montanans may give up being ornery out of sheer, redoubled orneriness and vote to make it illegal to own firearms unless you`re married, gay and stoned. Maybe the experts will finally figure out then that the freedom some people cherish most (not only in Montana) is the freedom from being figured out.

Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor to the magazine, is the author, most recently, of ``Up in the Air,`` a novel.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Vor der nächsten Katastrophe
von Uri Avnery
uri-avnery.de / ZNet Deutschland 01.01.2005
Stellen wir uns einen Augenblick vor, diese große Flutwelle hätte die westlichen Küsten Europas getroffen und Hunderttausende von Engländern, Iren, Holländern, Belgiern, Franzosen, Spaniern und Portugiesen wären Opfer des Tsunami geworden, und die Ostküste der USA wäre auch betroffen worden. Wie würde die Welt wohl in Aktion getreten sein! Wie wären die Regierungen schlagartig aktiv geworden! Was für große Geldsummen wären innerhalb von Stunden geflossen, um zu retten, was hätte gerettet werden können und um Epidemien, die Millionen bedrohen, zu verhindern. Doch es geschah nicht in Europa. Es geschah weit weg – in den von Armut geschlagenen asiatischen Ländern. Das ist der Unterschied.

Musste dies so geschehen?

Das Erdbeben konnte nicht verhindert werden, und eine genügende Warnung konnte auch nicht gegeben werden. Aber der Augenblick des Erdbebens mitten im Meer wurde registriert, mit einem Tsunami musste gerechnet werden. Als er seinen Amoklauf über den Ozean begann, war genug Zeit, um entferntere Küsten zu warnen. Ein paar Minuten genügten, damit Zehntausende auf höher gelegenes Land oder in obere Stockwerke hätten fliehen können. Solch eine Warnung wurde nicht gegeben. Die Menschen haben den Mond erreicht. Raumschiffe erforschen die weit entfernte Sternenwelt. Milliarden über Milliarden sind in diese Bemühungen gesteckt worden. Aber das menschliche Genie ist nicht in der Lage, Hunderttausende von Menschenleben vor solch einem Naturereignis zu schützen. Man kann immer argumentieren, dass man nach dem Schaden jeweils klüger ist. Aber wo sind die Experten, deren Job es wäre, vor Gefahren zu warnen, bevor sie sich ereignen? Die Medien sind voll mit Geschichten über Experten, die schliefen, wenn sie hätten auf Wachposten sein sollen, über Frühwarnzentren, die rechtzeitig eine Warnung erhielten und sie nicht dorthin weitergaben, wo sie nötig gewesen wäre, über wissenschaftliche Institute, die im Wochenendurlaub waren und so keine Warnung abgeben konnten, über den Mangel an einem minimalen Not-Kommunikationssystem für solche Eventualitäten. Man sagte uns, dass an der Pazifikküste die Situation weit besser sei, so weit es solch eine Situation betrifft. Ist doch „Tsunami“ ein japanisches Wort ( eine Verbindung von Hafen und Welle). Sind die Küstenbewohner anderer Meere also weniger privilegiert?

Die Reaktion der westlichen Welt war skandalös.

Der britische Ministerpräsident Tony Blair erfreute sich weiter seines Urlaubs in Ägypten. Kofi Anan brach seinen Urlaub erst am 4. Tag nach der Katastrophe ab und hielt eine seiner aalglatten Reden. Der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten blieb auf seiner Farm in Texas und machte ein Statement, um dann vor allem den UN- Hilfs-Koordinator Jan Egeland zu beschuldigen, weil dieser die westlichen Regierungen wegen ihres Geizes angegriffen hatte. Der unglückliche Bürokrat entschuldigte sich sofort. Colin Powell, mittlerweile eine mitleiderregende Karikatur seiner selbst, wies die Anklage zurück, dass die USA nicht ihre Pflicht getan hätte, als es 15 Millionen Hilfsgelder spendete. Die Spenden waren tatsächlich absurd. Innerhalb weniger Stunden war klar, dass viele Milliarden nötig waren, um zu retten, um Seuchen zu verhindern und um wiederaufzubauen. Washington gab eine Million, dann 15 Millionen, schließlich wurde die Summe auf 35 Millionen erweitert – weniger als die Summe, die bei der festlichen 2. Amtseinsetzungspartie von Bush verschwendet werden wird. (Später - unter Druck - wurde die Summe verzehnfacht). Großbritannien bot eine ähnliche Summe an. Andere Länder gaben verschiedene Beträge. Sogar die israelische Regierung gab etwas Geld - begleitet von lautem Tamtam - dass man denken könnte, es wolle die Welt retten. All dies ist nicht mehr als ein Tropfen im Ozean– vielleicht eine unglückliche Metapher in diesen Tagen. Man kann dies mit dem Schock zu entschuldigen versuchen, der die Welt in den ersten Tagen überfallen hatte. Es verging viel Zeit, bevor die politischen Systeme in den Ländern der Welt die ganze Dimension der Katastrophe begriff. Das Fernsehen, ein Medium, das für solche Situationen besonders gut geeignet ist, brachte die Bilder in jedes Haus, aktivierte die öffentliche Meinung und übte auf die Politiker Druck aus. Aber sogar dies war nicht genug, um entsprechende Reaktionen hervorzurufen. Besonders da die Medien sich auf die wenigen zugänglichen Örtlichkeiten konzentrierte, aber nicht die Hunderte anderer betroffenen Gegenden in entfernteren Regionen erreichte. Dies schuf ein völlig falsches Bild der notwendigen umfangreichen Unterstützung. Herz-zerreißende Geschichten wurden im TV gebracht, statt Berichte über die reale Situation. Man könnte behaupten, dass es keinen Weg gibt, um eine Katastrophe von solch gewaltigen Ausmaßen vorauszusehen und sich darauf vorzubereiten. Das könnte wahr sein. Aber die Welt war auch nicht auf eine Katastrophe kleineren Ausmaßes vorbereitet. Vor ein paar Jahren veröffentlichte die International Harald Tribune nach dem großen Erdbeben in der Nähe Istanbuls einen Artikel von mir, in dem ich zu einer geistigen Revolution auf diesem Gebiet aufrief. Ich schlug die Schaffung einer internationalen Rettungstruppe vor. Ich rief dazu auf, eine stehende Truppe mit einem Generalstab und einer Befehlskette einzurichten, die in der Lage wäre, innerhalb Stunden nach einer größeren Katastrophe zu reagieren und innerhalb weniger Tage all das, was zur Bewältigung einer solch großen internationalen Katastrophe nötig ist, zu mobilisieren. Was für solch einen Ziel nötig ist, ist ein permanenter Krisenstab, der ständig bereit ist, 24 Stunden am Tag und täglich während des ganzen Jahres. Dieser Krisenstab muss unter seinem Kommando Rettungskräfte in vielen Ländern haben, die innerhalb kurzer Zeit einsatzbereit sind. Er muss mittels der logistischen Infrastruktur in der Lage sein, schnelle Hilfe auf dem Luft-, Land- oder Meerweg leisten zu können, auch dann, wenn die Katastrophe Landstraßen und Flughäfen zerstört haben sollte. Er muss trainierte Rettungsexpertenteams und die Experten für Logistik als auch medizinische Teams vorbereiten. Er muss Zugang zu speziellen Ressourcen in vielen Ländern haben, die kurzfristig verwendet werden können. Wenn all dies im voraus bereit steht, können massive Rettungs- und Hilfsaktionen innerhalb weniger Stunden in Bewegung gesetzt und an den folgenden Tagen je nach Notwendigkeit erweitert werden. Solch eine Körperschaft könnte auch ein weltweites Warnsystem für Naturkatastrophen in verschiedenen Formen koordinieren und dabei alle verfügbaren Mittel, einschließlich Satelliten, verwenden und absichern, dass die Warnungen die bedrohte Bevölkerung beizeiten erreichen. Die Internationalen Kräfte sollen nicht die freiwilligen Hilfsorganisationen , die eine wunderbare Arbeit tun, ersetzen. Es muss als Befehls- und Einsatzzentrum funktionieren und bereit sein, sofort zu handeln. Solch eine Gruppe könnte zur Einheit der Menschheit beitragen. Eine Katastrophe großen Ausmaßes bringt die Nationen einander näher und mäßigt Konflikte, wie wir in der vergangenen Woche tatsächlich gesehen haben. Ich glaube, dass die Schaffung einer Internatonalen Rettungskraft ein weiterer Schritt in Richtung weltweiter Zusammenarbeit und Solidarität sein könnte.

Mein Vorschlag erhielt einige positive Antworten, prallte aber schnell am der reflexartigen internationaler Bürokratie ab. Bei den UN erklärte jemand in beleidigtem Ton, dass es schon eine Gruppe von Beauftragten für diesen Bereich gebe etc. etc. Natürlich wurde nichts getan. In der vergangenen Woche sahen wir die Konsequenzen – Tage vergingen, bis die ersten bedeutenden Hilfsoperationen anliefen. Sie waren in keinem Verhältnis zur Katastrophe. Im Fernsehen aber erklärten wohlgepflegte Bürokraten in Anzug und Krawatte, dass alles nach abgesprochenem Verfahren ablaufe. Die Internationale Rettungskraft muss aufgebaut werden, damit man für die nächste Katastrophe gewappnet ist. Um sie zu leiten, müsste eine mit Autorität ausgestattete Persönlichkeit ernannt werden, jemand mit Vorstellungskraft, geistiger Beweglichkeit, Organisationstalent und dem Talent für Improvisation. Wir haben solche Leute in Israel. Ich bin sicher, dass es solche Leute auch in anderen Ländern gibt. Was fehlt, ist die internationale Bereitschaft.

Wie früher kann die Menschheit noch einmal mit Zungen schnalzen und sich mit Aktionen begnügen, deren Zweck es ist, ein Minimum des Notwendigen an Pflichterfüllung zu tun. Nach wenigen Tagen ist das Ganze vergessen.

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$2bn pledged, but will the world keep its promises?

· UN warns west could renege on aid
· Chaotic relief efforts with 125,000 dead, 5m homeless
John Vidal and Jamie Wilson
Monday January 3, 2005

Guardian
The United Nations yesterday warned that huge promises of aid from rich countries to the Asia tsunami crisis might not be fulfilled as some countries use dubious methods to appear more generous than they really are.

Charities and international bodies say they fear that much of the money pledged so far to help the emergency in southern Asia may not materialise because governments traditionally renege on their humanitarian pledges.

Last night the death toll stood at more than 125,000, although the exact tally will probably never be known. More than 5 million people have been left homeless.

More than a week after the disaster, most countries in the region have given up the search for survivors to concentrate on burying the dead.

But in Banda Aceh, the province of Indonesia closest to the epicentre of the earthquake, a 24-year-old fisherman, Tengku Sofyan, was found trapped but alive underneath his boat after being tossed on to the beach when the tsunami hit.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which is leading the response to the disaster, the amount promised by countries and international banks stood last night at just under $2bn (£1.1bn) after a verbal pledge at the weekend of $500m by the Japanese prime minister and $530m from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

But UN OCHA spokesman, Robert Smith, told the Guardian: "We should be very cautious about these figures. Let`s put it this way. Large-scale disasters tend to result in mammoth pledges which... do not always materialise in their entirety. The figures look much higher than they really are. What will end up on the ground will be much less."

Rudolf Muller, also of UN OCHA, said: "There is definitely double accounting going on. A lot of the money will be swallowed up by the military or will have been been diverted from existing loans."

A spokesman for the Overseas Development Institute, Britain`s leading aid analysts, said: "The research evidence is that the immediate response to natural disasters involves some new money, but that rehabilitation needs are often met by switching aid money between uses rather than increasing total aid to the countries affected."

The disparity between government promises and the delivery of emergency and rehabilitation aid can be extreme. Iranian government officials working to rebuild Bam, destroyed by an earthquake exactly a year before the Asian tsunami, last week said that of $1.1bn aid promised by foreign countries and organisations only $17.5m had been sent.

Similarly, more than $400m was pledged by rich countries to help rebuild Mozambique after floods in 2000, but according to its public works minister, less than half was delivered.

The worst example was Hurricane Mitch, which in 1998 swept through Honduras and Nicaragua, killing more than 9,000 people and making 3 million homeless. Governments pledged more than $3.5bn and the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the EU promised a further $5.2bn, but less than a third of the money was ever raised.

Similarly, emergencies in Gujarat, Bangladesh and central America in the past three years have mostly not received all the money promised. The humanitarian emergency in Afghanistan attracted more than $700m of pledges, but less than half that has been sent. Of the $100bn promised for debt relief, only $400m was received.

Last night a spokesman for the US Agency for International Development could give no breakdown between civilian and military expenditures. But the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, indicated that the cost of military logistics were not included in the $350m pledge.

Britain`s promised £50m to the Asian reconstruction funds will not come out of other aid budgets, the international development secretary, Hilary Benn, stressed last night. It will come from his department`s contingency funds.

There was also concern that the Asia crisis would inevitably draw money from other emergencies.

Jasmine Whitbread, international director at Oxfam, said: "We are concerned that humanitarian aid could be sucked from other crises such as Sudan and Congo where the needs are just as great. Pledges to the tsunami victims must be new money and not taken from the people in other crises."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/

Der Unterschied zwischen der USA und D ist, dass die Hetze gegen die Moslime und den Islam in den USA von offizieller Seite vorgenommen wird und in D z.B. hier im Thread von etwas minderbemittelten Postern oder offensichtlichen Rassisten.

Monday, January 03, 2005

2 Killed, 14 Wounded at Allawi Party HQ

Wire services and Lebanese Broadcasting Channel were reporting early Monday morning that guerrillas had detonated a car bomb near the headquarters of the Iraqi National Accord party. The party was about to announce its candidate list for the forthcoming elections. LBC reported that Allawi was on the premises but not near where the bomb went off, but this seems to me like Allawi spin. If he was on the premises, he was in danger.

The problematic character of these elections, with their artificial national candidate lists such that people cannot vote for someone from their own city; with almost no announcements of the names of actual candidates so far; with so much of the Sunni Arab population not registered to vote (and often unable to go out of their houses for fear of poor security)-- is underlined by this bombing. When the prime minister`s party cannot hold a press conference without getting bombed, this is a walking disaster.

What do do? Probably nothing can be done. The US didn`t drive having these elections this way at this time. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani did, though he wanted them earlier. So this is his call. And he can make so much trouble if he doesn`t get the elections he wants that it is not worthwhile crossing him.

My guess is that his next call, after the elections, will be for a timetable for US withdrawal. That is one reason I haven`t joined Naomi Klein, Pat Buchanan, Christopher Manion and others in saying the US should just get out. I`m watching Sistani. When he says it, it will be time. This is not because I`m abdicating my judgment to him. It is because without his acquiescence, the US presence in Iraq is untenable and really would, globally, do more harm than good.

posted by Juan @ 1/3/2005 06:30:51 AM

Middle Eastern Contributions to Tsunamic Relief in Context

Someone on an email list drew my attention to the following exchange from last week, with Tucker Carlton talking to Leslie Gelb, a fromer president of the Council on Foreign Relations, shown at 10 pm on Weds. Dec. 29 on CNN Newsnight.

Carlson, who doesn`t know anything at all about the Middle East, might be excused for not knowing that at the time he was speaking, Saudi Arabia had already pledged $10 million to the tsunami relief effort a day before he made his ignorant remark. Gelb should have known better. I`m beginning to think he seldom does (he is also the one with the bright idea to break up Iraq, which would be a world-class catastrophe, not least for US security).



CARLSON: Well, I got the sense from the remarks from people we`ll say in the background from the White House of two things, one that they thought the president really was waiting to figure out what the scope of the aid would be and that when he figured that out he`d say something about it.

And, second, that this is sort of an unfair attack since, for instance, Kuwait, a Muslim country and a very rich one has pledged only $2 million and nobody is criticizing Kuwait or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia, which I don`t think is going to come through.

GELB: Well, I`ll criticize them. They`re cheap.



Somebody named John Farmer has picked up this meme and run with it. Farmer has even less excuse, since he was mouthing off after much more information was available.

As of 1/1, Reuters was reporting these responses to the tsunami from Middle Eastern countries:

--Qatar, $25 million
--Saudi Arabia, $10 million
--Kuwait, $2.1 million
--Algeria, $2 million
--Libya, $2 million
--UAE, $2 million
--Turkey, $1.25 million

I have suggested before that if you want to compare the donations, you can`t do it in terms of absolute numbers. You have to look at the population of the country and at its per capita income.

The announced Saudi contribution of $10 million is probably about $0.66 cents a citizen on a per capita basis (I don`t think the Saudi citizen population can possibly be over 15 million no matter what Riyadh says). The initial US offer of $35 million was about $0.09 per person. Since US per capita income is approximately 4.5 times that of Saudi Arabia ($8500 Atlas method), however, the Saudi contribution should be seen as about $3.00 per citizen on a US scale, with regard to the real per capita burden. So the Saudi was a generous initial offer in comparison to that of the US.

The USG is now pledging about $0.90 cents per person ($350 million).

The Qatar offer of $25 million is about $250 per citizen.

The Kuwait offer of $2 million is $2.00 per citizen or $1.00 per person if guest workers are counted. Either way, it is comparable to the US offer on a per capita basis, and Kuwaiti per capita income is about half that of Americans. So any way you cut it, the Kuwaitis are not being chintzy unless you want to say Americans are moreso.

The Libyans are giving about $0.36 per person, and their per capita income (purchasing power parity method) is a little over $6,000. That is about 1/7 of the US per capita income, so their contribution burdens the Libyans the same way a roughly $2.50 per person contribution would burden Americans. Remember, the USG is currently giving ninety cents a person.

The Turks have offered 18 cents a person. But their per capita income is only about $3000 per year, or a tenth that of an average American, so this plege is equivalent to an American one of $1.80. That is, the Turks are giving twice what Americans are if everything is taken into account.

The Australian pledge of $28 million is about $1.35 per person.

It is obvious that if we take their populations and actual per capita income into account, the offers made by these governments are generally more generous than that of the United States. A lot of Middle Eastern countries have small populations, so even if they gave a lot per capita, it would look small in absolute numbers. Apparently US pundits don`t know things like the citizen population of Kuwait or the per capita income of Libya, and can`t be bothered to look them up.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (the foreign ministers of Muslim-majority countries) is offering to coordinate aid from the area, and is calling for Muslim countries to give the utmost.

And, civil society organizations are also swinging into action in places like Qatar.

What explains this misplaced American high dudgeon? Petroleum wealth seems often to be coded by Americans as underserved and also as automatically making people rich. But this impression is exaggerated. Petroleum probably only accounts for about a fourth of Libya`s gross domestic product. And the Saudi per capita income of about $8,500 per person per year (Atlas method) compares poorly to the US average of $38,000 per year per person. (And remember, these are averages and since both countries have a lot of billionnaires, ordinary people actually make much less). Americans don`t seem to understand that on an average they are several times richer than the average Saudi.

It is particularly unfair to blame Kuwait, which has a reputation of doing great, professional little development projects in Africa and elsewhere, and which is still recovering from Saddam`s brutal occupation and sabotage. Since Tucker Carlson thought the recent Iraq war was so great, isn`t he grateful to Kuwait for allowing itself to be used as the launching pad? What does an Arab country have to do to get a break from the US talking heads? Sue to become the 51st state?

I wonder if Gelb or Carlson will ever apologize to the Kuwaitis and Saudis (or whoever "they" are, who are "cheap"), and whether their incorrect statements will ever be retracted.

posted by Juan @ 1/3/2005 06:17:59 AM

Postings

Postings may sometimes be irregular this week, since I`m at a conference.

posted by Juan @ [url1/3/2005 06:02:39 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/postings-postings-may-sometimes-be.html[/url]

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Sun, January 2, 2005
Sun Media: Calgary Sun / Ottawa Sun / Edmonton Sun / London Free Press / Winnipeg Sun

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margol…

U.S. dollar`s freefall to have global effect
Add China`s banking system to the mix, Eric Margolis writes, and it`s a recipe for disaster
By ERIC MARGOLIS

Here are what will be the big stories of 2005, according to my cloudy crystal ball: - The killer tsunami that struck Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India a week ago will cause years of ongoing economic damage and human tragedy. Damage to Thailand will be quickly repaired. But Indonesia and Sri Lanka, both rent by decade-old civil wars, will particularly suffer.

- The biggest problem the world faces this new year is the continuing fall of the U.S. dollar. The Bush administration`s reckless spending, ruinously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (now costing as much as the Vietnam War), America`s galloping trade deficit and credit spending frenzy are creating the perfect economic storm.

Japan and China`s central banks may give up trying to artificially shore up the U.S. dollar by buying U.S. currency and securities. A plunging dollar could cause foreign investors to start dumping U.S. securities and assets. The result: A potential worldwide financial crisis that could collapse the housing bubble, cause interest rates to soar, and send securities markets into freefall.

- China`s banking system is a house of cards. Uncontrolled credit expansion has fuelled China`s property boom and international buying spree. Banks are swamped by bad, non-performing loans made to huge, money-losing state-owned corporations. Collapse of China`s insolvent banking system would threaten world financial markets.

- The U.S.-led occupation of Iraq is a disaster for all concerned. The war is slowly being lost. The big question in 2005 is if and how President George W. Bush will extricate the U.S. from this catastrophe, which is costing $6 billion US per month. The elections in Iraq four weeks from today won`t resolve this huge mess.

- "Terrorism" -- the insurgency against U.S. domination of the Muslim world and its resources -- will intensify even after Osama bin Laden is killed. He has created a new, powerful ideological movement that will continue to shake the Muslim world and challenge its corrupt, autocratic rulers and their foreign masters.

- As the U.S. gets sucked ever deeper into its disastrous crusade against the Muslim world, it may -- possibly with Israel -- attack Iran`s nuclear infrastructure, or invade Syria. An attack on Iran would leave the U.S. garrison in Iraq trapped amid a sea of hostile Shia -- as well as Sunnis.

- A real, viable peace between Israel and the Palestinians seems unlikely. Israel`s PM Ariel Sharon already has everything he wants, and, according to U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, has "wrapped Bush around his little finger." So why make concessions? Palestinians will remain trapped in their giant open-air prison.

- Now that Vladimir Putin has crushed all domestic political and business opposition, his control over Russia is absolute. Only the courageous Chechen mujahadeen have resisted Putin`s restoration of Kremlin autocracy. Putin is determined to rebuild the old Soviet Union. Watch for him to put increasing pressure on Ukraine in the wake of last week`s election.

The Bush-Putin alliance will strengthen. By regaining state control of Russia`s oil industry, Putin is poised to become a kingpin of world oil, even an equal to the Saudi royals -- if he can raise enough cash to tap his nation`s vast but remote deposits.

- The European Union, for all its growing pains, economic doldrums, and bureaucratic obesity, has replaced the United States as the world`s champion of human rights and support for civilized world order.

By contrast, under Bush, the U.S. has become a reactionary power devoted to protecting the status quo in league with Britain, Russia, China and India. In short, a re-run of the Holy Alliance of 1815 in which Europe`s autocrats sought to protect their power and privileges, and halt the rise of bourgeois democracy.

- Look for an increasingly independent-minded Europe and China to draw closer strategically as a result of the Bush administration`s aggressive policies. Russia will play both sides, backing the U.S. in its "anti-terror" campaigns, and, discreetly, China, in opposing U.S. influence in East Asia. European arms may begin to flow to China in 2005.

- Revolution is under way in Saudi Arabia. The U.S.-backed royal family will be increasingly besieged in 2005. As for U.S. claims it will promote democracy in the Muslim world, any honest votes there will produce pro-Islamic parties advocating opposition to Israel, higher oil prices, and eviction of U.S. influence from the region.

So no true democracy, just U.S.-implemented "guided democracy" in Iraq, meaning a Vichy regime that keeps U.S. bases, sells oil cheap, makes nice to Israel, and allows U.S. firms to exploit Iraq`s wealth.

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Latest Fatality: Jan 01, 2005
Das 1.US-Opfer für 2005:

DoD Identifies Marine Casualties

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two Marines who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lance Cpl. Brian P. Parrello, 19, of West Milford, N.J.
Parrello died Jan. 1, as result of hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
Al Anbar ist Falluja.

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Monday, January 03, 2005
War News for Monday, January 3, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi policemen killed, 14 others wounded in Baghdad car bombing.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, two wounded by booby-trapped corpse in Tall Afar.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi policemen killed, one wounded in ambush near Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Deputy governor of Diyala province assassinated.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi policemen killed in central Basra ambush.

Bring ‘em on: US troops under rocket fire near Balad.

Bring ‘em on: US patrol ambushed by roadside bomb in North Babil.

Bring ‘em on: US patrol ambushed in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers wounded in Baghdad car bombing.

Bring ‘em on: US and British consulates in Basra under mortar attack.

Foreign fighters. “Large numbers of Al Qaeda fighters are still crossing freely from Saudi Arabia into Southern Iraq, according to senior military officials in Basra. Terrorists and weapons continue to flow into the country as it gears up for elections, said Colonel Jouke Spolestra, in charge of security sector reform in the southern Iraqi provinces. Col Spolestra, of the Royal Netherlands Navy, said that despite regular military patrols and raids on suspected insurgent strongholds, British-led forces had failed to halt the trafficking in personnel and arms.”

Election workers quit in Beiji.

Commentary

Opinion: “The numbers may well be off by tens of thousands, but some estimates put the death toll at a shocking level, well over 100,000. Many more are expected to die. Countless livelihoods have been wrecked. How can we help? That is baffling, because I`m not talking about the massive destruction of life caused by the tsunami in and near Asia. I`m talking about the massive death and devastation in Iraq during our ongoing invasion and occupation.”

Opinion: “While individual Americans are reaching into their pockets and donating money for the relief of the disaster victims, our government appears to have other priorities. We spent billions of dollars to destroy buildings and infrastructure in Iraq and now are spending further billions to try to rebuild what we destroyed. Our media spent countless dollars to rush to Asia and tell the story of the destruction there, but we focused much of the media attention on the plight of Western individuals. Maybe it is this form of media attention that allows us to be less helpful than other nations. And maybe the ‘compassionate conservatism’ of the Republican Party should focus more of their attention on the plight of our Asian brothers and sisters than on the Republican presidential inauguration.”

Opinion: “We can argue all day that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country. There was a government in place. People went to work and to the market and to school in relative safety. Can anyone really believe that the U.S.-spawned anarchy has left the Iraqi people better off? We broke it. Do we have the moral right to walk away with the shards scattered across the floor?”

Snark: “There are so many reasons, political and personal, that Bush should be the president of post-Hussein Iraq. Iraq could suit Bush a lot better than the Beltway culture of white-shoe lawyers and lobbyists and think-tank intellectuals. The man who is pleased to ‘see freedom on the march’ has earned the right to see it marching up close, from the reviewing stands of the Baghdad parade ground.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Washington State Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Kentucky soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania soldier wounded in Iraq.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:07 AM
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Das ist die Lösung. Dann würden sich auch mehr Länder am Kampf gegen den Irak beteiligen.

PATT MORRISON
The Perfect Candidate for Iraq
Patt Morrison

December 29, 2004

Some time around high noon EST, three weeks from today, George W. Bush will be sworn in for a second term as president, or as some of us think of it, "Dubya Dubya Too."

Ten days after that, Iraqis will strap on their body armor and go to the polls to vote for leaders of their own. More than 100 slates of candidates are in the running, but I know whom Iraq voters` choice should be. Who better to govern Iraq than the man who broke it, bought it and now pledges to put it back together again: George W. Bush?

Like the Lone Ranger, Bush can make the claim to Americans that his work here is done. He has made his point: The Bush family second-term curse has been broken. It`s all lame-duck downhill from here. So why not share his gospel of freedom in person and double-down democracy?

There are so many reasons, political and personal, that Bush should be the president of post-Hussein Iraq. Iraq could suit Bush a lot better than the Beltway culture of white-shoe lawyers and lobbyists and think-tank intellectuals. The man who is pleased to "see freedom on the march" has earned the right to see it marching up close, from the reviewing stands of the Baghdad parade ground.

The reasons for Bush to become president of Iraq:

• The United States is already on Bush autopilot; his agenda is safe in the hands of Dick Cheney, who wrote a lot of the playbook anyway.

• Karl Rove is getting bored and needs a real challenge, and Iraqi campaigning makes the rhetorical phrase "political bloodletting" real.



• Bush could wear his "mission accomplished" flight suit all the time.

• Iraq is running out of its own politicians.

• Short campaigns mean less time to be caught in tongue-twisting contradictions.

• Bush can institute his Social Security reforms without carping from elderly voters` lobby or economists — Iraqis may not live long enough anyway.

• It guarantees that the U.S. gets exactly the kind of leadership it wants in Baghdad.

• As a Texan, he`ll fit right into a country that has more guns than cars.

• Iraq has a crying need for someone who knows the "awl bidness."

• The climate is more like Texas` than D.C.`s.

• Many Iraqi people also speak English with an accent.

• Unmarried daughters have to live at home and stay out of trouble.

• Thanks to Saddam Hussein`s precedent, no problem defying international treaties.

• He could find himself signing a death warrant for Hussein, the guy who "tried to kill my dad."

• No alcohol — no temptation to fall off the wagon.

• No term limits.



• Iraqis love faith-based initiatives.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-bio-morrison-b,1,4015…


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Monday, January 3rd, 2005
The Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities: Robert Fisk Looks Back at 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/03/1447225

[urlWatch 256k stream]http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/jan/video/dnB20050103a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=41:02.00[/url]
[urlShow mp3]http://www.archive.org/download/dn2005-0103/dn2005-0103-1_64kb.mp3[/url]


Veteran Middle East Correspondent Robert Fisk says, "Over the past year, there has been evidence enough that our whole project in Iraq is hopelessly flawed, that our Western armies - when they are not torturing prisoners, killing innocents and destroying one of the largest cities in Iraq - are being vanquished by a ferocious guerrilla army, the like of which we have not seen before in the Middle East." Fisk joins us from Beirut, Lebanon. [includes rush transcript]

In a year-in-review article by veteran Middle east correspondent Robert Fisk in the Independent of London, Fisk begins his piece with a question:

Who said this and when?

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient that the public knows... We are today not far from a disaster."

Those were the words of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame) in The Sunday Times in August, 1920.

"And," Robert Fisk writes, "every word of it is true today.”

We turn now to Robert Fisk to look back on 2004 from Iraq to Palestine and beyond.


# Robert Fisk, correspondent for The Independent

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.


AMY GOODMAN: We now turn to Robert Fisk to look back on 2004, from Iraq to Israel, to Palestine and beyond. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert Fisk.

ROBERT FISK: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you have been doing some reflection, as you also write a book. You can talk about your observations of where we stand today?

ROBERT FISK: Well, I think that the whole project in Iraq is finished. We are not being told by Mr. Blair in my case and Bush in yours that this is the case, and perhaps through their own misjudgment or their own fantasies, they don`t even accept this themselves. But the American project for democracy or whatever its real purposes were, for oil, economic expansion, Middle East fit for Israel, whatever it may have been, that project is finished. It is hopeless. It cannot succeed. The insurgency in Iraq is so great now that American troops, however enormous their technology, cannot control it. The Iraqi so-called ministers, and I include Iyad Allawi, the so-called interim prime minister, who was of course appointed by the Americans as a former C.I.A. asset, they behave like statesmen when they tour the world or turn up in Washington, but in Baghdad they`re not even safe inside their little Green Zone. They`re not even the Mayor of Baghdad, they have less power than the town clerk. So, we have reached a stage now where insurgents control much of the country. The only safe part of Iraq is Kurdistan in the north, which is effectively an autonomous region, outside of the control anyway of the Iraqi government. And the elections, which are coming up, appear doomed because already we`re hearing that if the Sunnis won`t take part, the Americans are trying to persuade the unelected government to appoint Sunni Muslims to make up for the voters who didn`t vote. This is not an election, this is a charade. And what has happened is that the alienation of the Iraqis as a people from the West has been brought about by lunatic policies by the State Department and by the Pentagon, I`m afraid by the behavior of American troops and a lesser expect, but nonetheless culpable British troops and by the fantasies, which drove this war in the first place, the idea that we were going to suddenly create democracy in the Middle East. One of the things I have been studying for my new book on the Middle East, which comes out this year, is what happened when the rebellion first occurred in 1920, the time of which Lawrence of Arabia was talking, against the British military in Iraq. And exactly the same pattern took place. The Sunni Muslims became disenfranchised. The British laid seize to Fallujah, they laid seize to Najaf. The prime minister, in this case Lloyd George rather than Tony Blair, said if we believe there will be civil war and British military intelligence in Baghdad claimed that the terrorists were arriving - in 1920 this is - from Syria. Same old sorry. So I am afraid that even if you look at the pattern of history, there is no hope. If you look at the pattern today there is no hope. We come back to the equation, which I think I have set out on your program before, that the Americans must leave, and the Americans will leave, and the Americans can`t leave.

AMY GOODMAN: As we move, Robert Fisk, from Iraq to the situation in the occupied territories, to Mahmoud Abbas, to the death of Yasser Arafat, your thoughts at the end of this year, at the beginning of 2005.

ROBERT FISK: You know, I thought it was somehow perverse that the death of the one Palestinian leader, corrupt, venal, and ruthless though he was, I`m talking about why Arafat is immoral, the death of the one Palestinian leader, who could more or less unify the Palestinians, was seen as a hopeful sign, shows just how far from reality we are. Mahmoud Abbas, for the second time in three years is being held out as the angel who can save Palestine, who can bring about peace, who will be our new beloved savior of the Middle East peace, courtesy Tony Blair. And I`m sure he will be generous enough to include George Bush in the Middle East. Mahmoud Abbas is a colorless man who has been never associated with real democratic principles. He was one of the authors of the utterly doomed and hopeless Oslo accord, in whose 1,000 pages the single word occupation, which is what this colonial war is all about, does not occur once. Indeed, even withdrawal - withdrawing of the Israeli troops - doesn`t occur in this document. It always refers to redeployment. This is the man, whom now, we are supposed to believe, is going to bring the violent men to heal, is going to make a real peace, is going to be a beloved of the west, which of course is an essential element for any Middle East peace, and it going to be a problem. It is a further extension of our self-delusion, our British self-delusion, American self-delusion, Israeli self-delusion, to think this can be the case. This is another of our men, like Hamid Karzai and Iyad Allawi, another of the people, who we effectively are stepping up to a subject people or an occupied people, and one who inevitably and ultimately, will not be able to deliver the goods and we`ll cast around for more people to appoint or choose to someone else`s political leadership. To see, Mahmoud Abbas, who only a few months ago, when he resigned, was being cursed privately by Bush as the man he wished he had never met, now blessed the future Palestinian leader, when he was -- as I say, one of the author of the whole vain Oslo agreement, which collapsed. It`s a tragedy on our part that we actually believe that this sort of person, as pleasant and plausible though is he, can actually save the day for peace in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: We`re talking to Robert Fisk, who has been voted the best foreign correspondent by newspaper editors and reporters in Britain for many years. He is a long-time correspondent for the Independent, based in Beirut for over three decades. Where are you speaking from to us now?

ROBERT FISK: From Beirut during a wonderful winder thunderstorm, that actually looks like Christmas. But I`m going to Iraq in a weeks time possibly less, to enjoy obviously a much less peaceable environment.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you see happening with this election? On U.S. television, we repeatedly hear the story that the suicide bombings will increase, U.S. officials saying this as well that the violence will increase, because militants want to stop democracy in the elections.

ROBERT FISK: Sure. I mean, you have got to realize that this is now a constant sort of logo of American and British news-speak in Iraq. They announce that something wonderful is going to happen, an interim governments a new constitution, elections. And then they say that violence is going to increase, that things are going to get worse the nearer we get to it. In other words the better things to come, the worse things are. The worse things are, the better things are going to become. This is part of the self-delusional policy with which we tried to hide our total failure in Iraq, our total failure even to control the country and allow the citizens of that country to live in safety and security. We don`t even give the casualty figures. We don`t know, we don`t care about them. Even if the elections take place as I say, which I doubt, still doubt, they will be so hopelessly flawed by the absence of the Sunni population, so accompanied by terror on the part of the U.S. administration, that the Shiites might wipe the floor and set up an Islamic republic, even worse than democracy would be an Islamic republic in Iraq. I don`t think they will solve anything. Ultimately, I think what we are going to see, as we have seen in all Middle East wars of occupation, is the opening of some kind of contact between the Americans and the insurgents. This is what the French did after years of saying they would never talk to terrorists, they talked to the FLN. After years of saying they would never talk to terrorists, the British talked to the IRA. After years of saying they would never talk to terrorists, the British talked to the militants fighting them in Aden and to EOKA in Cyprus, and indeed, to both militant sides in Palestine that they tried to escape from what Churchill called a hell disaster in 1948. The Americans will soon, if they have not already, establish contact with the insurgents, and that will mean the beginning of end. It means that the project is over. That they have accepted, as I think, you know, they have already in terms of soldiers on the ground. If you are going to talk to the colonels, and they may -- the majors and the generals in Iraq, they know that the game is up. But the generals back at the Pentagon and the Centcom and down there in old Florida and the gentleman in the State Department and at the White House, they don`t accept this because this is a screen of self-delusion between them and the reality on the ground. But it`s over in Iraq. It`s finished. What we`re going to see this year is the beginning of the endgame, which is how do we get Americans out without losing face and ultimately - I should say faith as well - and ultimately, how do you start negotiation with the insurgents. I mean, that doesn`t mean that some American colonel is going to sit down with Zarqawi, though I wouldn`t put it past the realm of possibility. It means that we`re going to have in effect an understanding between the insurgents and the United States forces that the project has failed, that at some point the powers behind the insurgency or the resistance or the terrorists or whatever you would like to call them, will move into place to control the country and they probably will. In the meantime, I fear the Western powers will go on trying to promote the idea of civil war as an alternative to their occupation and oppression and I hope very much that that won`t work. As I said to you before, Iraq has never had a civil war. Iraqis don`t want a civil war. The only people who fear or talk about civil war are the Americans and British.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, you write in your latest piece, “A Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities, the Ghost of Vietnam,” of an American soldier, of Jimmy Massey, a soldier who game back home and said he didn`t want to continue to participate in the killing, in the slaughter. Can you talk about him, and as you see him from the other side of the ocean?

ROBERT FISK: Well, the odd thing is, I think we`re talking about the soldier who turned up to give evidence in Canada aren`t we?

AMY GOODMAN: That’s right Jimmy Massey. R: Yes, you can tell me whether his evidence gained any publicity in the mainstream American press or not. It happened by chance that I was in Toronto when that case came up, and of course, I immediately – you know I had just had come from Iraq and was due to come back to the Middle East, and of course my eyes went straight on and I read through his accounts and I thought, my goodness me, here we go again. In evidence in a court in a not very powerful country, Canada, up comes again the reality of Iraq. Had it not been for my reading it, it wouldn`t have appeared in the British press. Did it occur, did you read anything about Mr. Massey`s evidence in the American press, perhaps you did.

AMY GOODMAN: Well of course we did a long interview with Jimmy Massey when he came back …

ROBERT FISK: I didn`t mean on your radio station, I mean the mainstream media.

AMY GOODMAN: Right, right, right. But I wanted to encourage people to go to our website, democracynow.org, and also in our year-end review of last Thursday, we included his descriptions, but in terms of the larger audience, both in terms of what we have heard about what`s happening with Jeremy Hinsman and other U.S. soldiers who have fled to Canada asking for political asylum there, and Jimmy Massey going up and testifying on their behalf there is very little written about it in this country.

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, of course, yeah. This is part of the self-delusion, not only do our leaders suffer from this mania of deluding themselves, but the press by their silence or by their complicity, assist in this process of self-delusion. Indeed, they self-delude themselves. In Britain, we have, you know, some newspapers, my own, The Independent, The Guardian and increasingly, I suspect The Daily Telegraph, which is no longer prepared to do this. They say, hold on a second, we have got to live on Planet Earth. But when I read The New York Times and the Washington Post, I frankly wonder, who is on Planet Earth. The real problem is - and this was the case of course in Vietnam in the beginning - I am not making these comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. It`s interesting that the Left wants to make the comparison between Vietnam and Iraq and the Right wants to make the comparison between World War II and Iraq, where of course we are playing the role of Churchill, Roosevelt, Tito, you name it, not I noticed Stalin. But the real problem is that, when you go to - I have said this to you before, when I`m in Baghdad, and I read the American press or I turn on the television and watch CNN, what I`m reading and what I am seeing bears absolutely no physical, moral, political, or military relationship to the place that I`m living in. When I come out, I`m sane enough to realize for quite a long time that that remains the case. We are not - look, let me give you the most basic example of the problem. In Baghdad now, we have got one or two exceptions and I hope The Independent is one of them, though even we are very circumscribed, journalists do not move from their hotel rooms and from their hotels. They`re in hotel prisons. Now, I don`t object to my colleagues doing this, if they want to, because after all, we all want to preserve our lives. Nobody wants to turn up on a video and have themselves seen around the world having their throats cut or having their throats cut without being on video tape, but they don`t tell their readers and their viewers that this is the case. They still appear on television as the courageous war correspondent in war-torn Baghdad or war-torn Iraq with information, which in fact only comes from the occupational authorities or from the government, which was apoirnted by the occupational authorities, but which by not saying that they cannot witness and see what is actually going on, they give the impression it is the product of independent reporting. We are as usual in these circumstances, we journalists, complicit in the self-delusion, which allows my country`s people, Britons, and Americans, to believe that things are much better, that things are okay, when in fact they`re not okay at all. You know, it`s difficult to see how you turn this corner, and I can see why journalists do not want to admit that they`re too frightened to travel, though they should. I sometimes say in my report, I didn`t go to this place, I thought it was too dangerous to go to. Other times I manage to travel, 70, 80 miles outside Baghdad. And it`s getting worse all the time. But at least let us tell our readers and our viewers that we cannot move. But the journalists don`t do this, and of course neither does Mr. Allawi, who cannot even move around Baghdad. Neither does Mr. Rumsfeld, who for a long time wouldn`t venture into Iraq. So, an illusion is created of calm and progress and well, things may get more violent, but that`s because things are getting better, which is the most ludicrous topsy turvy I ever heard. So, the weeks tick by and we continuing to be surprised by the bombings and killings and the executions. We have days now. When 20 Iraqis are lined up because they`re accused of collaboration for joining the Iraqi police or the Iraqi army and executed. Incredible and we just accept it.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, I want to thank you for being with us. Robert Fisk, in Lebanon now, headed back to Iraq. We will continue to talk to him there. Robert Fisk, a Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London.

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January 4, 2005
Iraqi Premier Calls Bush to Discuss Obstacles to Election
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAVID E. SANGER.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 3 - Hours after a wave of bombing attacks that left at least 20 people dead on Monday, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi telephoned President Bush and discussed the many impediments still facing the country as it heads toward elections in 27 days, according to senior American officials familiar with the contents of the call.

The officials insisted that Dr. Allawi, Iraq`s interim leader, did not tell Mr. Bush that the elections should be delayed, though his defense minister said in Cairo on Monday that the voting could be postponed to ensure greater participation by Sunnis. "There was no substantive conversation about delay," a senior administration official said. Dr. Allawi, the official said, "wasn`t even a bit wobbly" on that point.

But some officials in Washington and in Iraq interpreted the telephone call as a sign that Dr. Allawi, who is clearly concerned his own party could be headed to defeat if the election is held on schedule, may be preparing the ground to make the case for delay to Mr. Bush.

"Clearly the thinking on this is still in motion in Baghdad," a senior administration official said Monday evening. "And President Bush is holding firm," the official said, telling Dr. Allawi that the Iraqi government has met every deadline so far, including assuming power from the United States in June.

Mr. Bush has publicly insisted that the elections must go forward on Jan. 30, as scheduled, and said any delay would mean giving in to the insurgents who have vowed to stop the elections from taking place.

Dr. Allawi`s call, on Mr. Bush`s first day back in Washington after a weeklong break at his Texas ranch, came just hours after a wave of bombing attacks that included one near the interim prime minister`s Baghdad party headquarters. Another killed three British citizens and an American in a convoy of the American security firm Kroll Inc. In addition to the 20 or more deaths - a figure that included suicide bombers - dozens were injured.

The attacks, which followed a car bombing north of Baghdad on Sunday that killed 18 Iraqi troops, were the latest attempt by insurgents to destabilize the country and intimidate Iraqis in the weeks before the parliamentary elections. The insurgents` targets are Iraqis who work with American forces, especially in Sunni areas, in hopes of frightening people from the polls. Some groups have already warned of major attacks on Election Day.

While White House officials were hesitant to give many details of the discussion between Dr. Allawi and Mr. Bush, they said the Iraqi leader brought up questions of security and the ferocity of the insurgency. "It was a discussion about the impediments," said an official who reviewed a transcript of the call. "But no one suggested the impediments could not be overcome."

Yet Dr. Allawi`s cabinet is already showing signs of weakening on the question of holding the elections this month. The defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, suggested during his Cairo visit that a postponement would encourage Sunnis to participate; American and Iraqi officials have been concerned that if the Sunnis are blocked from voting or boycott the election, the outcome will not be considered legitimate.

But an American Embassy official said the United States wanted the elections to proceed as scheduled, and an official with Iraq`s independent election commission told The Associated Press that there were no plans for a delay.

No one affiliated with Prime Minister Allawi`s party, the Iraqi National Accord, was hurt in the suicide car bombing Monday morning near the party`s headquarters in Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. But the blast killed two Iraqi police officers and one other person in addition to the car`s driver while injuring at least 25 others, according to Iraqi officials. The Iraqi police said the bomb detonated after the police rained gunfire on the vehicle to stop it from passing a checkpoint.

The suicide bomber drove a Chevrolet Caprice with the markings of a Baghdad taxicab and rammed the checkpoint near the party headquarters just west of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified American compound in central Baghdad.

The victims were taken to Yarmouk Hospital. Ahmed Thamir, a 21-year-old soldier slightly wounded in the attack, stood guard outside the hospital with a Kalashnikov rifle. "It`s hard to trust anyone nowadays," he said.

The group that calls itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna took responsibility for the attack in an Internet posting. In the message, the group warned "apostates" that if they "do not repent from your infidelity," it had other bombers ready to "kill you one by one." The group has claimed a string of attacks, including the Dec. 21 bombing of a mess tent in Mosul that killed 14 American servicemen and 8 other people.

Many recent attacks against Iraqi troops and officials have occurred in the heavily Sunni areas north of Baghdad, a region where the deadliest attacks took place on Monday.

In the first attack, shortly before 8 a.m., a car bomb killed 4 Iraqi National Guard soldiers and wounded 14 more near a military base in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, said Master Sgt. Robert Cowens, a spokesman for the First Infantry Division. The attack was not far from where insurgents killed 18 Iraqi troops and a civilian the day before by detonating an explosives-laden vehicle next to a bus full of national guardsmen.

Early Monday afternoon, six Iraqi National Guard troops were killed and four wounded when insurgents attacked a patrol near Tikrit, farther north of Baghdad, with a roadside bomb. The attackers used an artillery shell for ammunition in the attack, which happened at 2:40 p.m., Sergeant Cowens said.

There were reports of other attacks across Iraq. In Tal Afar, a city in northern Iraq, one Iraqi policeman was killed and two were wounded when a homemade bomb hidden in a decapitated body exploded as the policemen approached the body, the government said in a statement.

The attack on a car carrying employees of Kroll Inc., the New York-based risk consulting and security firm, occurred at 3:45 p.m. at a checkpoint where people leave Baghdad`s fortified Green Zone to get onto the road to the airport.

A Kroll official said that four people were killed when a suicide bomber rammed into their car, including two British employees of Kroll. "It was a suicide attack on a convoy coming from the airport," said Pat Wood, Kroll`s vice president for corporate communications.

The other victims were an American woman, Tracy Hushin, of Islip, N.Y., with the consulting firm BearingPoint, and a British citizen working for a subcontractor of the company, an announcement by BearingPoint said.

Despite the violence, American officials say the election must be held, as planned, on Jan. 30. For one thing, they say, the Iraqi interim constitution mandates the timing. There have already been extensive preparations by the American military for the elections, they say.

Some Sunni leaders have called for a delay, worried that the intimidation tactics will keep many voters home and lead to severe Sunni under representation in the new government. Mr. Shaalan made his suggestion for a delay Monday as he sought help from other Arab nations to persuade Iraq`s Sunnis to take part.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Baghdad for this article and David E. Sanger from Washington. Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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ROBERT SCHEER
Backing Gonzales Is Backing Torture
Robert Scheer

January 4, 2005

Is there bipartisan congressional support for torture?

That is the central question the Senate Judiciary Committee faces Thursday as it begins hearings on the confirmation of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as the next attorney general of the United States. At stake is whether Congress wants to conveniently absolve Gonzales of his clear attempt to have the president subvert U.S. law in order to whitewash barbaric practices performed by U.S. interrogators in the name of national security.

Gonzales ignored the objections of State Department and military lawyers to strongly endorse the determination of Justice Department lawyers that neither the Geneva Convention nor corresponding U.S. laws on prisoner protections should be applied in the "war on terror."

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva`s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Gonzales wrote in a legal memo to President Bush on Jan. 25, 2002. Declaring the war-on-terror prisoners exempt from the Geneva Convention, he argued, "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."



Acting like a sleazy attorney advising a client on how not to be convicted of an ongoing crime, Gonzales was apparently not worried about irrational foreign courts or high-minded jurists in The Hague, but rather U.S. prosecutors who might enforce federal laws that ban torture of foreign prisoners of war. Indeed, Gonzales made the case for a legal end run around the 1996 War Crimes Act, which mandates criminal penalties, including the death sentence, for any U.S. military or other personnel who engage in crimes of torture.

"It is difficult to predict the motives of [U.S.] prosecutors and [U.S.] independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441" of the act, Gonzales wrote. "Your determination [that Geneva protections are not applicable] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

In light of what we have learned since about the rationalization and use of torture by U.S. interrogators over the last three years, it is difficult to ignore the possibility that Gonzales already had knowledge that such violations had occurred and expected more.

In fact, Gonzales in his memo singles out language from the Geneva Convention (and incorporated into U.S. law) that explicitly brands as a war crime "outrages against personal dignity" — a perfect description of the pattern of mental, sexual and physical degradation of U.S. detainees that has been reported by prisoners, military whistle-blowers and even FBI agents in recent months. Many of those rounded up in Muslim countries by U.S. military and intelligence personnel have reportedly been subjected to dog attacks, being chained in fetal positions in their own excrement or placed in degrading sexual postures.

On Monday, a group of military legal experts, including Rear Adm. John Hutson, who was recently the Navy`s judge advocate general, released a letter to the Judiciary Committee noting that Gonzales` recommendations "fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world."

Gonzales based his case for doing away with the Geneva protections on memos produced by a small group of Justice Department lawyers that, along with making other controversial claims, infamously argued that physical abuse of prisoners was torture only if it was "of an intensity akin to … serious physical injury such as death or organ failure," and mental abuse was torture only if it caused "lasting psychological harm." Presumably these pain and damage levels are to be determined by the interrogator.

Such language was so onerous that, perhaps to help Gonzales get through the hearings, the Justice Department only last week quietly slipped new guidelines onto its website redressing this stain on the country`s reputation. Although still vague in many parts, the new doctrine belatedly reasserts the primacy of international and federal law in the treatment of prisoners, even those captured in relation to the war on terror.

Another positive step would be the withdrawal or rejection of the Gonzales nomination. To make a man with so little respect for both the spirit and the letter of the law the nation`s top law enforcement official would be a terrible advertisement for American democracy.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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washingtonpost.com
Ugly Truths About Guantanamo

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, January 4, 2005; Page A15

Somewhere in the U.S. government is the person who came up with the idea of fusing the wail of an infant with an incessant meow from a cat food commercial to torment detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Detainees were also subjected to popular songs by the likes of Eminem and Rage Against the Machine. What Liberace would have done to an observant Muslim, I can only imagine, but it is a mad genius who realized that ordinary American culture can, with repeated exposure, be nearly lethal. God help us all.

In George Orwell`s novel "1984," it was rats, as I recall, that were used to torture Winston Smith. It was not that the rats could do real physical damage; rather it was that Smith was phobic about them -- "his greatest fear, his worst nightmare" -- and so he succumbed, denounced his beliefs and even his girlfriend, and went back to his pub where he wasted his days drinking gin. This was Orwell`s future, our present.

The term "Orwellian" is much abused, and back in the actual year 1984 I thought Orwell himself overrated. The essential novelist of the 20th century, I thought then, was Kafka, who realized that there is no more efficient murder weapon than what the critic George Steiner called "the lunatic logic of the bureaucracy."

Orwell, however, was off by only 20 years. With immense satisfaction, he would have noted the constant abuse of language by the Bush administration -- calling suicidal terrorists "cowards," naming a constriction of civil liberties the Patriot Act and, of course, wringing all meaning from the word "torture." Until just recently when the interpretation of torture was amended, it applied only to the pain like that of "organ failure, impairment of body function, or even death." Anything less, such as, say, shackling detainees to a low chair for hours and hours so that one prisoner pulled out tufts of hair, is something else. We have no word for it, but it is -- or was until recently -- considered perfectly legal.

The administration`s original interpretation of torture was promulgated by the Justice Department, under John Ashcroft, and the White House, under its counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales. The result has deeply embarrassed the United States. Among other things, it produced the abuses of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which we were assured were an unaccountable exception. My God, if only higher authorities had known.

Now we all know. The International Committee of the Red Cross has complained that some of what has been done at Guantanamo -- Guantanamo, not Abu Ghraib -- was "tantamount to torture." The American Civil Liberties Union has complained, but that you would expect. So, though, have the FBI and military lawyers, former and current. Just about across the board, the Bush administration has raised itself above the law. It pronounced itself virtuous, but facing a threat so dire, so unique, that Gonzales found the Geneva Conventions themselves "obsolete." Such legal brilliance does not long go unrewarded. He has been nominated to become attorney general.

The elevation of Gonzales is supposed to be a singular American success story. This son of Mexican immigrants bootstrapped his way to Harvard Law School and from there to Bush`s inner circle, first in Austin, then in Washington. There he came up with a brilliant definition of torture, one so legally clever that only the dead could complain and they, of course, could not. Everyone was off the hook. Is it any wonder the Senate will probably soon confirm him? By next year, he will undoubtedly receive a cherished Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to those who successfully serve the president but dismally fail the nation. In the audience, unseen but nonetheless present, Orwell and Kafka look on.

The revelations coming out of Guantanamo are hideous. The ordinary abuse of prisoners, the madness instilled by gruesome incarcerations, the incessant lying of the authorities, plus the mock interrogations staged for the media, in which detainees and their interrogators share milkshakes -- all this soils us as a nation. It`s as if the government is ahistorical, unaware of how communists and fascists also strained language and ushered the world into torture chambers made pretty for the occasion. We now keep some pretty bad company.

The Bush administration has fused Orwell with Kafka in the same way someone fused the cry of an infant with that of a cat from the Meow Mix television commercial. The upshot is Gonzales, ticketed maybe for the Supreme Court because he winked at torture and yessed the president. He`s Kafka`s man, Orwell`s boy and Bush`s pussycat. Know him for his roar.

Meow.

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© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

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Seit gestern taucht bei kleinen Agenturen immer wieder die Meldung auf, Zarqawi sei festgenommen worden.
Ich kann mir das nicht vorstellen, denn von Z gibt es keine aktuellen Fotos.
Also er wäre sehr schwer zu identifizieren, es ist noch nicht einmal sicher, ob er nicht nur eine symbolische Figur ist.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi reportedly arrested in Iraq

04.01.2005, 07.18


DUBAI, January 4 (Itar-Tass) - Abu Mus`ab al-Zarqawi, whom the US occupation authorities declared to be the "target number one" in Iraq, has been arrested in the city of Baakuba, the Emirate newspaper al-Bayane reported on Tuesday referring to Kurdish sources. Al-Zarqawi, leader of the terrorist group Al-Tawhid Wa`al-Jihad, was recently appointed the director of the Al-Qaeda organisation in Iraq.

The newspaper`s correspondent in Baghdad points out that a report on the seizure of the terrorist, on whom the US put a bounty of 10 million dollars, was also reported by Iraqi Kurdistan radio, which at one time had been the first to announce the arrest of Saddam Hussein.

There have been no official reports about the arrest of the terrorist. Al-Zarqawi, 38, a Jordanian, whose real name is Ahmad al-Khalayleh, aims to turn Iraq into a "new Afghanistan". According to Arab press data, Al-Tawhid Wa`al-Jihad group has divided Iraq into several emirates. The group`s independent subdivisions at a strength of 50 to 500 militants operate in the cities of Al-Falluja, Al-Qaim, Diala, and Samarra.

The personnel of the group is on the whole 1,500-strong and includes Iraqis and citizens of Arab and Islamic countries. There are demolition experts and missilemen among them.

The group has depots of weapons and explosives in various parts of the country. It intends to frustrate the upcoming parliamentary elections that are scheduled for the end of this month. Al-Tawhid Wa`al-Jihad threatens to do away with Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and members of the interim government.

© ITAR-TASS

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Stopping the Bum`s Rush
By PAUL KRUGMAN

New York Times

January 4, 2005

In the next few weeks, I`ll explain why privatization will fatally undermine Social Security, and suggest steps to strengthen the program. I`ll also talk about the much more urgent fiscal problems the administration hopes you won`t notice while it scares you about Social Security.

Today let`s focus on one piece of those scare tactics: the claim that Social Security faces an imminent crisis.

That claim is simply false. Yet much of the press has reported the falsehood as a fact. For example, The Washington Post recently described 2018, when benefit payments are projected to exceed payroll tax revenues, as a "day of reckoning."

Here`s the truth: by law, Social Security has a budget independent of the rest of the U.S. government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security has a large and growing trust fund.

When benefit payments start to exceed payroll tax revenues, Social Security will be able to draw on that trust fund. And the trust fund will last for a long time: until 2042, says the Social Security Administration; until 2052, says the Congressional Budget Office; quite possibly forever, say many economists, who point out that these projections assume that the economy will grow much more slowly in the future than it has in the past.

So where`s the imminent crisis? Privatizers say the trust fund doesn`t count because it`s invested in U.S. government bonds, which are "meaningless i.o.u.`s." Readers who want a long-form debunking of this sophistry can read my recent article in the online journal The Economists` Voice (www.bepress.com/ev).

The short version is that the bonds in the Social Security trust fund are obligations of the federal government`s general fund, the budget outside Social Security. They have the same status as U.S. bonds owned by Japanese pension funds and the government of China. The general fund is legally obliged to pay the interest and principal on those bonds, and Social Security is legally obliged to pay full benefits as long as there is money in the trust fund.

There are only two things that could endanger Social Security`s ability to pay benefits before the trust fund runs out. One would be a fiscal crisis that led the U.S. to default on all its debts. The other would be legislation specifically repudiating the general fund`s debts to retirees.

That is, we can`t have a Social Security crisis without a general fiscal crisis - unless Congress declares that debts to foreign bondholders must be honored, but that promises to older Americans, who have spent most of their working lives paying extra payroll taxes to build up the trust fund, don`t count.

Politically, that seems far-fetched. A general fiscal crisis, on the other hand, is a real possibility - but not because of Social Security. In fact, the Bush administration`s scaremongering over Social Security is in large part an effort to distract the public from the real fiscal danger.

There are two serious threats to the federal government`s solvency over the next couple of decades. One is the fact that the general fund has already plunged deeply into deficit, largely because of President Bush`s unprecedented insistence on cutting taxes in the face of a war. The other is the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

As a budget concern, Social Security isn`t remotely in the same league. The long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts is five times the budget office`s estimate of Social Security`s deficit over the next 75 years. The botched prescription drug bill passed in 2003 does more, all by itself, to increase the long-run budget deficit than the projected rise in Social Security expenses.

That doesn`t mean nothing should be done to improve Social Security`s finances. But privatization is a fake solution to a fake crisis. In future articles on this subject I`ll explain why, and also outline a real plan to strengthen Social Security.

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COMPLETE COVERAGE
A Guide to the Memos on Torture
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html?o…
Online Document Sources: Findlaw.com and National Security Archive, George Washington University (gwu.edu)

January 5, 2005
Bush`s Counsel Sought Ruling About Torture
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, intervened directly with Justice Department lawyers in 2002 to obtain a legal ruling on the extent of the president`s authority to permit extreme interrogation practices in the name of national security, current and former administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Gonzales`s role in seeking a legal opinion on the definition of torture and the legal limits on the force that could be used on terrorist suspects in captivity is expected to be a central issue in the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings scheduled to begin on Thursday on Mr. Gonzales`s nomination to be attorney general.

The request by Mr. Gonzales produced the much-debated Justice Department memorandum of Aug. 1, 2002, which defined torture narrowly and said that Mr. Bush could circumvent domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security.

Until now, administration officials have been unwilling to provide details about the role Mr. Gonzales had in the production of the memorandum by the Justice Department`s Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his.

Current and former officials who talked about the memorandum have been provided with firsthand accounts about how it was prepared. Some discussed it in an effort to clear up what they viewed as a murky record in advance of Mr. Gonzales`s confirmation hearings. Others spoke of the matter apparently believing that the Justice Department had unfairly taken the blame for the memorandum.

A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Tuesday that while Mr. Gonzales personally requested the August opinion, he was only seeking "objective legal advice and did not ask the Office of Legal Counsel to reach any specific conclusion."

As the White House`s chief lawyer, Mr. Gonzales supervised the production of a number of legal memorandums that shaped the administration`s legal framework for conducting its battle against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Of the documents that have been made public, only one was written by Mr. Gonzales. In that memorandum, dated January 2002, he advised Mr. Bush that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to fighters captured in Afghanistan. The next month the White House decided that the Geneva Conventions would be applied to Taliban captives but not to detainees linked to Al Qaeda.

As a result, a major area of questioning at his confirmation hearing is expected to be the role he played in the production of the other documents, like the August 2002 memorandum. That memorandum concluded that interrogators had great leeway to question detainees using coercive techniques that they could assert were not torture.

The Justice Department formally rescinded the August memorandum last week and in its place issued a legal opinion saying that torture should be more broadly defined and that there was no need to say that Mr. Bush had the authority to sanction torture because he has said unequivocally that it is not permitted.

The revision stated that "torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms." It rejected the language in the earlier memorandum, which said that only physical pain "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure" constituted torture punishable by law.

Administration officials said over the last few days that Mr. Gonzales had played a role in the decision to issue the new legal opinion as well, but they did not offer specifics.

Mr. Gonzales`s request resulting in the original August 2002 memorandum was somewhat unusual, the officials said, because he went directly to lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel, bypassing the office of the deputy attorney general, which is often notified of politically delicate requests for legal opinions made by executive-branch agencies, including the White House.

The memorandum has become one of the most hotly debated legal documents in the so-called war on terror. Democrats and human rights groups have complained that it created a permissive atmosphere that led to serious abuses of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The memorandum was addressed to Mr. Gonzales and was signed by Jay S. Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.

Officials dispute how much senior Justice Department officials knew of the memorandum as it was being prepared. A former official and a current one said that neither Attorney General John Ashcroft nor his deputy, Larry D. Thompson, were aware of the memorandum until it was about to be submitted to the White House.

Another former official said, however, that they were given progress reports as the memorandum took shape.

John Yoo, a senior Justice Department lawyer who wrote much of the memorandum, exchanged draft language with lawyers at the White House, the officials said. Mr. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an article published Sunday in The San Jose Mercury News that Mr. Gonzales did not apply any pressure on him to tailor the memorandum to accommodate the White House.

Instead, Mr. Yoo said that Mr. Gonzales was merely seeking to "understand all available options" in a perilous time, when the United States faced unprecedented threats.

But a senior administration official disagreed, saying that the memorandum`s conclusions appeared to closely align with the prevailing White House view of interrogation practices. The official said the memorandum raised questions about whether the Office of Legal Counsel had maintained its longstanding tradition of dispensing objective legal advice to its clients in executive-branch agencies.

While the nature of Mr. Gonzales`s specific discussions with the Justice Department remains unclear, administration officials said that Mr. Gonzales`s customary way of dealing with Justice Department lawyers was to pose questions about issues rather than offer his own conclusions, although one said his preferences could sometimes be inferred easily from his questions.

Justice Department officials said that the timing of the revised memorandum, which was posted on the Justice Department`s Internet site without announcement late on Dec. 30, was a result of instructions from James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general.

Mr. Comey, the officials said, told lawyers to complete the revised opinion before the end of the year. At the same time, officials said they were mindful that issuance of the new opinion might help neutralize the issue for Mr. Gonzales even as it served as a sharp critique of the earlier opinion.

Mr. Gonzales talked about the August 2002 memorandum in a meeting with reporters last June, when the White House sought to defend its actions at the height of the uproar over abuses of prisoners in Iraq.

Without discussing his own role in soliciting the document, Mr. Gonzales said that the memorandum was not a policy directive to officials in the field but a response to questions about the scope of the federal law prohibiting torture and the international convention on torture.

"The president has given no order or directive that would immunize from prosecution anyone engaged in conduct that constitutes torture," Mr. Gonzales said. "All interrogation techniques actually authorized have been carefully vetted, are lawful, and do not constitute torture."

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, who has signaled an intent to question Mr. Gonzales vigorously about his role in the memorandums, said Tuesday that he has been continually frustrated by the White House in trying to obtain answers and documents.

In a letter to Mr. Gonzales on Tuesday, Mr. Leahy wrote, "I am disappointed that, contrary to your promises to me to engage in an open exchange and answer my questions in connection with your confirmation process, you have not answered my letters" requesting documents.

But Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the new chairman of the committee, said that Mr. Leahy`s complaints appeared unjustified.

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January 5, 2005
EDITORIAL
Rewarding Mr. Gonzales

Last week, the Bush administration put another spin on the twisted legal reasoning behind the brutalization of prisoners at military jails, apparently in hopes of smoothing the promotion of Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel. Mr. Gonzales, who oversaw earlier memos condoning what amounts to torture and scoffed at the Geneva Conventions, is being rewarded with the job of attorney general.

But the document only underscored the poor choice Mr. Bush made when he decided to elevate a man so closely identified with the scandal of Abu Ghraib, the contempt for due process at Guantánamo Bay and the seemingly unending revelations of the abuse of Afghan and Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. Like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the other chief architect of these policies, Mr. Gonzales shamed the nation and endangered American soldiers who may be taken prisoner in the future by condoning the sort of atrocious acts the United States has always condemned.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will question Mr. Gonzales tomorrow, even though the White House has not released documents that are essential to a serious hearing. The committee has an obligation to demand these documents, and to compel Mr. Gonzales to account for administration policies, before giving him the top law-enforcement job.

After Sept. 11, 2001, with Americans intent on punishing those behind the terrorist attacks and preventing another calamity at home, the Bush administration had its lawyers review the legal status of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners, with an eye to getting around the Geneva Conventions, other international accords and United States law on the treatment of prisoners.

Mr. Gonzales was the center of this effort. On Jan. 25, 2002, he sent Mr. Bush a letter assuring him that the war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva`s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners." That August, Mr. Gonzales got a legal opinion from Jay Bybee, then the assistant attorney general, arguing that the president could suspend the Geneva Conventions at will and that some forms of torture "may be justified." Mr. Rumsfeld`s lawyers produced documents justifying the abuse of prisoners sent from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay. Mr. Gonzales approved those memos or didn`t object. We don`t know which because the White House won`t release the documents.

On Thursday, more than eight months after the rotten fruits of those legal briefs were shown to the world at Abu Ghraib, the Justice Department issued yet another legal opinion. This time it rejected Mr. Bybee`s bizarre notions that the president could be given the legal go-ahead to authorize torture, simply by defining the word so narrowly as to exclude almost anything short of mortal injury. We were glad to see that turnaround, although it was three years too late. Prisoners have already been systematically hurt, degraded, tortured and even killed. The nation`s international reputation is deeply scarred.

The new memo said that "torture is abhorrent," but it raised more questions than it answered, like this one: If Mr. Bybee`s views were so obviously outlandish, why were they allowed to stand for so long?

And the new memo still goes beyond the limits of American values and international conventions. The administration now recognizes that the anti-torture accord forbids the deliberate use of severe physical or mental pain and suffering to compel a prisoner to divulge information or cooperate in some other way - but it continues to draw fine lines about what that means.

For instance, the Geneva Conventions say that it is torture when a prisoner suffers mentally from the use of mind-altering drugs or the threat of imminent death. But the administration`s lawyers have decided that temporary trauma doesn`t count, and that mental suffering is real only if it lasts for years. More than once, American soldiers have taken an Iraqi teenager and compelled him to dig his grave, then forced him to kneel, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger in a mock execution. Is that not torture unless he`s still upset about it in five years?

Even if the new memo could somehow magically sweep away all these deeply troubling aspects of the Gonzales nomination, there are other big questions about his background. As White House counsel, he recently oversaw the feckless vetting of Bernard Kerik as the nominee for secretary of homeland security. He was a primary agent behind unacceptably restrictive secrecy policies, the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and the excessive authority to abuse civil liberties granted by the Patriot Act. In Texas, as Governor Bush`s legal adviser, Mr. Gonzales wrote briefs on condemned prisoners` appeals for clemency that were notoriously sloppy.

Republicans expect an easy confirmation, given their Senate majority. But at the very least, Mr. Gonzales should account for his actions. He should unequivocally renounce torture, without any fine-print haggling, as well as the other illegal treatment of prisoners in military jails. And he should explain how he will use his new job to clean up the mess he helped create.

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Tuesday, January 4th, 2005
ExxonMobil, Aceh and the Tsunami
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/04/160250
[urlDownload Show mp3]http://www.archive.org/download/dn2005-0104/dn2005-0104-1_64kb.mp3[/url]
[urlWatch 256k stream]http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/jan/video/dnB20050104a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=12:16.00[/url]

ExxonMobil has contributed $5 million to the Tsunami relief efforts. In Aceh, the company operates one of the largest gas fields in the world and they`re being sued for gross human rights violations. We speak with a lawyer who has just returned from Indonesia where he was interviewing witnesses against ExxonMobil from Aceh. [includes rush transcript] Today, as the United Nations puts the confirmed death toll from the Asian Tsunami at more than 150,000, we are going to continue our special coverage of the devestation in the hardest hit area, the Aceh region of Indonesia where the death toll is expected soon to rise above 100,000. In a few moments we are going to be joined by two Acehnese activists who were out in front of the Indonesian Mission to the UN protesting yesterday against the Indonesian military regime. But first, we turn to a story that has gotten almost no attention and that is the story of the oil giant Exxon-Mobil, a corporation that has a massive investment in Aceh. According to some estimates, ExxonMobil has extracted some $40 billion from its operations in Aceh, Indonesia.

According to human rights groups, ExxonMobil has hired military units of the Indonesian national army to provide "security" for their gas extraction and liquification project in the region. Members of these military units regularly have perpetrated ongoing and severe human rights abuses against local villagers, including murder, rape, torture, destruction of property and other acts of terror. Human rights groups further charge that ExxonMobil has continued to finance the military and to provide company equipment and facilities that have been used by the Indonesian military to commit atrocities and cover them up through the use of mass graves.

For years, the Washington DC-based International Labor Rights Fund has fought a series of legal battles to hold ExxonMobil responsible for its record in Aceh. One of the group`s lawyers was in Aceh interviewing witnesses just days before the Tsunami hit.

* Derek Baxter, a lawyer for the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington, D.C.

* Bama Athreya, Deputy Director of the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington, D.C.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.


AMY GOODMAN: We`re joined by Bama Athreya, who is the Deputy Director of the International Labor Rights Fund, as well as Derek Baxter, who is a lawyer with that group. He has just returned from Indonesia, where he was speaking with people who are involved in the lawsuit. We want to welcome you both to Democracy Now!, and begin with Derek Baxter. Welcome.

DEREK BAXTER: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It`s good to have you with us, Derek. I wanted to start off by saying that we did invite ExxonMobil on the program. They said at first they would participate in the program, if we were just talking about their contribution, ExxonMobil`s contribution to the relief efforts. They`re one of the largest corporate contributors to the relief efforts. They have pledged more than -- they have pledged $5 million. They did write us an email. They said, “I`m surprised your program would choose to divert attention from the unprecedented outpouring of support and coordination among multinational and local relief agencies in Indonesia, by pursuing an ambush interview with one of the largest corporate contributors to those efforts.” Derek Baxter, can you respond?

DEREK BAXTER: Well, we welcome ExxonMobil`s contribution, but ExxonMobil, we have to remember, has a long debt to the Acehnese people. They are by far the largest corporation operating in Aceh. The amount of profit that they derive from this region is enormous. It dwarfs any other industry in the area. While we`re glad that they`re helping, sadly, all too long, Exxon has been part of the problem in Aceh. As our lawsuit has alleged, Exxon has knowingly operated its facilities, its natural gas facilities on the northeastern coast of Aceh. They have done so by hiring the Indonesian military forces to provide security, knowing all along, as is a matter of public record, that the Indonesian military`s record in that area has been a very difficult one. The military has committed many human rights abuses against the people of Aceh in that area. Their collaboration with ExxonMobil has only worsened the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Derek Baxter, you recently returned, in fact, what, just a week before the tsunami hit, from Indonesia. Can you talk about what you were doing there?

DEREK BAXTER: Certainly. I was very close to Aceh, and part of the problem in actually going to Aceh is that the Indonesian government has not regularly allowed foreigners, journalists, NGOs, etc., to enter without securing special permission, which is very difficult to get. So I was in North Sumatra, very close to Aceh. I met with numerous people, villagers who lived very close to the ExxonMobil facilities in Aceh, who traveled at great personal risk to themselves to North Sumatra, the area where I was, to meet with me. They told me of continuing human rights abuses. Just on the eve of the tsunami, the human rights situation in that part of Aceh was severe, and if anything, it was worsening. I spoke with people who told me that military assigned to protect the ExxonMobil facilities accosted them, extorted them, asked them regularly for contributions of money, of rice, of possessions, which these people had very little, and if there was any protest, they would often be attacked. They would be hauled away from their families, beaten. I spoke to a very young man who had been shot in the right knee, very gruesome. But these atrocities were commonplace. They didn`t surprise anybody that I was talking to, because sadly, in that area, right by the ExxonMobil facilities, those abuses of that type have been going on for years, for the entire last decade. We have even heard reports, which we`re trying to verify, that five people were killed actually on the liquification plant that ExxonMobil helps to operate. As we have -- as the ILRF have noted in the lawsuit which we filed in 2001, the torture and murder, disappearance, sexual assault of people, Acehnese, living close to these ExxonMobil facilities was all too routine over the last years.

AMY GOODMAN: Derek Baxter, if you are talking about the Indonesian military, why do you hold ExxonMobil accountable?

DEREK BAXTER: That`s an excellent question, and we`re not seeking to hold them accountable for everything, obviously, that happens in Aceh. There`s a long, ongoing civil strife in that area, but in this particular area, ExxonMobil has contracted, as we have said and alleged in our complaint, they have contracted with the Indonesian military to provide security just for the ExxonMobil facilities. We have alleged that this relationship with the Indonesian military includes providing money, directly to them, it includes building -- constructing buildings on ExxonMobil grounds, which the military has used for the torture and disappearance of Acehnese. It includes providing excavating equipment, which ExxonMobil has provided to the military, in which we have alleged the military has then used to construct mass graves of the victims. It`s a very close, ongoing relationship, and you have to remember that ExxonMobil wields enormous financial power in this region, and if they are choosing to utilize the military force that has been criticized by many human rights groups for their violations, then we believe, and we believe the law will hold us out on this point, that ExxonMobil will be legally liable for these violations.

AMY GOODMAN: Derek Baxter, we have to break. When we come back, we will also talk with Bama Athreya, about the overall region. Today, there`s a piece in the Washington Post that talks about the collaboration between the U.S. military right now and the Indonesian military. Yesterday we went up to the U.N. mission -- to the Indonesian mission to the United Nations where there was a gathering of Acehnese refugees who were encouraging international aid organizations not to funnel their money through the Indonesian government. And they were calling on the Indonesian military not to stop the aid going into Aceh.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: As we continue to discuss one of the largest corporate contributors to the relief efforts, ExxonMobil – $5 million they say they are giving, we wish we could have them on the program. They declined to participate, but we are talking about an ongoing lawsuit that involves ExxonMobil and its running of one of the largest gas fields in the world in Aceh. I believe that its facility there was not actually damaged by the tsunami. We`re joined in Washington studios by two members of the International Labor Rights Fund. We`re joined by the Deputy Director of the International Fund, Bama Athreya, as well as Derek Baxter, who is the lawyer who`s just returned from Indonesia, a week before the tsunami, interviewing people who are participating in the lawsuit against the -- against ExxonMobil. I was wondering, Bama Athreya, if you could put this in the context of Indonesia, which you have worked on for many years, and in the context of what`s happening right now, the massive -- well, the cataclysm that has taken place and what is taking place in Aceh.

BAMA ATHREYA: Sure. That`s a big question, Amy, and I`ll try and focus it a little bit on the things that you just mentioned. You had mentioned that there has been a call from a number of activists to insure that the aid that people are so very generously giving to the victims of the tsunami is not all funneled through the Indonesian military. And, on context, I think it`s important for people here, who are, you know, giving very generously on a personal level to recognize the political context in Aceh. The Indonesian military has been operating basically a war against a separatist movement in Aceh for decades now. And that has had a lot of fallout in terms of human rights violations against innocent civilians throughout Aceh. It`s also important to remember that the Indonesian military itself are an extremely corrupt institution. It`s estimated that only about 40% of the military`s basic operating costs are paid for by the Indonesian government. That means they get the other 60% through extortion. You mentioned that ExxonMobil`s given $5 million to the relief effort. Well, we would sure love to know how much ExxonMobil`s has given to the Indonesian military over the years. We know they`ve paid them. We know they`ve given them logistical support. We know they`ve housed them. I`m just guessing that their donations, if you`d like to call it that, to the Indonesian military over the years have been far in excess of the $5 million they`re now giving to the poor victims in Aceh. So, we`re looking at a context where we`ve got a very corrupt institution, the Indonesian military, which has been extorting local Acehnese villagers, which has been running drug operations and prostitution rings in Aceh, which has been involved in illegal timber operations in Aceh; and now we`re going to trust this same institution to be the folks who deliver the aid to the Acehnese victims? It`s not a great idea, Amy, and I think that`s one of the reasons why we share the position of some of our human rights colleagues here in the U.S. that there have got to be some transparent systems in place to deliver aid to make sure those people in Aceh that have suffered the most really, truly get the food and the medicine that people are donating.

AMY GOODMAN: As you mentioned, Bama, Acehnese and human rights groups have been protesting the funneling of aid to the Indonesian military. Yesterday outside the Indonesian mission to the U.N., a gathering of Acehnese refugees took place. They marched from the U.N. to thank them for supporting huge relief efforts in Indonesia, but then marched over to the Indonesian Mission to the U.N., condemning what they called the Indonesian government`s haphazard response to the tsunami. They accuse the Indonesian armed forces of continuing their military operations in Aceh, and of preventing the delivery of aid to victims of the earthquake and tsunami. The refugees charged that rather than helping the people, in a number of areas the troops are intimidating villagers, scaring away --them away from their villages, looting their homes, stealing food. They called on the military to implement an immediate cease-fire.

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`You`re George Bush`s brother? Good for you.`

Tragedy turns to comedy as US envoys arrive
Jonathan Watts at Phuket town hall
Wednesday January 5, 2005

Guardian
It was one of the few moments of light relief in what has otherwise been a week of heart-rending loss, ghoulish encounters with death, and heroic self-sacrifice.

The scene was Phuket town hall, which has become the polyglot headquarters of the huge international operation to recover bodies and support the survivors of last week`s tsunami.

The stage was set by sniffer dogs which checked the building for explosives, and secret service agents, easily identifiable by the wires coiling down from their earpieces as they cased every room several hours before the principal US actors arrived to seize the international limelight.

The comedy was provided by the visiting governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, who might reasonably have expected at least a celebrity`s welcome, if not a hero`s. But even though he is the brother of the most powerful man of earth and came bearing news of a $350m (£186m) US contribution to the $2.5bn international relief effort, nobody seemed to know who he was.

"Who are you?" asked one slightly bemused Australian consular official as the large-girthed US stranger pumped his hand.

"I`m Jeb Bush."

"Oh, are you a relative of the president?" said the interlocuter, jokingly.

"Yes I am. I am his little brother."

"Oh," came the reply. "Good for you."

The confusion was understandable.

The volunteers at the visitors` centre in the town hall have been working long hours in fraught circumstances for more than a week.

Mr Bush was just one of a long stream of visitors who have come through the doors on life-and-death missions. This room - where 36 countries have a desk, each marked with its own flag or sign - is the first port of call for families of the missing, who come here to find translators, accommodation and advice. It is around here that they give DNA samples, pin up missing persons notices, and check through the lists of casualties at the hospitals and the morgues. This location is also the rallying point for the army of volunteers who have flown in from around the world to offer their services as doctors, counsellors, builders and morticians.

Jeb Bush was not the only senior US official who appeared to feel awkward.

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, came close to damaging his reputation as the Bush administration`s leading diplomat when he walked into the room, strolled to the US desk, shook the hands of the people working there and then walked straight back out again. It was only when he was downstairs that an aide suggested he "might like" to meet the volunteers from some of the other countries, too. Reminded that he is part of an international relief mission, Mr Powell promptly turned on his heels once again and marched back up the stairs to belatedly press some non-American flesh.

Jeb Bush, who was chosen as a US representative in part because his own state of Florida was hit by four powerful hurricanes last year, conceded that the destruction caused by the tsunami was far worse. "We had nothing compared to that," he said. "When you have 150,000 people who died over 11 countries, that goes way beyond what anybody`s experienced in our own country."

But he and Mr Powell will have to wait until they get to Indonesia to see the damage first hand. In Thailand, they did not visit any of the worst-hit areas. "We did not want to get in the way of relief work," he said.

Mr Powell and Mr Bush were among the first leading political figures to visit the disaster area, and they were able to boast a speedy and large contribution. As well as cash, the US government has provided 12,600 military personnel, 20 US naval vessels and 80 military aircraft to the relief operation. Thailand - which has offered to serve as the hub for that operation - has also asked the US to supply body bags, for support for environmental reconstruction of damaged coral reefs in the Andaman Sea, assistance with the huge problem of victim identification and technological expertise in setting up a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean.

Mr Powell said the tsunami was a tragedy for the world, but he said donations would not be as great as those used to rebuild Europe after the second world war. "The United States will certainly not turn away from those in desperate need," he said. But he added: "I don`t think it needs something on the scale of the Marshall Plan." After landing in Jakarta on the next leg of his tour, Mr Powell said he hoped American efforts to help in the region would also help Muslim nations see the United States in a better light, and give the rest of the world "an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action".

In an interview with Thailand`s Independent Television, Mr Powell again rejected criticism of the US response as being slow. "Who criticised us? It wasn`t the countries in the region," he said. "So I don`t accept the criticism that some in the media have given to the United States that we were slow."

The financing and organisation of the reconstruction effort will be discussed by regional leaders and diplomats at two international conferences over the next two weeks. At the first in Jakarta tomorrow, Mr Powell will be joined by Japan`s prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi - whose country`s $500m pledge makes it the biggest contributor so far - along with the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, and international banking officials. The second is scheduled for Geneva on January 11. Ahead of these meetings, senior diplomats are flying in to the disaster zone to asses the damage.

Australia`s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, also visited Phuket town hall yesterday, before flying to Jakarta. Australia is setting up a military hospital in Sumatra and using a fleet of cargo planes to ferry supplies to survivors. "The focus of the discussion in Jakarta on Thursday will be the salvation of those communities," Mr Downer said.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Baghdad Governor, 6 Bodyguards Assassinated
5 US Troops, 10 Iraqi Commandoes also Killed

The pro-American governor of Baghdad and his convoy were ambushed on Tuesday by gunmen, who managed to cut down the governor and six of his bodyguards in only the latest of a spate of killing of provincial governing officials. The head of the governing council of Baqubah was also killed recently, in a whole series of such assassinations, which included a female member of the governing council of Salahuddin. Where the assassination targeted only a member of the provincial governing council and not its head, these killings have often not even been well reported in the US press. But imagine if a group was systematically killing the secretaries of state of the 50 US states, and sometimes got a governor to boot.

Three of the US dead were from a roadside bomb in Baghdad, which also wounded 2. Two other US troops died in separate incidents.

Guerrillas targeted the Ministry of the Interior commando squad with a huge truck bomb, killing 10.

If things go on like this the real question won`t be whether you could hold elections but rather whether the members of the new government could be kept alive.

That is another problem with just having the US summarily pull out. The neo-Baath and Salafi guerrillas could and would just kill the members of the existing government, in preparation for making a Sunni Arab coup. That really would provoke a civil war.

What I can`t understand is why the governor of Baghdad did not have better security. You shouldn`t just be able to ambush and shoot an official of his stature. That six of his bodyguards were also killed doesn`t speak very highly of them, either, though it speaks more highly of them than it does of the bodyguards who survived. Why cannot the US provide security to Iraqi government officials? Isn`t that a priority? There are techniques that could be used to save these lives.

In other news , the Iraqi government formally requested that the Egyptian government encourage Iraqi Sunni Arabs to participate in the upcoming elections. Interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan is in Cairo for talks on this and other issues.

Since the neo-Baathists and Salafis who are leading the Iraqi Sunni Arab rebellion view the Mubarak government as a pharaonic dictatorship and servant of the United States, I very much doubt that Cairo has much influence with people in Mosul and Ramadi, on the face of it. But Shaalan is said by al-Hayat to also be inviting the Gulf Arab states to make the same appeal. I wonder if what Shaalan is really saying is that Egypt and the Arab Gulf should adopt Sunni Arab parties in Iraq as clients in the same way as Iran has some Shiite parties, to offset Tehran. This would require them to throw money and resources at specific personalities or groups.

Iran will not send full representation to the meeting of the foreign ministers of the six neighboring countries to Iraq scheduled for Thursday in Amman. It is miffed by the interview King Abdullah II gave to the Washington Post, where he forcefully accused Iranians of sending in a million stealth voters and trying to creat a Shiite crescent in the Near East that would stretch from Lebanon through Syria to Iraq and Iran.

posted by Juan @ 1/5/2005 02:10:08 AM
Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Downsides of Partitioning Iraq

Some readers asked me why I was so against partitioning Iraq.

It is because it would cause a great deal of trouble to us all, not least Iraqis. Iraq is not divided neatly into three ethnic enclaves. It is all mixed up. There are a million Kurds in Baghdad, a million Sunnis in the Shiite deep south, and lots of mixed provinces (Ta`mim, Ninevah, Diyalah, Babil, Baghdad, etc.). There is a lot of intermarriage among various Iraqi groups. Look at President Ghazi Yawir. He is from the Sunni Arab branch of the Shamar tribe. But some Shamar are Shiites. One of his wives is Nasrin Barwari, a Kurdish cabinet minister. What would partition do to the Yawirs?

Then, how do you split up the resources? If the Sunni Arabs don`t get Kirkuk, then they will be poorer than Jordan. Don`t you think they will fight for it? The Kurds would fight to the last man for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk if it was a matter of determining in which country it ended up.

If the Kurds got Kirkuk and the Sunni Arabs became a poor cousin to Jordan, the Sunni Arabs would almost certainly turn to al-Qaeda in large numbers. Some Iraqi guerrillas are already talking about hitting back at the US mainland. And, Fallujah is not that far from Saudi Arabia, which Bin Laden wants to hit, as well, especially at the oil. Fallujah Salafis would hook up with those in Jordan and Gaza to establish a radical Sunni arc that would destabilize the entire region.

Divorced from the Sunnis, the Shiites of the south would no longer have any counterweight to religious currents like al-Dawa, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the Sadrists. The rump Shiite state would be rich, with the Rumayla and other fields, and might well declare a Shiite Islamic republic. It is being coupled with the Sunnis that mainly keeps them from going down that road. A Shiite South Iraq might make a claim on Shiite Eastern Arabia in Saudi Arabia, or stir up trouble there. The Eastern Province can pump as much as 11% of the world`s petroleum.

So Americans would like this scenario why?

posted by Juan @ [url1/4/2005 02:48:41 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/downsides-of-partitioning-iraq-some.html[/url]

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TSUNAMI IMPACT:
Aceh Children Becoming Vulnerable to Traffickers

Richel Dursin

After the First Lady announced her intention to adopt a 13-year-old Acehnese boy whose parents were swept away by the tsunami, different actors started to express rising concern that orphans are falling prey to child trafficking rings in a country that sees 100,000 children and women trafficked each year.

JAKARTA, Jan 5 (IPS) - Some call it a ``philanthropic act``, others a ``big blunder`` when Indonesia`s First Lady Kristiani Herawati Yudhoyono publicly expressed her intention to adopt a 13-year-old Acehnese boy whose parents were swept away by the tsunami that devastated Asia, a day after Christmas.

A footage taken by a private television station last Monday showed the wife of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono saying she wanted to adopt Mirwanda and send him to a school in Jakarta.

``I will finance his education,`` Ani Yudhoyohono, as she is affectionately called, said in a televised interview over `Metro TV`, while stroking the hair of Mirwanda, a first year high school student who survived the tsunami disaster by running to a hill near his house in Aceh, which was the near the epicenter of the quake.

Upon watching the news report, Mirwanda`s elder sister, Aida, broke in tears and pleaded with the president`s wife to immediately return her brother to her in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital.

``Please give me back my brother. He is the only one I have now. I will act as his mother and find my way to send him to school,`` begged Aida, a domestic housekeeper.

Presidential spokesperson Andi Mallarangeng went into damage control when he saw the distressed Aida on television. He said the boy had been handed over, in neighbouring North Sumatra`s capital Medan, to a person in a refugee camp who claimed to be his neighbour.

``The plan by the president`s wife to adopt Mirwanda did not materialise because the boy refused,`` said Mallarangeng, adding that the president`s entourage took the Acehnese tsunami survivor to Medan -- which serves as a transit relief center for refugees fleeing Aceh province.

As it turned out, the act of the First Lady, who has two grown-up sons, drew more flak than praise from ordinary citizens, who expressed concern that Acehnese children are falling prey to child trafficking rings.

``Why was the boy taken out from Aceh and just given to somebody who claimed to be his neighbour?`` asked Vincentius, a viewer in Jakarta.

Added university student Graesiana: ``What if the boy has fallen victim to a child trafficker?``

Indonesia is both a receiving site and a sending area overseas for trafficked children.

Each year in Indonesia, some 100,000 children and women are trafficked due to various factors including poverty, lack of economic opportunities for young people, high demand for commercial sex, cheap labor, weak law enforcement and corruption, according to the United Nations Children`s Fund (UNICEF).

``In tumultuous environments like those in the tsunami zone - where families are broken apart - children are more vulnerable,`` said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy.

``In some of the affected countries, reports have been emerging of opportunistic child traffickers moving in to exploit vulnerable children,`` she added.

In Banda Aceh, several refugees reported that some people have approached survivors of the tsunami disaster and asked about children who lost their parents when the Dec. 26 undersea quake-triggered killer waves struck. The death toll at Aceh and northern Sumatra stands at 94,000, the highest in Asia, but officials expect it to rise.

According to relief agencies, between 100,000 and 300,000 Acehnese children, who survived the tsunami disaster, are either orphaned or separated from their parents and other family members in the province.

``Some people came to see us and wanted to buy kids who no longer had any parents. They told us they will bring the children to Jakarta and sell them,`` said Juliana Zakariah, a refugee in Banda Aceh.

Zakariah pointed out that she saw the people who wanted to buy children taking a ``young girl with a curly hair``.

The non-governmental Medan-based Aceh Sepakat Foundation disclosed that at least 20 Acehnese children are believed to have been smuggled out of Aceh after the tsunami devastated the province.

The foundation executive officer Masriza said he was informed that a group based in Medan transported the 20 orphans to Bandung in West Java and neighbouring Malaysia.

``Babies and children below 15 are usually the targets of child traffickers, Masriza told IPS.

To avert child trafficking, Vice President Yusuf Kalla issued an order on Monday banning Acehnese children from leaving the tsunami-stricken province unless permitted by their parents or immediate family members.

However, child activists criticised the order not to take out Acehnese children from the province.

``Acehnese children should be allowed to leave the province because the place is not favourable to their mental and emotional development,`` said Seto Mulyadi, chairman of National Commission on Child Protection.

The government has also issued a regulation banning Acehnese children below the age of 16 from leaving Indonesia and imposed a temporary ban on their adoption.

A number of people in Jakarta have expressed their desire to become foster parents to Acehnese orphans and trooped to the office of the Council of Indonesian Ulemas (MUI), which supports the adoption of children from the province.

The MUI has made it known that parents who want to adopt should be economically stable and have the same religion as the child.

According to Makmur Sunusi, director for child protection at the Ministry of Social Affairs, adoption is only allowed when it can be verified that both parents and other immediate relatives of the child have been killed in the tsunami disaster.

``Acehnese children who lost their parents, but still have their siblings cannot be adopted like in the case of the boy whom the First Lady wanted to adopt,`` Sunusi said.

Sunusi stressed that Acehnese residents should be given priority to adopt orphans from their province in order to preserve the emotional and cultural ties between them.

As for Mirwanda, `Metro TV` looked for him in all the refugee camps in Medan immediately after it was revealed that he was in north Sumatra. But he was only found a week later, on the evening of Jan. 3.

Mirwanda, who complained of dizziness and nausea, was discovered staying with 14 other Acehnese children in the house of a sub-district head in Medan.

``Please come home. Tell the `Metro TV` crew to bring you back to Aceh,`` Aida told her brother, who replied that he will return as soon as he is well (END/2005)




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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-fall…
THE WORLD
Falloujans Return to All They Lost
Residents are scrutinized at tightly guarded entry points, then find a ghost city with blocks of empty homes, or just rubble.
By Tony Perry
Times Staff Writer

January 5, 2005

FALLOUJA, Iraq — The line began forming in the predawn chill Tuesday when the only sounds coming from this devastated city were the honking of geese on the Euphrates River and a call to prayers from a riverfront mosque.

By midmorning, hundreds of Iraqis were waiting to cross the bridge that serves as one of the five carefully guarded entry points into Fallouja that were recently opened by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Some were laborers hired by the Iraqi government to begin the massive effort to rebuild this war-ravaged Sunni Triangle city, once home to nearly 300,000 people.

Others were residents who had fled before U.S.-led forces wrested control of the city from insurgents in November. They hoped to find something remaining of their homes, their businesses and their lives.

The battle for Fallouja is largely over, save for occasional firefights and sniping. A longer and, in some ways, more daunting task lies ahead: letting residents return, catching insurgents trying to sneak back and helping Iraqis repair their shattered city.

On Tuesday, 2,500 residents passed through Entry Control Point 5 on the west side of the bridge, a new high for the site since the influx began last month. The checkpoint is open 10 hours a day.

During the morning, Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, commanding officer of the 1st Marine Division, was inspecting the five entry points and assessing the progress of the effort.

"I hope your home was not damaged too much," he said through a translator to an Iraqi who appeared to be about 50.

"If God is willing," the man replied, looking heavenward.

Natonski, whose forces led the incursion into Fallouja and are part of the rebuilding effort, is bullish on the prospects for restoring the city. But he concedes it will take a long time.

The city was heavily damaged during pre-invasion U.S. airstrikes and the subsequent combat. However, Natonski was unwavering in his view that the destruction of Fallouja was the fault of insurgents who had long used it as a base.

"The fact is, the city will be better than it was before the insurgents turned it into this," he said. "We`ll keep [insurgents] out. The people don`t want them, and we don`t either."

To get back into their city, Fallouja residents must run a gantlet of inspections and scrutiny. Those with Iraqi identification cards, issued by the fledgling government, are given preference, but their vehicles are searched.

Those without cards are interviewed. Their irises are scanned so that the characteristics of their eyes can be cataloged and compared to a database of Iraqis who have been arrested by U.S. forces.

Iraqis found with anti-American literature or such material on compact discs are taken aside for further interviewing. Female Marines search female Iraqis; Iraqi police search male Iraqis, with Marines watching.

It is difficult to gauge how many of the hundreds who return to the city each day leave again once they view the wreckage.

"There are some happy faces but also sad ones," said Lance Cpl. Jerry Contreras, 19, of Long Beach. "I saw one man start crying when he saw his house was destroyed. I felt bad but I knew we didn`t just blow it up, we had to."

One hopeful sign, Marines say, is that more women and children are returning.

"To me, it means the Iraqis feel safe inside the city, so they can bring their families," said 1st Lt. Donald Toscano, 28, of Miami, who commands the platoon in charge of Entry Control Point 5.

The city that awaits those who return has a ghostly appearance. Empty homes fill block after block, some with gaping holes in the walls and roofs. Some blocks are nothing but piles of brick and masonry rubble.

Skinny, crazed-looking dogs roam the streets. Telephone poles are bent over, their wires littering the ground. Some ruins have a strange, Stonehenge look.

The freshly damaged areas are interspersed with zones that were rusting and fetid long before U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003. Piles of ancient garbage ring the outskirts of town, and rusted reinforcing bars protrude from buildings that were abandoned, only half-completed.

Marines and soldiers have numerous compounds inside the city. Sentries keep away the curious and tanks back up the signs that warn: "STOP Or U.S. Military Will Shoot Fire." Some neighborhoods are blocked off with razor wire. Only certain parts of Fallouja are considered safe enough for residents to return.

Men stand on street corners in small knots watching glumly as American vehicles pass by. A few cars drive slowly down streets filled with rubble and garbage. Some depopulated neighborhoods are silent except for the whine of an unmanned U.S. surveillance plane overhead.

Parks are being used as food distribution centers by troops.

The Marines manning Entry Control Point 5 are members of Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment. The unit was a leader of the assault on Fallouja.

The same Marines who were exchanging gunfire with insurgents are now trying to convince residents that a better life lies ahead.

"This is critical," said Maj. Rob Belknap, 32, of New Orleans, the commanding officer of Weapons Company. "Getting people back into their city and back to a normal life, that`s mission-success, if we can accomplish that."



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Latest Fatality: Jan 04, 2005

Im Irak gehen die Wahlvorbereitungen weiter:
http://icasualties.org/oif/



Suicide Bomber Kills 15 at Iraq Police Academy
Wed Jan 5, 2005 08:32 AM ET
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=1J15LGOJKDI3…

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Tuesday, January 4, 2004
Just One Senator... An Open Letter to the U.S. Senate from Michael Moore

Dear Members of the U.S. Senate,

Welcome back! The 109th session of Congress has just begun. I`m watching you on C-SPAN right now and you all look so snap-happy and clean-faced. It`s like the first day of school all over again, isn`t it?

I have a favor to ask of you. Something isn`t right with the vote from Ohio. Seems a lot of people didn`t get to vote. And those who did, thousands of theirs weren`t counted.

Does that seem right to you? I`m just asking. Forget about partisan politics for a moment and ask yourself if there is a more basic right, in a democracy, than the right of the people to vote AND have ALL their votes counted.

Now, I know a lot of you wish this little problem of Ohio would just go away. And many of you who wish this are Democrats. You just want to move on (no pun intended!). I can`t say I blame you. It`s rough to lose two elections in a row when the first one you actually won and the second one you should have won. And it seems this time around, about 3 million more Americans preferred to continue the war in Iraq and give the rich more tax breaks than those who didn`t. No sense living in denial about that.

But something isn`t right in Ohio and more than a dozen members of the House of Representatives believe it is worth investigating.

So on Thursday at 1:00pm, Rep. John Conyers of Detroit will rise and object to the vote count in Ohio. According to the laws of this land, he will not be allowed to speak unless at least one of you -- one member of the United States Senate -- agrees to let him have the floor.

A very embarrassing moment during the last session of Congress occurred in the first week when none of you would allow the members of Congress who were black to have the floor to object to the Florida vote count. Remember that? You thought no one would ever notice, didn`t you? You certainly lucked out that night when the networks decided not to show how you shut down every single member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

No such luck this year. Everyone now knows about that moment of shame. Thank you? You’re welcome.

But this Thursday, at 1:00pm, you will have a chance to redeem yourself.

Congressman Conyers and a dozen other members of Congress have some serious questions about how the Republican secretary of state in Ohio (who was also the state’s co-chair of Bush’s reelection campaign) conducted the election on November 2. The list of possible offenses of how voters were denied access to the polls and how over a hundred thousand of their votes have yet to be counted is more than worthy of your consideration. It may not change the outcome, but you have a supreme responsibility to make sure that EVERY vote is counted. Who amongst you would disagree with that?

If you would like to read more about the specific charges, I ask that you read these two links: “Senators Should Object to Ohio Vote” —by Jesse Jackson and “Ten Preliminary Reasons Why the Bush Vote Does Not Compute, and Why Congress Must Investigate Rather Than Certify the Electoral College”. I am asking everyone on my mailing list to send you a letter joining me in this call to you to do your job and investigate what happened before you certify the vote.

It only takes one member of the House and one member of the Senate to stop the acceptance of the Electoral College vote and force a legitimate debate and investigation. Do you know why this provision is set in stone in our nation’s laws? I mean, why would we allow just two officials in a body of 535 members to throw a wrench into the works? The law exists because nothing is more sacred than the integrity of the ballot box and if there is ANY possibility of fraud or incompetence, then it MUST be addressed. Because if we don`t have the vote, what are we left with?

C`mon Senators! Especially you Democrats. Here is your one shining moment of courage. Will you allow the gavel to come down on our black members of Congress once again? Or will you stand up for their right to object?

We will all be watching.

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
[e-mail]

P.S. My whereabouts this week: I will be on the Today Show Thursday morning, Jay Leno on Friday night. And... the People`s Choice Awards are this Sunday night, live on CBS at 9pm! Can we defeat the superheroes Spiderman, Incredibles and Shrek for best picture? A documentary??? Whoa... tune in...

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WHAT`S THE MATTER WITH MANHATTAN?
Democrats and Republicans Both Vote Against Themselves

NEW YORK--Why do the poor and middle class, who get screwed by Republican policies, vote for them anyway? Old-school liberals accept the vexing explanation offered by Thomas Frank`s influential book "What`s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America." "Our long culture wars," posits the Los Angeles Times in its review, "have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders` `values` and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy." Frank blames the phenomenon of trailer park Republicanism--people whose votes support right-wingers who export their jobs overseas, raise their taxes and starve their kids` schools--on the GOP`s astute use of "cultural wedge issues like guns, abortion, and the sneers of Hollywood whose hallucinatory appeal would ordinarily be far overshadowed by material concerns."

It`s the teen lesbian abortion sluts, stupid.

Democrats reeling from November 2004 found an explanation in Frank`s thesis. Republicans had divided Americans "along the fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance, and religious rule," wrote The New York Times` Maureen Dowd. The pivotal "moral values" voters--more than 20 percent, said exit polls--had been duped into voting against their own interests.

Frank`s book is powerful, but it only tells half the story.

Many Democrats vote against their economic self-interest too. In 2000 George W. Bush promised tax cuts principally designed to benefit Americans earning over $100,000 a year. Yet 46 percent of these voters, well into the top one percent of wage earners, voted for Al Gore. In 2004, 32 percent of John Kerry`s campaign budget came from people giving the maximum $2,000 direct contribution. (For Bush the figure was 49 percent.) Anyone with a spare two grand to blow on a presidential campaign can objectively be described as well off. And the most successful capitalists gave generously to liberal "527" groups like MoveOn.org: $19 million each from George Soros and Peter Lewis, $15 million from Stephen Bing, $13 million from Jane Fonda. Why did so many rich people support a guy who promised to take away their Bush tax cut? The fact that Democratic presidencies are historically better than Republicans for the economy may have factored into some of these wealthy voters` decisions--Kerry would have been better for their stock portfolios. But for others, values obviously played a role. They believed in economic justice. They were against the invasion of Iraq. And, like working class Republicans, they were willing to take an economic hit for their heartfelt beliefs.

Most Democrats oppose the Iraq war, seeing it not as a war of liberation or anti-WMD preemption but rather as a brazen attempt to protect low energy prices. Yet all of these people drive cars or ride mass transportation systems whose fares are tied to fuel costs. Although they stand to benefit from lower gas prices, they`re against waging war to secure them.

Liberal lifestyles are defined by similar self-defeating behavior. I graduated from high school more than two decades ago; my mom still votes for every school levy because she believes in public education. Because I`m too lazy to wait in an extra line for the rebate at the grocery store, I pay an extra nickel per soda and give the cans to the homeless. Despite this additional cost, I support bottle deposit laws because I value the environment.

Traditional Marxist-influenced thinkers assume that citizens in democracies wage class warfare at the ballot box. In the United States, however, millions of Democrats and Republicans alike routinely cast votes that work against their narrowly defined economic self-interest. Recent surveys show that an overwhelming majority of Americans, from both parties, is willing to pay higher taxes for everything from better schools to higher salaries for soldiers to space exploration.

All Americans, not just social conservatives, are "values" voters. We have different values, that`s all. Some of us rank values like personal freedom, a clean environment and economic fairness so highly that we`re willing to give up some of what we have to promote them. Other people see those values as unimportant or even harmful. But they`re willing to sacrifice for their opposing principles of traditional piety, free markets and personal security.

There`s a thin line, a cynic would say, between idealism and stupidity. Even so, the broader point--that what divides us most isn`t red versus blue, urban versus rural, or black versus white--is important. Americans have vastly different ways of looking at the world, of deciding what is important, even of defining what it means to be American.

COPYRIGHT 2005 TED RALL

RALL 1/4/05

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Harris hatte 2000 die Floridawahl verschoben.

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January 5, 2005
Germany Responds to Tsunami Disaster With $660 Million
By MARK LANDLER

FRANKFURT, Jan. 5 - As Heike Schultz-Fademrecht pleaded for a flight to take her and her sons away from the horror of their diving trip to Sri Lanka, she was already agonizing about those left behind - villagers whose cars and furniture and family photos she had seen floating on the deadly tide.

Ms. Schultz-Fademrecht and her sons survived the tsunami by clambering up a hillside behind their room. Now back home in Berlin, she is collecting money for the victims in Unawatuna, a beach resort on Sri Lanka`s southwestern coast. Her take, after barely a week of donations: $75,582.

Germany, with 60 people known dead and 1,000 missing, has suffered among the heaviest losses of any European country from last week`s calamity. But the trauma has been more muted here than in Scandinavia, in part because those losses are spread over a much larger population.

Still, as Germany absorbs what could end up being its greatest single loss of life since World War II, the country is responding with $660 million in government aid, and a torrent of private donations that philanthropy experts here say could set a record for the postwar period.

The German government confirmed that it would increase its aid to the region to 500 million euros - $664 million - from 20 million euros, which would make it one of the world`s leading donors. It has earmarked the money for reconstruction projects over three to five years, primarily in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

"The question arose of what we could do in the long term, because as important as the short-term aid is, it was not enough," Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said at a news conference in Berlin.

Mr. Schröder said private donations were running close to $200 million, boosted by a $10 million pledge by the Formula One champion, Michael Schumacher. At this pace of giving, the largess could equal the $460 million Germans gave after the ruinous floods of 2002 in eastern Germany.

"The Germans have always been great donors in cases of emergencies," said Michael Naumann, a former culture minister, who is now the editor of the daily paper Die Zeit. "That may go back to earlier experiences, but it also shows that Germany is a pretty rich country."

Indeed, the calamity underscored the thousands of Germans who spend their money on tropical holidays in South Asia, especially during winter. One of the largest German tour operators, Tui, said it booked trips last year for 80,000 people to Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the Maldives alone.

Tui has suspended its tours to the region for January. But it hopes to resume business next month to Sri Lanka and Phuket, a resort island in southern Thailand. A spokesman for Tui, Mario Köpers, noted that northern Sri Lanka had not been damaged by the tsunami. In Thailand, Bangkok and the beach resort of Pattaya were also unscathed.

By sending tourists back quickly, Mr. Köpers said, Germany could help stave off a collapse in these tourism-dependent economies. "We must set an example in supporting these countries," he said.

Germans have also been reminded of a less savory side to the Asian connection - those who go there on sex tours. A German man was cleared by police in Thailand today after being suspected of kidnapping a 12-year-old Swedish boy, who was recovering in a hospital.

For the most part, though, the disaster has brought out the better German virtues: sincerity, competence, and efficiency. Mr. Schröder, who cut short his Christmas vacation to return to Berlin, won widespread support for a plan to offer debt relief to countries hit by the tsunami.

It is Ms. Schultz-Fademrecht, however, who has captured the headlines here, with her harrowing tale of escaping the giant waves, as they engulfed her guest house. She and her two sons, Simon and Nelson, survived the first onslaught by scrambling to the second floor, as waves lapped the stairs.

After the water receded, the family gazed out at the sea in astonishment, noting that an offshore reef had been exposed. Simon, who is 14, recalled a class presentation on tsunamis last fall, which discussed the pattern of ebbing water followed by second and third waves.

He urged his family to flee up a hill topped by a Buddhist temple. Villagers helped them climb over walls and ditches. By the time they were halfway up, a second wave crashed ashore. Ms. Schultz-Fademrecht recalls seeing a red Toyota and pictures of Buddha in the flotsam.

Having survived the waves, the family now faced a three-day ordeal in getting to the capital, Colombo. They were saved by what she describes as repeated acts of kindness by the villagers.

The head of the diving club grabbed the family`s passports from a locker, as the wave was bearing down on him. Another local, who had lost his home, offered them a ride to Colombo in his pickup truck.

"When I got to the airport and was crying about not getting on a plane, I started to think, what happens to the people in the village? They aren`t able to go anywhere," said Ms. Schultz-Fademrecht, 40, who has traveled widely as a costume designer for theater and films.

On landing in Leipzig, she had made a decision to raise money for Unawatuna. First she opened a bank account for the donations - which took several days because individuals are not supposed to function as charities. Then she told her family`s story on a top-rated television talk show, which prompted a flood of e-mail messages and phone calls with pledges.

The traffic has been so heavy that an Internet firm volunteered to design a Web site for her.

"I`m totally overwhelmed," she said. "People were waiting for a reason to give. I`m the person they were waiting for."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Australia pledges $764 million to help Indonesia recover from tsunami; Germany earlier increased its package to $674 million
-
Wednesday, January 5, 2005

(01-05) 06:42 PST JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) --

Australia became the largest donor to the tsunami relief effort Wednesday, committing $764 million in loans and grants to help Indonesia recover from the disaster.

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2 Artikel zu dem Thema Aceh, Sumatra. Nach diesen Artikel versuchen die indonesischen Militärs die Flutkatastrophe auszunutzen, um die Aufständigen zu bekämpfen. Deshalb hatte es auch so lange gedauert bis Hilfe ins Land gelassen wurde.
Ferner soll Exxon, die dort eins der größten Erdgaslager der Welt ausbeuten erst ExxonMobil has hired military units of the Indonesian national army to provide " security" for their gas extraction and liquification project in the region.
Siehe #25169. Das Feld hat bis jetzt 40Mil§ gebracht.
Es wird nicht so einfach sein besonders in Indonesien mit seiner korrupten Machtelite sinnvolle Aufbauarbeit zu leisten.
Es wird dort viel Geld in falschen Kanälen versickern.

Nun die beiden Artikel aus Asia Times. Da wird nichts von den Erdgasvorkommen berichtet.

Jan 5, 2005


Military offensive hinders aid to Aceh
By Sonny Inbaraj

BANGKOK - While volunteers, relief workers and families are busy collecting and searching for bodies in Indonesia`s tsunami-stricken Aceh province, Indonesian soldiers are continuing their offensive against separatist rebels, hindering the delivery of badly needed humanitarian aid, critics say.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GA05Ae01.html

Jan 4, 2005
Aceh feels the fallout
By Bill Guerin

JAKARTA - In the wake of the tsunami tragedy that has claimed more than 80,000 Indonesian lives, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has called on his people to approach the New Year with optimism. The latest death toll in the country`s poorest region - the resource-rich but war-ravaged province of Aceh on the northwestern tip of Sumatra Island - has been estimated at 82,000, mostly in Banda Aceh, Sabang and the west coast regencies of Aceh Jaya and Aceh Besar.
http://atimes01.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GA04Ae01.ht…

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SPEAKING FREELY
Iranian past holds lessons for Iraq`s future
By Fariborz S Fatemi


The controversy raging over Iran and the pending election in Iraq will be better understood if these events are seen through the historical prism of what happened in Iran some 50 years ago. That was a time when state and religion had great coherence in Iran and when, sadly, the United States helped the British overthrow a freely elected constitutional government. The implications of that heinous act have echoed across half a century of Middle East history and present real lessons for the US role in Iraq, in its relations with Iran and the future of democratic rule in the region.

This can be best illustrated through the life and times of a national hero of Iran, Dr Hussein Fatemi. He was the leader of a generation of pious Muslims who brought coherence, constitutional government, free elections and the rule of law back to the people of Iran. He was a founder of the National Front Party that brought Dr Mohammed Mossadegh to power in 1951, and he was the inspiration for nationalizing Iran`s oil so that its revenues could be used to benefit the people of Iran.

Not since the short-lived constitutional revolution of the early 1900s had the people of Iran been so in control of their own destiny as when Dr Fatemi lived. The freely elected constitutional government he was part of, led by Mossadegh, governed in harmony with nationalism and democratic values enshrined in the Holy Koran.

For believers, the Holy Koran is a blueprint for conducting one`s life. For governing, it points out, govern with the consent of the governed. These values are as old as Islam itself, and that is how Mossadegh governed. That government was overthrown by a coup and was replaced by the hated regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which ended with the Islamic Revolution of 1979. November 10 marked 50 years since Dr Fatemi was murdered by the Pahlavi regime. Yet today he is alive, as part of every Iranian striving for a better life.

As with Iran some 50 years ago, the depressing truth is that everything this US administration has done in Iraq has turned out to be either wrong or woefully mismanaged. Because of this, more than 1,200 brave American servicemen have died and countless others have been grievously wounded.

As the teeth-gnashing goes on about holding free elections in Iraq, as imperfect as that may be, it would serve US policymakers well to recollect that government of Iran some 50 years ago. The issues for the people of Iraq have always been sovereignty, legitimacy, occupation and promises unfulfilled. Remembering US actions in Iran, Iraqis desperately need to believe that the United States does not have any long-term designs on their country.

The interim governments fashioned by the United States lack credibility and legitimacy, and Americans are seen as occupiers. No government can claim legitimacy unless it is freely elected. That is why it is important to stick with the January date for the election. Delay only means more death and destruction.

The Iraqi people ask: "Where are the jobs, the promised electricity, water, sewers and reconstruction?" More of the same policies only mean that those who want to kill Americans will continue to do so with impunity. And the United States in turn will destroy Iraq in order to save it.

When the election takes place and majority rule, which may have religious ties, is established, it would be well to remember the Iranian model. That model was a powerful, irrefutable case, proving that democracy in harmony with Islam can work.

The United States must allow the Iraqis to develop that model to govern themselves. Only such a government will be seen as credible and legitimate by the Iraqi people, and only such a government will be able to end the insurgency and occupation. All along, this is what Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has always advocated.

Clearly, when the US administration talks about transforming the Middle East by bringing democracy to the area, people remember Iran. And as long as no lessons are learned from the consequences of destroying a freely elected constitutional government and how that has affected generations of Iranians, any US initiative for the area will lack credibility, legitimacy and will remain what it is, just talk.

So deep is the animosity about that overthrow of some 50 years ago, that there is hardly a large gathering in Iran today where you do not see the portraits of Dr Mossadegh and Dr Fatemi held aloft by people who are at least a generation removed since they lived. They are reminding the world of an era that was filled with so much promise.

In the past 25 years, hundreds of books and articles have been written and numerous Internet sites have been established about these heroes of Iran. Their names adorn buildings and highways all over that country.

In the years before his death at the age of 32, Dr Fatemi was Iran`s youngest prime minister, foreign minister and member of parliament. During this time, he was awarded the highest civilian medal declaring him "a patriotic son of Iran". But his proudest achievement was as editor and publisher of the daily newspaper Baktar Emrouz, which was the voice and conscience of a generation. By his pen and his speech, he could move people to action and challenge the many domestic and foreign intrigues that had become daily occurrences.

If that freely elected constitutional government, in harmony with Islam, had been allowed to flourish, surely the Middle East would not have been dominated by armed societies masquerading as democracies and client states governed by authoritarian dictators.

Democracy is that form of government which a free people elect freely, as Iran did some 50 years ago. When policymakers in the United States are willing to accept that as the gold standard, and promote it by their deeds, only then will their initiatives in Iraq and the region gain credibility and legitimacy.

Fariborz S Fatemi is a former professional staff member with the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

(Copyright 2004 Fariborz S Fatemi.)

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

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January 6, 2005
Newly Released Reports Show Early Concern on Prison Abuse
By KATE ZERNIKE

In late 2002, more than a year before a whistle-blower slipped military investigators the graphic photographs that would set off the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, an F.B.I. agent at the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, sent a colleague an e-mail message complaining about the military`s "coercive tactics" with detainees, documents released yesterday show.

"You won`t believe it!" the agent wrote.

Two years later, the frustration among F.B.I. agents had grown. Another agent sent a colleague an e-mail message saying he had seen reports that a general from Guantánamo had gone to Abu Ghraib to "Gitmo-ize" it. "If this refers to intell gathering as I suspect," he wrote, according to the documents, "it suggests he has continued to support interrogation strategies we not only advised against, but questioned in terms of effectiveness."

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last spring, officials characterized the abuse as the aberrant acts of a small group of low-ranking reservists, limited to a few weeks in late 2003. But thousands of pages in military reports and documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to the American Civil Liberties Union in the past few months have demonstrated that the abuse involved multiple service branches in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba, beginning in 2002 and continuing after Congress and the military had begun investigating Abu Ghraib.

Yesterday, in response to some of the documents, the Pentagon said it would investigate F.B.I. reports that military interrogators in Guantánamo abused prisoners by beating them, grabbing their genitals and chaining them to the cold ground.

Questions on the handling of detainees will be central to Senate hearings today on the nomination of the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, as attorney general and to the court-martial of the accused leader of the Abu Ghraib abuse, which begins Friday in Texas.

An article in today`s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine says that military medical personnel violated the Geneva Conventions by helping design coercive interrogation techniques based on detainee medical information. Some doctors told the journal that the military had instructed them not to discuss the deaths that occurred in detention.

No one predicted the acts that showed up in snapshots from Abu Ghraib - naked detainees piled in a pyramid or leashed and crawling - but the documents showed many warnings of mistreatment, most explicitly from the F.B.I.

"Basically, it appears that the lawyer worked hard to write a legal justification for the type of interviews they (the Army) want to conduct here," one agent said in an e-mail message from Guantánamo in December 2002.

The Pentagon now says 137 military members have been disciplined or face courts-martial for abusing detainees. A separate federal investigation in Virginia is looking into possible abuses by civilians hired as interrogators. Several military investigations are still pending, including ones into the deaths of about a dozen detainees.

The charges against the 137 service members, officials say, reflect a zero-tolerance attitude toward abuse - and a small percentage of the 167,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Our policy is clear," said Lt. Col. John A. Skinner, a Pentagon spokesman. "It has always been the humane treatment of detainees."

Civil liberties groups complain that no high-level officers have been held accountable for abuse.

"When you see the same thing happening in three different places, you see abuses being committed with impunity, then it ceases to be the sole responsibility of the individual soldiers," Reed Brody, special counsel to Human Rights Watch, said. "At a certain point, it becomes so widespread that it makes it look like a policy."

Colonel Skinner said that while Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said he believes the abuse was limited, "the secretary has also been clear that we`re going to have multiple lines of inquiry to really fully understand what took place, and to have the appropriate investigations to find out any wrongdoing that`s occurred." Three of eight military reports on the abuse, he said, have yet to be concluded.

An Army officer, Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow, will lead the new investigation at Guantánamo.

Officials have defended some cases of harsh treatment by saying it was simply the cost of the so-called global war on terror. The Special Operations task force was assigned to track down terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. But many of the detainees were not terrorists. In Iraq, 70 percent to 90 percent of those detained, according to military intelligence estimates reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross, "had been arrested by mistake." A military report on Iraqi prisons said that many detainees were held for several months for things like expressing "displeasure or ill will" toward the American occupying forces.

The Bush administration decided in February 2002 that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to members of Al Qaeda and that while they did apply to the Taliban, prisoners taken in Afghanistan were not entitled to the protections of the conventions. Many detainees were taken to Guantánamo, held indefinitely and interrogated with harsh techniques approved for by Mr. Rumsfeld in April 2003. The administration said detainees in Iraq were covered by the conventions, which should have protected them from threats or harassment in interrogations, or from physical or mental torture.

But a military report by a former defense secretary, James R. Schlesinger, which was released in August, concluded that harsh tactics intended for use only at Guantánamo - threatening detainees with dogs, leaving them naked in extreme heat or cold, shackling them upright to keep them awake - "migrated" improperly to Afghanistan and then to Iraq.

"The AC had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees," one F.B.I. agent reported from Guantánamo in August. "The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

The earliest abuses on record in Iraq apparently came in May 2003. On May 15, two marines in Karbala held a 9-millimeter pistol to the head of a bound detainee while a third took a picture. One marine, according to military records, then poured a glass of water on the detainee`s head. In June 2003, according to records, a marine ordered four Iraqi children who had been detained for looting to stand next to a shallow ditch, then fired a pistol in a mock execution.

In August, a marine put a match to a puddle of hand sanitizer that had spilled in front of an Iraqi detainee, igniting a flame that severely burned the detainee`s hands.

In April of 2004, marines shocked detainees with wires from an electric transformer - "the detainee `danced` as he was shocked," an investigative report said. And in June, Defense Intelligence agents reported members of a military Special Operations task force repeatedly punching a detainee in the face. The agents also reported finding prisoners with burn marks on their backs and complaining of kidney pain.

C.I.A. agents reported concerns that the Special Operations task force had abused detainees a year before the Defense Intelligence agents had, leading the C.I.A. to order its agents not to participate in task force interrogations. A military investigation found no evidence of abuse. The F.B.I. also warned its agents at Guantánamo and in Iraq not to participate in military interrogations that used tactics like harsh light, excessively loud music and extreme temperatures, which were not accepted F.B.I. practices.

The Red Cross reported concerns about mistreatment in all three places and raised concerns about medical personnel at Guantánamo sharing health information with military units that planned interrogations. The New England Journal report went further, saying the doctors helped design interrogation strategies using private medical records.

The Pentagon denied that any doctors had taken part in any mistreatment of prisoners but said yesterday that it was reviewing its medical policies regarding detainees.

The F.B.I. complaints began in December 2002, according to the documents. A year later, an agent complained that "these tactics have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature to date."

But agents struggled with what they could complain about, believing that, in some cases, tactics they considered harsh or abusive had high-level approval.

"This technique and all of those used in the scenarios was approved by the dep sec def," or deputy secretary of defense, one agent wrote from Guantánamo in January 2004.

An agent in Iraq reported seeing military interrogators yelling at detainees, covering them with hoods and subjecting them to loud music. That went beyond acceptable F.B.I. practice, the agent wrote, but had been "authorized by the president under his executive order." An e-mail message from the agent made several references to President Bush`s signing of an order allowing such techniques.

"We know what`s permissible for F.B.I. agents but are less sure what is permissible for military interrogators," the agent wrote.

After Abu Ghraib, when the F.B.I. asked agents to report any abuse they had seen, agents reported 26 incidents they believed to be mistreatment. But the bureau`s general counsel said 17 of those were allowed under Pentagon policy.

The Pentagon and the White House say that no executive order existed.

But earlier memorandums from the White House and the Pentagon on interrogation techniques could have created confusion.

The A.C.L.U. argues that whether or not an executive order existed, the fact that an F.B.I. agent believed so demonstrates the uncertainty over what was permissible.

"It`s this climate of confusion and the creation of a legal framework that allowed detainee rights to be violated that has to be parked on the doorstep of leading government officials," said Anthony Romero, the executive director of the A.C.L.U.

Most of the 137 people who have been charged or disciplined, were members of the Army. Of those, 46 resulted in nonjudicial or administrative punishments, which generally mean fines or reductions in rank.

Fourteen marines have been convicted by courts-martial, including one who shocked a detainee with electrical wires. That marine was sentenced to one year`s confinement. The marine who conducted the mock execution received a reduction in rank, 30 days` hard labor and 6 months` forfeiture of pay.

One Special Operations member, the Pentagon said, admitted using a stun gun on detainees.

The Pentagon said the punishments reflected different levels of involvement, but the A.C.L.U. and human rights groups said that many serious cases were not given appropriate punishments. After an Army specialist shot a detainee in Tikrit in September 2003, an investigation found probable cause to charge him with murder, records showed. Instead, the specialist was demoted to private and discharged.

Another report on Abu Ghraib cited 34 military intelligence soldiers, including the top two officers at the prison. But only one solider has been punished, and the two officers have not been charged. A military investigation implicated 28 soldiers in the deaths of two men at the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan; but only one has been charged.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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January 6, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
We Are All Torturers Now
By MARK DANNER

AT least since Watergate, Americans have come to take for granted a certain story line of scandal, in which revelation is followed by investigation, adjudication and expiation. Together, Congress and the courts investigate high-level wrongdoing and place it in a carefully constructed narrative, in which crimes are charted, malfeasance is explicated and punishment is apportioned as the final step in the journey back to order, justice and propriety.

When Alberto Gonzales takes his seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee today for hearings to confirm whether he will become attorney general of the United States, Americans will bid farewell to that comforting story line. The senators are likely to give full legitimacy to a path that the Bush administration set the country on more than three years ago, a path that has transformed the United States from a country that condemned torture and forbade its use to one that practices torture routinely. Through a process of redefinition largely overseen by Mr. Gonzales himself, a practice that was once a clear and abhorrent violation of the law has become in effect the law of the land.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Americans began torturing prisoners, and they have never really stopped. However much these words have about them the ring of accusation, they must by now be accepted as fact. From Red Cross reports, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba`s inquiry, James R. Schlesinger`s Pentagon-sanctioned commission and other government and independent investigations, we have in our possession hundreds of accounts of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment - to use a phrase of the Red Cross - "tantamount to torture."

So far as we know, American intelligence officers, determined after Sept. 11 to "take the gloves off," began by torturing Qaeda prisoners. They used a number of techniques: "water-boarding," in which a prisoner is stripped, shackled and submerged in water until he begins to lose consciousness, and other forms of near suffocation; sleep and sensory deprivation; heat and light and dietary manipulation; and "stress positions."

Eventually, these practices "migrated," in the words of the Schlesinger report, to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where for a time last spring the marvel of digital technology allowed Americans to see what their soldiers were doing to prisoners in their name.

Though the revelations of Abu Ghraib transfixed Americans for a time, in the matter of torture not much changed. After those in Congress had offered condemnations and a few hearings distinguished by their lack of seriousness; after the administration had commenced the requisite half-dozen investigations, none of them empowered to touch those who devised the policies; and after the low-level soldiers were placed firmly on the road to punishment - after all this, the issue of torture slipped back beneath the surface. Every few weeks now, a word or two reaches us from that dark, subterranean place. Take, for example, this account, offered by an unnamed F.B.I. counterterrorism official reporting in August, more than three months after the Abu Ghraib images appeared, on what he saw during a visit to Guantánamo:

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more...When I asked the M.P.`s what was going on, I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occasion...the detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

This is a fairly mild example when judged against the accounts of the "abuses" that have entered the public record. I put quotation marks around the word "abuses" because most of these acts - as the F.B.I. agent acknowledged ("the interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment") - were in fact procedures, which would not have been possible without policies that had been approved by administration officials.

In the next few days we are likely to hear how Mr. Gonzales recommended strongly, against the arguments of the secretary of state and military lawyers, that prisoners in Afghanistan be denied the protection of the Geneva Conventions. We are also likely to hear how, under Mr. Gonzales`s urging, lawyers in the Department of Justice contrived - when confronted with the obstacle that the United States had undertaken, by treaty and statute, to make torture illegal - simply to redefine the word to mean procedures that would produce pain "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure." By this act of verbal legerdemain, interrogation techniques like water-boarding that plainly constituted torture suddenly became something less than that.

But what we are unlikely to hear, given the balance of votes in the Senate, are many voices making the obvious argument that with this record, Mr. Gonzales is unfit to serve as attorney general. So let me make it: Mr. Gonzales is unfit because the slow river of litigation is certain to bring before the next attorney general a raft of torture cases that challenge the very policies that he personally helped devise and put into practice. He is unfit because, while the attorney general is charged with upholding the law, the documents show that as White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales, in the matter of torture, helped his client to concoct strategies to circumvent it. And he is unfit, finally, because he has rightly become the symbol of the United States` fateful departure from a body of settled international law and human rights practice for which the country claims to stand.

On the other hand, perhaps it is fitting that Mr. Gonzales be confirmed. The system of torture has, after all, survived its disclosure. We have entered a new era; the traditional story line in which scandal leads to investigation and investigation leads to punishment has been supplanted by something else. Wrongdoing is still exposed; we gaze at the photographs and read the documents, and then we listen to the president`s spokesman "reiterate," as he did last week, "the president`s determination that the United States never engage in torture." And there the story ends.

At present, our government, controlled largely by one party only intermittently harried by a timorous opposition, is unable to mete out punishment or change policy, let alone adequately investigate its own war crimes. And, as administration officials clearly expect, and senators of both parties well understand, most Americans - the Americans who will not read the reports, who will soon forget the photographs and who will be loath to dwell on a repellent subject - are generally content to take the president at his word.

But reality has a way of asserting itself. In the end, as Gen. Joseph P. Hoar pointed out this week, the administration`s decision on the Geneva Conventions "puts all American servicemen and women at risk that are serving in combat regions." For General Hoar - a retired commander of American forces in the Middle East and one of a dozen prominent retired generals and admirals to oppose Mr. Gonzales - torture has a way of undermining the forces using it, as it did with the French Army in Algeria.

The general`s concerns are understandable. The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism are ultimately political in character. Victory depends in the end not on technology or on overwhelming force but on political persuasion. By using torture, the country relinquishes the very ideological advantage - the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights - that the president has so persistently claimed is America`s most powerful weapon in defeating Islamic extremism. One does not reach democracy, or freedom, through torture.

By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us. True, that miserable man who pulled out his hair as he lay on the floor at Guantánamo may eventually tell his interrogators what he knows, or what they want to hear. But for America, torture is self-defeating; for a strong country it is in the end a strategy of weakness. After Mr. Gonzales is confirmed, the road back - to justice, order and propriety - will be very long. Torture will belong to us all.

Mark Danner is the author of "Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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They are all what others have called "tribes with flags" ...
We cannot liberate Iraq, and never could. Only Iraqis can liberate themselves....
You go to elections with the country you`ve got, not the one you wish you had - because that is the only way to find out whether the one you wish for is ever possible.

January 6, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Country We`ve Got
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Each day we get closer to the Iraqi elections, more voices are suggesting that they be postponed. This is a tough call, but I hope the elections go ahead as scheduled on Jan. 30. We have to have a proper election in Iraq so we can have a proper civil war there.

Let me explain: None of these Arab countries - Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia - are based on voluntary social contracts between the citizens inside their borders. They are all what others have called "tribes with flags" - not real countries in the Western sense. They are all civil wars either waiting to happen or being restrained from happening by the iron fist of one tribe over the others or, in the case of Syria in Lebanon, by one country over another.

What the Bush team has done in Iraq, by ousting Saddam, was not to "liberate" the country - an image and language imported from the West and inappropriate for Iraq - but rather to unleash the latent civil war in that country. Think of shaking a bottle of Champagne and then uncorking it.

This is not to say that the "liberation" of Iraq`s people is impossible. But unlike in Eastern Europe - where a democratic majority was already present and crying to get out, and all we needed to do was remove the wall - in Iraq we first need to create that democratic majority.

That is what these elections are about and why they are so crucial. We don`t want the kind of civil war that we have in Iraq now. That is a war of Sunni and Islamist militants against the U.S. and its Iraqi allies, many of whom do not seem comfortable fighting with, and seemingly for, the U.S. America cannot win that war. That is a civil war in which the murderous insurgents appear to be on the side of ending the U.S. "occupation of Iraq" and the U.S. and its allies appear to be about sustaining that occupation.

The civil war we want is a democratically elected Iraqi government against the Baathist and Islamist militants. It needs to be clear that these so-called insurgents are not fighting to liberate Iraq from America, but rather to reassert the tyranny of a Sunni-Baathist minority over the majority there. The insurgents are clearly desperate that they not be cast as fighting a democratically elected Iraqi government - which is why they are desperately trying to scuttle the elections. After all, if all they wanted was their fair share of the pie, and nothing more, they would be taking part in the elections.

We cannot liberate Iraq, and never could. Only Iraqis can liberate themselves, by first forging a social contract for sharing power and then having the will to go out and defend that compact against the minorities who will try to resist it. Elections are necessary for that process to unfold, but not sufficient. There has to be the will - among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - to forge that equitable social contract and then fight for it.

In short, we need these elections in Iraq to see if there really is a self-governing community there ready, and willing, to liberate itself - both from Iraq`s old regime and from us. The answer to this question is not self-evident. This was always a shot in the dark - but one that I would argue was morally and strategically worth trying.

Because if it is impossible for the peoples of even one Arab state to voluntarily organize themselves around a social contract for democratic life, then we are looking at dictators and kings ruling this region as far as the eye can see. And that will guarantee that this region will be a cauldron of oil-financed pathologies and terrorism for the rest of our lives.

What is inexcusable is thinking that such an experiment would be easy, that it could be done on the cheap, that it could be done with any old army and any old coalition and any old fiscal policy and any old energy policy. That is the foolishness of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. My foolishness was thinking they could never be so foolish.

Still, the game is not over. We know that the Iraqi people do not want to be ruled by us. But what we don`t know is how they want to rule themselves. What kind of majority are the Iraqi Shiites ready to be - a tolerant and inclusive one, or an intolerant and exclusive one? What kind of minority do the Iraqi Sunnis intend to be - rebellious and separatist, or loyal and sharing?

Elections are the only way to find out. Or, as Rumsfeld might say: You go to elections with the country you`ve got, not the one you wish you had - because that is the only way to find out whether the one you wish for is ever possible.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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January 6, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Don`t Torture Yourself (That`s His Job)
By MAUREEN DOWD

Washington

The Associated Press headline that came over the wire yesterday said it all: "Gonzales Will Follow Non-Torture Policies."

You know how bad the situation is when the president`s choice for attorney general has to formally pledge not to support torture anymore.

Alberto Gonzales may have been willing to legally justify something that was abhorrent to everything America stands for, but it`s all relative. Given that Mr. Gonzales is replacing the odious John Ashcroft, Democrats didn`t seem inclined to try to derail the Hispanic nominee, even though his memo fostered the atmosphere that led to disgusting scandals in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

Just to get things started on the right foot, though, Mr. Gonzales planned to go the extra mile and offer the quaint, obsolete Senate Democrats a more nuanced explanation of why he called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete."

Before he helped President Bush circumvent the accords and reserve the right to do so "in this or future conflicts," you had to tune in to an old movie with Nazi generals or Vietcong guards if you wanted to see someone sneeringly shrug off the international treaty protecting prisoners from abuse. ("You worthless running dog Chuck Norris! What do we care about your silly Geneva Conventions?")

How are you to believe Mr. Gonzales when he says he`s through with torture? His mission is clearly to do whatever he thinks Mr. Bush wants.

All gall is divided into parts, so what`s next?

The Commerce Department nominee promising that giveaways to big business will be done with subtlety?

The Environmental Protection Agency nominee promising that the toxin content in water will never rise to Yushchenko level?

It`s comforting to start the new year in the hands of a party that cares so much about morals and values.

Tom DeLay and oily House Republicans inaugurated their new term by gutting ethics rules just in case any of them get caught in whatever misconduct they are plotting.

Rummy continued on his oblivious, dissembling path, refusing to admit that he`s tapped out the Army and broken the Army Reserve with what Lt. Gen. James Helmly, the frustrated chief of the Army Reserve, calls "dysfunctional" policies. We`ve gotten so numb on Iraq that when eight American soldiers and over 80 Iraqi police officers get killed, when the governor of Baghdad gets assassinated, and when our puppets plead with Mr. Bush to delay the elections, it all seems like just another week of pre-election maneuvering.

In The Los Angeles Times, we learn that Bush fave Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas "has accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts since joining the high court, including $1,200 worth of tires, valuable historical items and a $5,000 personal check to help pay a relative`s education expenses."

A guy we pay nearly $200,000 a year can`t pop for his own tires? Whatever happened to the dignity of the robe? At least we know where our possible future chief justice stands: on the side of personal corruption.

"He also took a free trip aboard a private jet to the exclusive Bohemian Grove club in Northern California - arranged by a wealthy Texas real estate investor who helped run an advocacy group that filed briefs with the Supreme Court," the paper said.

The L.A. Times reviewed the disclosures of all nine justices for the years 1998 through 2003 and found that "Thomas accepted $42,200 in gifts, making him the top recipient. Next in that period was Justice Sandra Day O`Connor, who accepted $5,825 in gifts, mostly small crystal figurines and other items."

Clarence Thomas follows Antonin Scalia`s lead on the law. Why not also on ethics? Justice Scalia defended taking his relatives on a ride on Air Force Two to Louisiana with Dick Cheney to go duck hunting, even though the v.p. had an important case before the court, by saying that it would have been a "considerable inconvenience" to fly commercial.

Going through a blistering confirmation hearing where his inappropriate behavior was questioned didn`t teach Clarence Thomas much. Can we hope for anything better from Mr. Gonzales after he`s waved through to be the man in charge of enforcing our laws?

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Conspicuous Compassion

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, January 6, 2005; Page A19

The thing you have to love about George W. Bush is that his deepest feelings seem evident on his face. It was, in fact, his face -- joyless, lacking almost all expression -- that told you precisely what he thought about the current effort by the United States to win friends in the Muslim world by raining money on tsunami-afflicted nations: not much. As almost everyone knows, and as the Beatles once sang, money can`t buy me love.

In fact, given the way the United States has gone about the business of charity, it could just buy some seething anger. From the president on down, it has become the stated purpose of the aid not only to help the victims of the tsunami but to establish our credentials as a supremely good guy. "We`re showing the compassion of our nation in the swift response," Bush said at the White House the other day.

Colin Powell, dispatched to what the State Department calls "the region," made a similar point about American aid and the Muslim world: "I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action."

It`s hard to quibble with any of these sentiments, or with the assertion that America is a good and charitable nation. It is also hard to quibble with the assertion that the Bush administration was trying desperately to play catch-up. Its initial response to the tsunami had been woefully slow and low-keyed, and the president had not roused himself from brush-cutting and other vacation pursuits to represent us all and to say, merely and in awe, that something terrible had happened and we were sorry. For too long, the United States had a chief executive but hardly a head of state.

That opportune moment is gone and will not reoccur. Nor will our money -- a generous $350 million in government funds -- suddenly make us the darlings of the Muslim world. As the late Susan Sontag bravely pointed out in a New Yorker essay published right after Sept. 11, 2001, those terrorist attacks were in response to American policy in the Middle East -- not, as Bush has said repeatedly since, because Islamic radicals cannot abide freedom. No amount of money is going to change the fact that Jerusalem remains in Israeli hands and the House of Saud rules Saudi Arabia -- and the United States, understandably, likes it that way.

That is the truth, and we must not be disappointed when our aid, both public and individual, buys us little -- as, in fact, it should. Long ago, the great Jewish sage Maimonides promulgated his Eight Degrees of Charity. "The highest degree," he wrote in the year 1180, is a gift or loan that makes the needy person self-sufficient. But only "a step below" is charity given "in such manner that the giver knows not to whom he gives and the recipient knows not from whom it is that he takes" -- in other words, charity "for its own sake."

For many of us, this is an impossible standard. We want -- we often seek -- recognition (yellow bracelets), and we expect gratitude. This may explain why so much of the money recently donated to international aid organizations has been earmarked for tsunami relief. We see the victims on television. They are the ones we want to help, not the faceless victims of ordinary poverty, disease and modest disasters. If we can`t see it, we don`t give. I am not pointing fingers. I fully understand. My donation to the Red Cross was earmarked for tsunami relief.

But as I think Maimonides understood, the reciprocal of gratitude is resentment. This is especially the case when the charitable act is more about the donor -- oh, how good we are -- than it is about the recipient. In the end, it will not be gratitude we get but just more resentment. The rich -- rich people, rich nations -- are not beloved for their charity. On the contrary, they are resented for their wealth.

Bush`s face the other day suggested a certain appropriate disquietude. Maybe a residual New England rectitude caused him to recoil from a bidding war for the hearts of the desperate, or maybe he realizes he is still behind the curve. Whatever the case, he is right about our being a good and giving nation. But we ought not to expect too much for our money -- except for the alleviation of misery. That, though, is not our gift. It is an obligation.

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The neocons have a hand in Aceh, too

US support for Indonesia`s army is compromising its relief effort
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday January 6, 2005

Guardian
Two days after the tsunami struck, President Bush, who had made no public statement, was vacationing at his ranch in Texas, and a junior spokesman was trotted out. The offer of US aid was $15m - $2m less than the star pitcher of the Boston Red Sox was paid that year.

On December 27, UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland had criticised wealthy nations for "stinginess". The next day Bill Clinton described the tsunami as a "horror movie", and explained that international leadership was required for a sustained effort once the "emotional tug" waned.

Now the White House spokesman reassured the country that Bush was "clearing some brush this morning; I think he has some friends coming in ... that he enjoys hosting; he`s doing some biking and exercising ... taking walks with the first lady..." The spokesman said US aid would be increased to $35m, and added a jibe at Clinton: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn`t want to make a symbolic statement about `we feel your pain`. "

For Bush, the war on terrorism is the alpha and omega of foreign policy, and it did not occur to him or to his national security team that the tsunami disaster, devastating Muslim regions, provided an opportunity for the US to demonstrate humanitarian motives. In this crisis, his advisers acted in character: Vice-president Cheney was duck-hunting on the plantation of a Republican donor; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, suggested nothing to disturb her boss; and Colin Powell, the secretary of state, defended Bush as "not stingy".

Eight days after the tsunami, Bush appeared in the White House flanked by his father and Clinton, who, he announced, would lead a private aid effort, and moreover that US aid would be increased tenfold to $350m. Attacking Clinton hadn`t worked; so Bush recruited him to deflect criticism.

The coastline of south Asia has been radically altered, but the political landscape in Washington remains familiar. Behind the stentorian rhetoric about the battle between good and evil lies the neoconservative struggle to remove human rights sanctions against the Indonesian military, which is waging a vicious war against the popular separatist movement on Banda Aceh, the province hardest hit by the tsunami.

The war between the Indonesian military and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has raged for more than two decades. A ceasefire negotiated in 2002, with the involvement of former general Anthony Zinni as US representative, was brutally broken by the military in May 2003. The Indonesian military is a virtual state within a state and is unaccountable for its human rights violations and criminal activities. After its war of ethnic cleansing against East Timor concluded with independence following diplomatic intervention, the military was determined not to lose Banda Aceh.

In its war there, the military has mimicked the language of the war on terrorism and the Iraq war, calling its operation "shock and awe", targeting the population as terrorist supporters, and expelling all international observers, including the UN, from the region. Human Rights Watch documented extensive torture and abuse.

Bush administration policy has been conflicted, confused and negligent. The leading neoconservative at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence, has tried to overthrow US restrictions on aid to, and relations with, the Indonesian military. The neoconservative thrust is undeterred by the military`s obstruction of the FBI investigation into the murder of two US businessmen in 2002, killings that appear to implicate the military. When the state department issued a human rights report on Indonesia`s abysmal record, its spokesman replied: "The US government does not have the moral authority to assess or act as a judge of other countries, including Indonesia, on human rights, especially after the abuse scandal at Iraq`s Abu Ghraib prison."

On his tour of Banda Aceh, Powell made no determined effort to restore the cease-fire. Meanwhile, GAM reports that the Indonesia military is using the catastrophe to launch a new offensive. "The Indonesians get the message when you have no high-level condemnation of what they`re doing," Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch told me. A renewed effort by Wolfowitz against sanctions is expected soon.

In the name of the war on terrorism, neoconservatives attempt to bolster the repressive military, which flings the Bush administration`s sins back in its face. In the "march of freedom", human rights are cast aside. The absence of moral clarity is matched by the absence of strategic clarity.

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of salon.com

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Thursday, January 06, 2005

Mysterious US strike in Irbil Condemned by Kurds

The US military appears to have become convinced that Ansar al-Sunnah, a breakaway group from the largely Kurdish terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, has been operating from dormitories at the Salahuddin University in the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil. US special forces accompanied by Kurdish fighters and helicopter gunships struck at the dormitory on Wednesday evening. There are rumors that the US captured a senior Ansar al-Islam leader. Seven persons were injured in the attack, and a number were captured.

The odd thing is that Irbil is under the control of Masoud Barzani`s Kurdistan Democratic Party, a close ally of the United States. If the US wanted something done in Irbil, why wouldn`t it just ask Barzani`s peshmerga or paramilitary to do it? Had Ansar al-Islam terrified or bribed local Irbil officials into ignoring the AI cell in the city?

Some reports say the US was accompanied by Kurdish commandoes. But they weren`t local peshmerga from Irbil.

Kurdistan Interior Minister Kerim Sinjari condemned the operation. Al-Zaman says he complained that several innocent civilians were killed by US forces in the course of it, including one woman. He said that such actions could jeopardize Kurdistan-US relations.

US news outlets continually blame Saddam for Ansar al-Islam, consisting of a few hundred Kurdish guerrillas, some of whom had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. In fact, however, they operated from the de facto no-fly zone that was under US control, not that of Saddam.

South Korea`s troops are stationed in the north, which may have contributed to the urgency of the US operation.

In my view, the threat of a serious conflict between the Kurdish paramilitary and the US is imminent. Once a new government is elected, if it can be, it may take decisions that the Kurds don`t like. The US will then have a choice of supporting the Kurds or the government it itself had formed.

posted by Juan @ 1/6/2005 02:17:24 AM
Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Murphy: Sunnis not Registered

Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor reports from Baghdad that many Sunni Arab families in Iraq are not registered to vote. In part, this situation derives from the poor security situation in their areas, and in part from the death threats received by the individuals who would ordinarily carry out the voter registration.

Hannah Allam of Knight Ridder writes that Najaf expects to become Iraq`s second capital if the Shiite parties come to power in parliament as a result of the January 30 elections. Najafis clearly expect their grand ayatollahs to be influential in setting the political agenda, and they expect Shiite politicians to throw a great deal of patronage their way. That patronage (and gobs of money from oil exports) used to go to Tikrit, Ramadi and Fallujah in stead, during the Sunni Arab-based Saddam regime. It is precisely against this shift in the distribution of national resources that the Sunni Arabs are fighting so hard.

US Iran expert Bill Beeman at Brown University argues that the resurrection of Najaf as a great center of Shiite learning and politics will have a moderating influence on Iran.

But the question of more radical influences coming from Sadr City is still unanswered. Although Muqtada al-Sadr is not running for office, he has quietly approved the inclusion of about 20 of his followers in the mega-Shiite list, the United Iraqi Alliance, put together at the behest of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

Sadr`s organization has quietly been campaigning in East Baghdad by doing things like organizing fuel distribution.

posted by Juan @ 1/5/2005 08:22:14 AM

Car Bomb at Hilla Police Academy Kills at Least 20

Guerrillas detonated a car bomb outside a police academy in Hilla, a city of 500,000, largely Shiite, in the mixed Babil province an hour south of Baghdad. Numbers of wounded were not available but must run to the dozens. The Academy was holding a graduation ceremony Wednesday morning.

The guerrillas have been targeting police, especially newly-trained ones, since they are fairly soft targets, ironically enough. Because a lot of the new recruits to the police are poor Shiite young men, and the guerrillas are largely Sunni Arabs, there is an undertone of sectarian violence to these attacks, which sometimes becomes explicit.

Other violence in Iraq killed people in Amiriyah, Baqubah and Ramad early on Wednesday or late Tuesday.

The Umar Ibn al-Khattab Brigade, a subsidiary of the Islamic Anger Brigade, released a video showing the car bombing of an American convoy on Monday. Umar ibn al-Khattab was the second Caliph or vicar of the Prophet, according to Sunni Muslims, but is disliked by Shiite Muslims, who feel he shunted aside the Prophet`s son-in-law, Ali. Calling the unit the Umar Ibn al-Khattab Brigade is a way of emphasizing its Sunni character, since some Shiite even ritually curse Umar.

posted by Juan @ [url1/5/2005 08:19:23 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/car-bomb-at-hilla-police-academy-kills.html[/url]

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Latest Fatality: Jan 06, 2005

Das Neuste aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Today in Iraq:

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

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Ich habe es noch nie bei der Seite erlebt, dass bis jetzt über 100 Kommentare zu dem Artikel gekommen sind.
Das Thema Wahlbetrug beschäftigt die US-Bürger immer noch sehr stark.

Boxer signs electoral challenge � Democrats to force debate on Ohio results
Posted on Thursday, January 06 @ 09:54:25 EST By Alan Fram, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A small group of Democrats agreed Thursday to force House and Senate debates on Election Day problems in Ohio before letting Congress certify President Bush`s election over Sen. John Kerry in November.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., signed a challenge mounted by House Democrats to Ohio`s 20 electoral votes, which put Bush over the top. By law, a challenge signed by members of the House and Senate requires both chambers to meet separately for up to two hours to consider it. Lawmakers are allowed to speak for no more than five minutes each.

While Bush`s victory is not in jeopardy, the Democratic challenge will force Congress to interrupt tallying the Electoral College vote that was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. It would be only the second time since 1877 that the House and Senate were forced into separate meetings to consider electoral votes.



Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press.

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The other tsunami

While the sea may have killed tens of thousands, western policies kill millions every year. Yet even amid disaster, a new politics of community and morality is emerging.

John Pilger

01/06/05 "New Statesman" -- The west`s crusaders, the United States and Britain, are giving less to help the tsunami victims than the cost of a Stealth bomber or a week`s bloody occupation of Iraq. The bill for George Bush`s coming inauguration party would rebuild much of the coastline of Sri Lanka. Bush and Blair increased their first driblets of "aid" only when it became clear that people all over the world were spontaneously giving millions and that a public relations problem beckoned. The Blair government`s current "generous" contribution is one-sixteenth of the £800m it spent on bombing Iraq before the invasion and barely one-twentieth of a £1bn gift, known as a soft loan, to the Indonesian military so that it could acquire Hawk fighter-bombers.

On 24 November, one month before the tsunami struck, the Blair government gave its backing to an arms fair in Jakarta, "designed to meet an urgent need for the [Indonesian] armed forces to review its defence capabilities", reported the Jakarta Post. The Indonesian military, responsible for genocide in East Timor, has killed more than 20,000 civilians and "insurgents" in Aceh. Among the exhibitors at the arms fair was Rolls-Royce, manufacturer of engines for the Hawks, which, along with British-supplied Scorpion armoured vehicles, machine-guns and ammunition, were terrorising and killing people in Aceh up to the day the tsunami devastated the province.

The Australian government, currently covering itself in glory for its modest response to the historic disaster befallen its Asian neighbours, has secretly trained Indonesia`s Kopassus special forces, whose atrocities in Aceh are well documented. This is in keeping with Australia`s 40-year support for oppression in Indonesia, notably its devotion to the dictator Suharto while his troops slaughtered a third of the population of East Timor. The government of John Howard - notorious for its imprisonment of child asylum-seekers - is at present defying international maritime law by denying East Timor its due of oil and gas royalties worth some $8bn. Without this revenue, East Timor, the world`s poorest country, cannot build schools, hospitals and roads or provide work for its young people, 90 per cent of whom are unemployed.

The hypocrisy, narcissism and dissembling propaganda of the rulers of the world and their sidekicks are in full cry. Superlatives abound as to their humanitarian intent while the division of humanity into worthy and unworthy victims dominates the news. The victims of a great natural disaster are worthy (though for how long is uncertain) while the victims of man-made imperial disasters are unworthy and very often unmentionable. Somehow, reporters cannot bring themselves to report what has been going on in Aceh, supported by "our" government. This one-way moral mirror allows us to ignore a trail of destruction and carnage that is another tsunami.

Consider the plight of Afghanistan, where clean water is unknown and death in childbirth common. At the Labour Party conference in 2001, Tony Blair announced his famous crusade to "reorder the world" with the pledge: "To the Afghan people, we make this commitment . . . We will not walk away . . . we will work with you to make sure [a way is found] out of the miserable poverty that is your present existence." The Blair government was on the verge of taking part in the conquest of Afghanistan, in which as many as 25,000 civilians died. In all the great humanitarian crises in living memory, no country suffered more and none has been helped less. Just 3 per cent of all international aid spent in Afghanistan has been for reconstruction, 84 per cent is for the US-led military "coalition" and the rest is crumbs for emergency aid. What is often presented as reconstruction revenue is private investment, such as the $35m that will finance a proposed five-star hotel, mostly for foreigners. An adviser to the minister of rural affairs in Kabul told me his government had received less than 20 per cent of the aid promised to Afghan-istan. "We don`t even have enough money to pay wages, let alone plan reconstruction," he said.

The reason, unspoken of course, is that Afghans are the unworthiest of victims. When US helicopter gunships repeatedly machine-gunned a remote farming village, killing as many as 93 civilians, a Pentagon official was moved to say, "The people there are dead because we wanted them dead."

I became acutely aware of this other tsunami when I reported from Cambodia in 1979. Following a decade of American bombing and Pol Pot`s barbarities, Cambodia lay as stricken as Aceh is today. Disease beckoned famine and people suffered a collective trauma few could explain. Yet for nine months after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime, no effective aid arrived from western governments. Instead, a western- and Chinese-backed UN embargo was imposed on Cambodia, denying virtually the entire machinery of recovery and assistance. The problem for the Cambodians was that their liberators, the Vietnamese, had come from the wrong side of the cold war, having recently expelled the Americans from their homeland. That made them unworthy victims, and expendable.



A similar, largely unreported siege was forced on Iraq during the 1990s and intensified during the Anglo-American "liberation". Last September, Unicef reported that malnutrition among Iraqi children had doubled under the occupation. Infant mortality is now at the level of Burundi, higher than in Haiti and Uganda. There is crippling poverty and a chronic shortage of medicines. Cases of cancer are rising rapidly, especially breast cancer; radioactive pollution is widespread. More than 700 schools are bomb-damaged. Of the billions said to have been allocated for reconstruction in Iraq, just $29m has been spent, most of it on mercenaries guarding foreigners. Little of this is news in the west.

This other tsunami is worldwide, causing 24,000 deaths every day from poverty and debt and division that are the products of a supercult called neoliberalism. This was acknowledged by the United Nations in 1990 when it called a conference in Paris of the richest states with the aim of implementing a "programme of action" to rescue the world`s poorest nations. A decade later, virtually every commitment made by western governments had been broken, making Gordon Brown`s waffle about the G8 "sharing Britain`s dream" of ending poverty as just that: waffle. Very few western governments have honoured the United Nations "baseline" and allotted a miserable 0.7 per cent or more of their national income to overseas aid. Britain gives just 0.34 per cent, making its "Department for International Development" a black joke. The US gives 0.14 per cent, the lowest of any industrial state.

Largely unseen and unimagined by westerners, millions of people know their lives have been declared expendable. When tariffs and food and fuel subsidies are eliminated under an IMF diktat, small farmers and the landless know they face disaster, which is why suicides among farmers are an epidemic. Only the rich, says the World Trade Organisation, are allowed to protect their home industries and agriculture; only they have the right to subsidise exports of meat, grain and sugar and dump them in poor countries at artificially low prices, thereby destroying livelihoods and lives.

Indonesia, once described by the World Bank as "a model pupil of the global economy", is a case in point. Many of those washed to their deaths in Sumatra on Boxing Day were dispossessed by IMF policies. Indonesia owes an unrepayable debt of $110bn. The World Resources Institute says the toll of this man-made tsunami reaches 13-18 million child deaths worldwide every year; or 12 million children under the age of five, according to a UN Human Development Report. "If 100 million have been killed in the formal wars of the 20th century," wrote the Australian social scientist Michael McKinley, "why are they to be privileged in comprehension over the annual [death] toll of children from structural adjustment programmes since 1982?"

That the system causing this has democracy as its war cry is a mockery which people all over the world increasingly understand. It is this rising awareness, consciousness even, that offers more than hope. Since the crusaders in Washington and London squandered world sympathy for the victims of 11 September 2001 in order to accelerate their campaign of domination, a critical public intelligence has stirred and regards the likes of Blair and Bush as liars and their culpable actions as crimes. The current outpouring of help for the tsunami victims among ordinary people in the west is a spectacular reclaiming of the politics of community, morality and internationalism denied them by governments and corporate propaganda. Listening to tourists returning from stricken countries, consumed with gratitude for the gracious, expansive way some of the poorest of the poor gave them shelter and cared for them, one hears the antithesis of "policies" that care only for the avaricious.

"The most spectacular display of public morality the world has ever seen", was how the writer Arundhati Roy described the anti-war anger that swept across the world almost two years ago. A French study now estimates that 35 million people demonstrated on that February day and says there has never been anything like it; and it was just a beginning.

This is not rhetorical; human renewal is not a phenomenon, rather the continuation of a struggle that may appear at times to have frozen but is a seed beneath the snow. Take Latin America, long declared invisible and expendable in the west. "Latin Americans have been trained in impotence," wrote Eduardo Galeano the other day. "A pedagogy passed down from colonial times, taught by violent soldiers, timorous teachers and frail fatalists, has rooted in our souls the belief that reality is untouchable and that all we can do is swallow in silence the woes each day brings." Galeano was celebrating the rebirth of real democracy in his homeland, Uruguay, where people have voted "against fear", against privatisation and its attendant indecencies. In Venezuela, municipal and state elections in October notched up the ninth democratic victory for the only government in the world sharing its oil wealth with its poorest people. In Chile, the last of the military fascists supported by western governments, notably Thatcher, are being pursued by revitalised democratic forces.

These forces are part of a movement against inequality and poverty and war that has arisen in the past six years and is more diverse, more enterprising, more internationalist and more tolerant of difference than anything in my lifetime. It is a movement unburdened by a western liberalism that believes it represents a superior form of life; the wisest know this is colonialism by another name. The wisest also know that just as the conquest of Iraq is unravelling, so a whole system of domination and impoverishment can unravel, too.

[http://www.johnpilger.com]

http://www.newstatesman.com/Economy/200501100003

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[urlGonzales Vows to Follow Prisoner Treaties]http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4715397,00.html
Guardian, UK, 1-6-05
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales vowed on Thursday to abide by international treaties ... [/url]
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LIVE
1:00 (est.) Joint Session of Congress
Electoral College Ballot Count
U.S. House of Representatives
Richard Cheney, United States
To watch it on the Internet, click here and [urlthen click]http://www.c-span.org/watch/cspan_rm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS[/url] the appropriate delivery method under “WATCH / LISTEN LIVE” in the right-hand column.

Published on Thursday, January 6, 2005 by the Associated Press
Dems To Force Debate on Ohio Results
by Alan Fram

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0106-02.htm

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January 6, 2005
Weeks Before Vote, General Says 4 Iraqi Provinces Are Not Ready
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 6 - With three weeks go to go before nationwide elections, four of the country`s 18 provinces are still not secure enough to allow for voting, the commander of American ground forces in Iraq said today.

Speaking at a news conference here, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz said he planned increased military action against insurgents in the coming days to make those places safe enough for voting. The four provinces were all in the country`s Sunni heartland, which forms the core of the resistance against the American-backed project: Al Anbar, which includes Falluja and Ramadi; Nineva, which contains the restive city of Mosul; Salahadin, which includes Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, and parts of Baghdad.

General Metz said that the 14 other provinces were ready to hold the elections, and he expressed confidence that the Iraqi security forces, which have often performed miserably against the guerrillas, would be largely responsible for security around some 9,000 polling places around the country. The American military plans to stay away from the polling places, lest they antagonize Iraqi voters, and engage in military operations only if they are called in by the Iraqi forces.

The statement by General Metz that there were still significant parts of the country too unstable to hold elections comes after several major offensives against insurgent strongholds in Falluja, Samara and areas south of Baghdad.

"Today I would not be in much shape to hold elections in those provinces three weeks from today," General Metz said. "Those are the four areas that we see enough attacks that we are going to continue to focus our energies."

As part of that plan, American forces this week stepped up military operations in and around Mosul, the Sunni-dominated city in northern Iraq that has been particularly violent in recent weeks. American forces have recently doubled the number of American troops there, adding about 3,000 soldiers, and also dispatched "significant numbers" of Iraqi forces as well.

Despite the difficulties, General Metz gave a mostly upbeat assessment of the security environment here in the final days before the vote, scheduled to take place Jan. 30. General Metz said that attacks against American and Iraqi forces, had declined in recent weeks following the monthlong Ramadan holiday, and that there were signs that the "quality" of the fighters had begun to decline and that the execution of some recent attacks had been poor.

General Metz, a three-star general, said American and Iraqi forces had been attacked an average of about 70 times a day in the past week. He said he expected the number of such attacks to climb to about 85 a day as the vote nears. Insurgents have launched a number of spectacular attacks against Iraqi security forces, killing more than 80 police and soldiers in the past week.

The general said that the recent run of gruesome suicide bombings, which have killed dozens of civilians, was a measure of desperation among the insurgents, who have put forward no political vision beyond expelling the Americans.

"Murder, kidnapping and torture are not the tools of a popular movement," he said.

Yet even with the drop in recent attacks, their frequency still far exceeds the number of attacks faced by American forces in late 2003, when the insurgency began to gather steam. At that time, the number of attacks averaged about 50 a day.

Like other senior American officials, General Metz said he was opposed to postponing the election, saying that a delay would give the insurgents more time to try to wreck the democratic process.

"I think there is a greater chance of civil war with a delay than without one," he said.

General Metz said he favored going forward with the elections even if it meant that significant numbers of Iraqis stayed away from the polls. Many prominent Sunni clerics and political leaders have said they plan on staying away from the polls, some because of the violence, others because they insist that a fair election cannot take place under a foreign military operation.

"Part of democracy is the right to choose," General Metz said. "If people choose to boycott the election, that is their choice."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Noch eine Gute-Nacht-Geschichte.

THE NAKED HEGEMON
Part 1: Why the emperor has no clothes
By Andre Gunder Frank

Uncle Sam has reneged and defaulted on up to 40% of its trillion-dollar foreign debt, and nobody has said a word except for a line in The Economist. In plain English that means Uncle Sam runs a worldwide confidence racket with his self-made dollar based on the confidence that he has elicited and received from others around the world, and he is a also a deadbeat in that he does not honor and return the money he has received.

How much of our dollar stake we have lost depends on how much we originally paid for it. Uncle Sam let his dollar fall, or rather through his deliberate political economic policies drove it down, by 40%, from 80 cents to the euro to 133 cents. The dollar is down by a similar factor against the yen, yuan and other currencies. And it is still declining, indeed is apt to plummet altogether.

There was also a spate of competitive devaluations in the 1930s, called the "beggar thy neighbor policy" of shifting the costs for the neighbors to bear. True, as the dollar has declined, so has the real value that foreigners pay to service their debt to Uncle Sam. But that works only if they can themselves earn in currencies that have increased in value against the dollar. Otherwise, foreigners earn and pay in the same devalued dollars, and even then with some loss from devaluation between the time they got their dollars and the time they repay them to Uncle Sam. China and other East Asian nations do earn in dollars, to which they have pegged their currencies, so they have already lost a substantial portion of their dollar stake, by far the world`s largest.

And they, like all others, will also lose the rest. For Uncle Sam`s debt to the rest of the world already amounts to more than a third of his annual domestic production and is still growing. That alone already makes his debt economically and politically never repayable, even if he wanted to, which he does not. Uncle Sam`s domestic, eg credit-card, debt is almost 100% of gross domestic product (GDP) and consumption, including that from China. Uncle Sam`s federal debt is now US$7.5 trillion, of which all but $1 trillion was built up in the past three decades, the last $2 trillion in the past eight years, and the last $1 trillion in the past two years. Alas, that costs more than $300 billion a year in interest, compared with, for example, the $15 billion spent annually on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). But no worries: Congress just raised the debt ceiling to $8.2 trillion. To help us visualize, $1 trillion tightly packed up in $1,000 bills would match a building 40 stories high.

But nearly half is owed to foreigners. All Uncle Sam`s debt, including private household consumer credit-card, mortgage etc debt of about $10 trillion, plus corporate and financial, with options, derivatives and the like, and state and local government debt comes to an unvisualizable, indeed unimaginable, $37 trillion, which is nearly four times Uncle Sam`s GDP. Only some of that can be managed domestically, but with dangerous limitations for Uncle Sam noted below. That is only one reason I want you to meet Uncle Sam, the deadbeat confidence man, who may remind you of the film Meet Joe Black; for as we get to know him better below, we will find that he is also a Shylock, and a corrupt one at that.

The United States is the world`s most privileged nation for having the monopoly privilege of printing the world`s reserve currency at will and at a cost of nothing but the paper and ink it is printed on. Moreover, by doing so, Uncle Sam can export abroad the inflation he generates by the extra dollars he prints, of which there are already at least three times as many floating around the world as at Uncle Sam`s home. Additionally, his is also the only country whose "foreign" debt is mostly denominated in his own world-currency dollars that he can print at will; while most foreigners` debt is also denominated in the same dollar, but they have to buy it from Uncle Sam with their own currency and real goods. So he simply pays the Chinese and others in essence with these dollars that already to begin with have no real worth beyond their paper and ink. So especially poor China gives away for nothing at all to rich Uncle Sam hundreds of billions of dollars` worth of real goods produced at home and consumed by Uncle Sam. Then China turns around and trades these same paper dollar bills in for more of Uncle Sam`s paper called Treasury Certificate bonds, which are even more worthless, except that they pay a percent of interest. For as we already noted, they will never be able to be cashed in and redeemed in full or even in part, and anyway have the lost much of their value to Uncle Sam already.

In an earlier essay, I argued that Uncle Sam`s power rests on two pillars only, the paper dollar and the Pentagon. Each supports the other, but the vulnerability of each is also an Achilles` heel that threatens the viability of the other. Since then, Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan, has shown confidence in the Pentagon not to be what it was cracked up to be; and with the in-part-consequent decline in the dollar, so has confidence in it and Uncle Sam`s ability to use it to finance his Pentagon`s foreign adventures (See Coup d`Etat and Paper Tiger in Washington, Fiery Dragon in the Pacific, which also conjures up the productive growth of China). Additionally we must realize that Uncle Sam`s numbers above and below are also all literally relative. So far relations with other countries, in particular with China, still favor Uncle Sam, but they also help maintain an image that is deceptive. Consider the following:

A $2 toy leaving a US-owned factory in China is a $3 shipment arriving at San Diego. By the time a US consumer buys it for $10 at Wal-Mart, the US economy registers $10 in final sales, less $3 import cost, for a $7 addition to the US GDP. (Blaming `undervalued` yuan wins votes, Asia Times Online, February 26, 2004)

Moreover, ever-clever Uncle Sam has arranged matters so as to earn 9% from his economic and financial holdings abroad, while foreigners earn only 3% on theirs, and among them on their Treasury Certificates only 1% real return. Note that this difference of 6 percentage points is already double what Uncle Sam pays out, and his total 9% take is triple the 3% he gives back. Therefore, although foreign holdings and Uncle Sam`s are now about equal, Uncle Sam is still the big net interested winner, just like any Shylock, but no other ever did so grand a business.

But Uncle Sam also earns quite well, thank you, from other holdings abroad, eg from service payments by mostly poor foreign debtors. The sums involved are not peanuts or even small potatoes. For from his direct investments in foreign property alone, Uncle Sam`s profits now equal 50%, and including his receipts from other holdings abroad now are a full 100% of profits derived from all of his own domestic activities combined. These foreign receipts add more than 4% to Uncle Sam`s national domestic product. That helps nicely to compensate for the failure of domestic profits as yet to recover even their 1972 level, because Uncle Sam has failed to boost productivity sufficiently at home.

The productivity hype of president Bill Clinton`s "new economy" in the 1990s was limited to computers and information technology (IT), and even that proved to be a sham when the dot-com bubble burst. Also, not only the apparent increase in "profits" but also that of "productivity" were, at the bottom, on the backs of shop-floor, office and sales-floor workers working harder and longer hours and, at the top, the result of innovative accounting shams by Enron and the like. Such factors still compensate for and permit much of Uncle Sam`s $600-billion-and-still-rising trade deficit from excess home consumption over what he himself produces. That is what has resulted in the multitrillion-dollar debt. Exactly how large that debt is Uncle Sam is reluctant to reveal, but what is sure is that it is by far the world`s largest, even as net debt to foreigners, after their debt to him is deducted.

How has all this come about?
The simple answer is that Uncle Sam, who is increasingly hooked on consumption, not to mention harder drugs, saves no more than 0.2% of his own income. The Federal Reserve`s guru and now you see it, now you don`t doctor of magic, Alan Greenspan, recently observed that this is so because the richest 20% of Americans, who are the only ones who do save, have reduced their savings to 2%. Yet even these measly savings (other, poorer countries save and even invest 20%, 30%, even 40% of their income) are more than counterbalanced by the 6% deficit spending of the government. That is what brings the average saving rate to 0.2%. To maintain that $400-plus-billion budget deficit (more than 3% of national domestic product), which is really more the $600 billion if we count, as we should, the more than $200 billion Uncle Sam "borrows" from the temporary surplus in his own Federal Social Security fund, which he is also bankrupting. (But never mind, President George W Bush just promised to privatize much of that and let people buy their own old-age "security" in the ever-insecure market).

So with this $600-billion-plus budget deficit and the above-mentioned related $600-billion-plus deficit, rich Uncle Sam, and primarily his highest earners and biggest consumers, as well as of course the Big Uncle himself, live off the fat of the rest of the world`s land. Uncle Sam absorbs the savings of others who themselves are often much poorer, particularly when their central banks put many of their reserves in world-currency dollars and hence into the hands of Uncle Sam in Washington, and some also in dollars at home. Their private investors send dollars to or buy dollar assets on Wall Street, all with the confidence that they are putting their wherewithal in the world`s safest haven (and that, of course, is part of the above-mentioned confidence racket). From the central banks alone, we are looking at yearly sums of more than $100 billion from Europe, more than $100 billion from poor China, $140 billion from super-saver Japan, and many 10s of billions from many others around the globe, including the Third World. But in addition, Uncle Sam obliges them, through the good offices of their own states, to send their thus literally forced savings to Uncle Sam as well in the form of their "service" of their predominantly dollar debt to him.

His treasury secretary and his International Monetary Fund (IMF) handmaiden blithely continue to strut around the world insisting that the Third - and ex-Second, now also Third - World of course continue to service their foreign debts, especially to him. No matter that with interest rates multiplied several times over by Uncle Sam himself after the Fed`s Paul Volcker`s coup in October 1979, most have already paid off their original borrowings three to five times over. For to pay at all at interest rates that Volcker boosted to 20%, they had to borrow still more at still higher rates until thereby their outstanding foreign debt doubled and tripled, not to mention their domestic debt from which part of the foreign payments were raised, particularly in Brazil. Privatization is the name of the game there and elsewhere, except for the debt. The debt was socialized after it had been incurred mostly by private business, but only the state had enough power to squeeze the greatest bulk of back payments out of the hides of its poor and middle-class people and transfer them as "invisible service payments" to Uncle Sam.

When Mexicans were told to tighten their belts still further, they answered that they couldn`t because they had already had to eat their belts. Only Argentina and for a while Russia declared an effective moratorium on debt "service", and that only after political economic policies had destroyed their societies, thanks to Uncle Sam`s advisers and his IMF strong arm. Since then, Uncle Sam himself has been blithely defaulting on his own foreign debt, as he already had several times before in the 19th century.

Speaking of that, it may be well to recall at least two pieces of advice from that time: Lord Cromer, who administered Egypt for then-dominant British imperial interests, said his most important instrument for doing so was Egypt`s debts to Britain. These had just multiplied when Egypt was obliged to sell its Suez Canal shares to Britain in order to pay off earlier debts and British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli explained and justified his purchase of the same on the grounds that it would strengthen British imperial interests. Today, that is called "debt-for-equity swaps", which is one of Uncle Sam`s latter-day favorite policies to use the debt to acquire profitable and/or strategically important real resources, as of course also was the canal as the way to the jewel of the British Empire, India.

Another piece of practical advice came from the premier military strategist Carl von Clausewitz: make the lands you conquer pay for their own conquest and administration. That is of course exactly what Britain did in and with India through the infamous "Home Charges" remitted to London in payment for Britain administering India, which even the British themselves recognized as "tribute" and responsible for much of "The Drain" from India to Britain. How much more efficient yet to let foreign countries` own states administer themselves but by rules set and imposed by Uncle Sam`s IMF and then effect a drain of debt service anyway. Actually, the British therein also set the 19th-century precedent of relying on the "imperialism of free trade" with "independent" states as far and as long as possible, using gunboat diplomacy to make it work (which Uncle Sam had already learned to copy by early in the 20th century); and if that was not enough, simply to invade, and if necessary to occupy - and then rely on the Clausewitz rule.
We shall note several recent instances thereof, and especially the Iraqi one, in the second article in this series.

Last but not least, oil producers also put their savings in Uncle Sam. With the "shock" of oil that restored its real price after the dollar valuation had fallen in 1973, ever-cleverer-by-half Henry Kissinger made a deal with the world`s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, that it would continue to price oil in dollars, and these earnings would be deposited with Uncle Sam and partly compensated by military hardware. That deal de facto extended to all of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and still stands, except that before the war against Iraq that country suddenly opted out by switching to pricing its oil in euros, and Iran threatened do the same. North Korea, the third member of the "axis of evil", has no oil but trades entirely in euros. (Venezuela is a major oil supplier to Uncle Sam and also supplies some at preferential rates as non-dollar trade swaps to poor countries such as Cuba. So Uncle Sam sponsored and financed military commandos from its Plan Colombia next door, promoted an illegal coup and, when that failed, pushed a referendum in his attempt at yet another "regime change"; and now along with Brazil all three are being baptized as yet another "axis of evil").

To return to the main issue and call a spade a huge spade, all of the above is part and parcel of the world`s biggest-ever Ponzi-scheme confidence racket. Like all others, its most essential characteristic is that it can only continue to pay off dollars and be maintained at the top as long as it continues to receive new dollars at the bottom, voluntarily through confidence if possible and by force if not. (Of course, the Clausewitz and Cromer formulas result in the poorest paying the most, since they are also the most defenseless: so that the ones sitting on/above them pass much of the cost and pain down to them.)

What if confidence in the dollar runs out?
Things are already getting shakier in the House of Uncle Sam. The declining dollar reduces the necessary dollar inflows, so Greenspan needs to raise interest rates to maintain some attraction for the foreign dollars he needs to fill the trade gap. As a quid pro quo for being reappointed by President George W Bush, he promised to do that only after the election. That time has now arrived, but doing so threatens to collapse the housing bubble that was built on low interest and mortgage - and remortgage - rates.

But it is in their house values that most Americans have their savings, if they have any at all. They and this imaginary wealth effect supported over-consumption and the nearly as-high-as-GDP household debt, and a collapse of the housing price bubble with increased interest and mortgage rates would not only drastically undercut house prices, it would thereby have a domino effect on their owners` enormous second and third remortgages and credit-card and other debt, their consumption, corporate debt and profit, and investment. In fact, these factors would be enough to plummet Uncle Sam into a deep recession, if not depression, and another Big Bear deflation on stock and de facto on other prices, rendering debt service even more onerous. (If the dollar declines, even domestic price inflation is de facto deflationary against other currencies, which Russians and Latin Americans discovered to their peril, and which we observe below.)

Still lower real US investment would reduce its industrial productivity and competitiveness even more - probably to a degree lower than can compensated for by further devaluing the dollar and making US exports cheaper, as is the confident hope of many, probably including the good Doctor. Until now, the apparent inflation of prices abroad in rubles and pesos and their consequent devaluations have been a de facto deflation in terms of the dollar world currency. Uncle Sam then printed dollars to buy up at bargain-basement fire-sale prices natural resources in Russia (whose economy was then run on $100 bills), and companies and even banks, as in South Korea. True, now Greenspan and Uncle Sam are trying again to get other central banks to raise their own interest rates and otherwise plunge their own people into even deeper depression.

But even if he can, thereby also canceling out the relative attractiveness of his own interest-rate hike, how could that save Uncle Sam? What remains the great unknown and perhaps still unknowable is how a more wounded, Ponzi-less Uncle Sam would react with more "Patriotic" acts at home and abroad with the weapons - including the now almost ready "small" nukes - he would still have, even if his foreign victims no longer paid for new ones. So, to compensate for less bread and civil rights at home, an even more patriotic, nay chauvinist, circus at the cost of others abroad is the real danger of the current policies to "defend freedom and civilization".

So, far beyond Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all the terrorists put together, the greatest real-world threat to Uncle Sam is that the inflow of dollars dries up. For instance, foreign central banks and private investors (it is said that "overseas Chinese" have a tidy trillion dollars) could any day decide to place more of their money elsewhere than in the declining dollar and abandon poor ol` Uncle Sam to his destiny. China could double its per capita income very quickly if it made real investments at home instead of financial ones with Uncle Sam. Central banks, European and others, can now put their reserves in (rising!) euros or even soon-to-be-revalued Chinese yuan. Not so far down the road, there may be an East Asian currency, eg a basket first of ASEAN + 3 (China, Japan, South Korea) - and then + 4 (India). While India`s total exports in the past five years rose by 73%, those to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) rose at double that rate and sixfold to China. India has become an ASEAN summit partner, and its ambitions stretch still further to an economic zone stretching from India to Japan. Not for nothing, in the 1997 East Asian currency and then full economic crisis, Uncle Sam strong-armed Japan not to start a proposed East Asian currency fund that would have prevented at least the worst of the crisis. Uncle Sam then benefited from it by buying devalued East Asian currencies and using them to buy up East Asian real resources, and in South Korea also banks, at bargain-basement reduced-price fire sales. But now, China is already taking steps toward such an arrangement, only on a much grander financial and now also economic scale.

A day after writing the above, I read in The Economist (December 11-17, 2004) a report on the previous week`s summit meeting of ASEAN + 3 in Malaysia. That country`s prime minister announced that this summit should lay the groundwork for an East Asian Community (EAC) that "should build a free-trade area, cooperate on finance, and sign a security pact ... that would transform East Asia into a cohesive economic block ... In fact, some of these schemes are already in motion ... China, as the region`s pre-eminent economic and military power, will doubtless dominate ... and host the second East Asia Summit." The report went on to recall that in 1990, Uncle Sam shot down a similar initiative for fear of losing influence in the region. Now it is a case of "Yankee Stay Home".

Or what if, long before that comes to pass, exporters of oil simply cease to price it in ever-devaluing dollars, and instead make a mint by switching to the rising euro and/or a basket of East Asian currencies? That would at one stroke vastly diminish the world demand for and price of dollars by obliging anyone who wants to buy oil to purchase and increase the demand price of the euro or yen/yuan instead of the dollar. That would crash the dollar and tumble Uncle Sam in one fell swoop, as foreign - and even domestic - owners of dollars would sell off as many of them as fast as they could, and other countries` central banks would switch their reserves out of dollars and away from Uncle Sam`s no-longer-safe haven. That would drive the dollar down even more, and of course halt any more dollar inflow to Uncle Sam from the foreigners who have been financing his consumption spree. Since selling oil for falling dollars instead of rising euros is evidently bad business, the world`s largest oil exporters in Russia and OPEC have been considering doing just that. In the meantime, they have only raised the dollar price of oil, so that in euro terms it has remained approximately stable since 2000. So far, many oil exporters and others still place their increased amount of dollars with Uncle Sam, even though he now offers an ever less attractive and less safe haven, but Russia is now buying more euros with some of its dollars.

So also many countries` central banks have begun to put ever more of their reserves into the euro and currencies other than Uncle Sam`s dollar. Now even the Central Bank of China, the greatest friend of Uncle Sam in need, has begun to buy some euros. China itself has also begun to use some of its dollars - as long as they are still accepted by them - to buy real goods from other Asians and thousands of tons of iron ore and steel from Brazil, etc. (Brazil`s president recently took a huge business delegation to China, and a Chinese one just went to Argentina. They are going after South African minerals too.)

So what will happen to the rich on top of Uncle Sam`s Ponzi scheme when the confidence of poorer central banks and oil exporters in the middle runs out, and the more destitute around the world, confident or not, can no longer make their in-payments at the bottom? The Uncle Sam Ponzi Scheme Confidence Racket would - or will? - come crashing down, like all other such schemes before, only this time with a worldwide bang. It would cut the present US consumer demand down to realistic size and hurt many exporters and producers elsewhere in the world. In fact, it may involve a wholesale fundamental reorganization of the world political economy now run by Uncle Sam.

PART 2: The center of the doughnut

All Ponzi schemes build a financial pyramid. Many who pay into them also live in a financial world themselves, but others need to derive their in-payment through earnings from production in the real world. In today`s world of financial transactions that every day are a hundredfold more than all payments for real goods and services put together, the financial ones put the real ones into the shadow behind their brilliance.

Moreover, to oversimplify a very complex matter into more intelligible layperson`s language, options, derivatives, swaps and other recent financial instruments have been ever much further compounding already compounded interest on the real properties in which their stake and debts are based, which has contributed to the spectacular growth of this financial world. Nonetheless, the financial pyramid that we see in all its splendor and brilliance, especially in its center at Uncle Sam`s home, still sits on top of a real-world producer-merchant-consumer base, even if the financial one also provides credit for these real-world transactions.

Now, what if we look at the world as a doughnut, analogous to so many cities in the US rust belt. The center is derelict and hollowed out as production and consumption have moved to the surrounding suburbs (in automobile capital Detroit, the windows of the principal department store Hudson`s have been boarded up for years, even as the city has built an expensive "Renaissance Center" to re-gentrify the center, a process that has "succeeded" in some other cities). General Motors` derelict Flint, Michigan, gave us Michael Moore, who featured it in Roger and Me (a reference to GM chief executive officer Roger Smith). We might look at the entire world in doughnut terms, with the whole of Uncle Sam in the empty hole in the middle that produces almost nothing it can sell abroad. The main exceptions are agricultural goods and military hardware that are heavily subsidized by the US government from its taxpayers and its dollar-printing press, and even so Uncle Sam runs a US$600-billion-plus budget deficit.

Should the dollar crash ...
The big difference in this US doughnut is that both the budget deficit and the $600-billion-plus trade deficit are financed by foreigners, as we have seen. Uncle Sam would exclude most of them as persons, but gladly receives the real goods they produce. As world consumer of last resort, as already suggested, Uncle Sam performs this important function in the present global political economic division of labor: everybody else produces and needs to export, and Uncle Sam consumes and needs to import. The crash of the dollar would (will?) crumble this entire world-embracing and -organizing political economic doughnut and throw hundreds of millions of people, not to mention zillions of dollars and their owners, into turmoil, with unforeseen and perhaps unforeseeable consequences.

Many people, high and low on the world totem pole, have a big stake in avoiding that, even if it requires continuing to blow an empty Uncle Sam up like a balloon. Or to refer to a well-know metaphor, to continue to pretend that the emperor with no clothes is dressed up. That still includes China, for which a financial showdown with Uncle Sam would be a blessing in disguise: it would oblige China to change its political economic course, and instead of giving its goods away for free to Uncle Sam, to turn production and consumption inward to its poor interior and outward to its neighbors in East Asia, all of which it could and should be doing already. (The latter China has recently begun to do, but not yet the former.)

Of course, crashing the dollar would finally also in one fell swoop wipe out, that is default, Uncle Sam`s debt altogether. Thereby, it would simultaneously also make all foreigners and rich Americans lose the whole of their dollar-asset shirt, of which they are still desperately trying to save as much as possible by not so doing. In fact, this historically necessary transition out from under the US-run doughnut world could bring the entire world into the deepest depression ever - and in all of them the poorest suffer the most. Only East Asia could save itself with greatest ease, but also after paying a high cost for this transition - toward itself! Thus, the Uncle Sam Ponzi Scheme poses the world`s biggest and craziest Catch-22 since MAD (mutually assured destruction).
However, even this would not be historically new. Recall how much the transition to Uncle Sam cost: another 30 Years` War from 1914 to 1945 with the intervening second Great Depression in a century that cost 100 million lives lost to war, more than in all of previous world history, not to mention the millions who suffered and died from unnecessary starvation and disease. Or the previous transition to Britain cost the Napoleonic Wars, the Great Depression of 1873-95, colonialism and semi-colonialism, to name a few, and their human costs, especially combined with the most pronounced El Nino climatic changes in two centuries, which ravaged Indians, Chinese and many others with famines. But these were in turn magnified by the imperial colonial powers and used in their own interests, eg increased export of wheat from India especially during years of famine.

The parallels with today, including even again taking advantage a century later of renewed stronger El Ninos, are too horrifying and guilt-generating for hardly anybody to make with Uncle Sam`s International Monetary Fund-imposed "structural adjustment" that obliges Mexican peasants to have already eaten the belt that the IMF wants them to tighten still further. And that is not to mention 3 million dead in Rwanda and Burundi, and then some in neighboring Congo, first after IMF-imposed strictures and the cancellation primarily by Uncle Sam of the Coffee Agreement that had sustained its price for these producers. And then we get the scramble for and production and sale there of gold for Uncle Sam`s Fort Knox, titanium so we can communicate by mobile telephone, diamonds forever, and so on.

Yet there are also others in the world who do not (yet) feel all caught in this trap. Just before the 2004 US election, one of them said so out loud in a video broadcast to the world. It seems to have been least publicly noted by its principal addressee, Uncle Sam, who should have been the most interested party, for it was none other than Osama bin Laden himself who announced that he was "going to bankrupt the Uncle Sam". In view of Uncle Sam`s deliberate blindness to the shakiness of his real-world foundation abroad, so massive a collapse may not be more difficult to arrange than it was to topple its Twin Towers symbol.

How Uncle Sam spends your dollars
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, as the saying goes in Texas, what does Uncle Sam himself blithely do with the world`s hard-earned savings and money? His consumers still over-consume it without 99.9% of them knowing what they are doing, since hardly anyone tells them. And Uncle Sam`s government uses much if not all of its increased hundreds of billions of dollars for the Pentagon. It does not, however, spend it to pay its poor professional soldiers, who come mostly from small-town rural America and took the only job they could get, and even less to its hapless reservists. No, better increasingly to privatize war in Iraq as well as at home. The military-industrial complex against which General Dwight Eisenhower warned in his 1958 parting presidential address is alive and kicking, more than ever under the stewardship of Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (with their jobs disastrously well done, both are being kept on for a second term. So is Douglas Feith, with Paul "Wolfowitz of Arabia" one of the duo at the Pentagon who went to Israel and who the commander of the Iraq invasion, Tommy Franks, has been quoted as calling "the greatest total idiot that there is on God`s Earth, with whom I have to battle almost every day").

Between 1994 and mid-2003, Uncle Sam`s Pentagon made more than 3,000 contracts valued at more than $300 billion with 12 US private military companies (PMCs) out of the 35 estimated by the New York Times, others of which are small and offer mercenary services. But more than 2,700 of those contracts were given to only two companies: Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Cheney-connected Halliburton, and Booz Allen Hamilton, according to the Center for Public Integrity`s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In Iraq these PMCs now have as many mercenaries as US and UK troops combined. But of course that is still "small" potatoes, since the bulk of Pentagon money is used to buy expensive weapons systems from only four major US "defense" contractors and the likes of Halliburton.

Uncle Sam then uses these arms unilaterally to twist others` arms by blackmail, to lord it over and invade the world that provided the money in the first place. After all, Uncle Sam has to do what it must to keep it coming. US unilateralism is not so much, as often mistakenly supposed, just going it alone. Yes, it is to proclaim fighting for "freedom" (whose, we may ask?) and "saving civilization", as President George W Bush and his even more eloquent British mouthpiece Tony Blair proclaim every day. The simplest way to "save" civilization was by simply abolishing in a day its most precious gift of the whole body of international law to keep the peace, which the West had taken centuries to develop, admittedly also in its own imperial interests. Still, it was the best and only international law we had, and at the very least better than nothing at all. Now the only "Law of the West" that remains is indeed "the law of the west": The spaghetti-western vigilante law of posses that, with or without a conniving judge, take the "law" into their own hands to form a lynch party and go after whomever and where and when they please, alas now on a much grander scale than any spaghetti western ever imagined.

That also means disemboweling and paralyzing the institution of the United Nations that was established to guard the peace, except when Uncle Sam after its own wars always recycles the UN to pick up the pieces he shattered in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and now Iraq. But in so doing, it also means to dupe, threaten, cajole and blackmail all others - friends and foes alike - to do his bidding on every issue, big and small. He has trained a whole civilian army of officials to do that. That way, Uncle Sam can "unilaterally" always throw around his still-apparent weight in all other international institutions that deal with endeavors from agriculture and aviation to zoology. But Uncle Sam extorts real unilateral favors for himself even more through his bilateral relations. That is why the World Trade Organization was dead on arrival. Indeed, Uncle Sam now prefers to use bilateral relations unilaterally, as he increasingly isolates himself internationally. Thus he can exercise even more military, political and economic bargaining power over his bilateral "partners" than he could over all or even many in international institutions.

And when bargaining is not enough, or even if it could be, Uncle Sam simply attacks when he feels like it, invading little Grenada (population all of 300,000), Nicaragua (with the help of arch-enemy Iran), Panama (7,000 civilians killed in one night to capture one man only, Daddy Bush`s onetime friend and ally Manuel Noriega - there is an all-smiles photo of them shaking hands), Iraq (that was even a money-making venture as Uncle Sam extorted more dollars from his allies to pay for the war than it actually cost him), Somalia, and Yugoslavia, which was attacked in part to make an example out of what can happen when one is weak and yet in abject defiance of Uncle Sam and his IMF, maintaining some state ownership of important means of production and social-welfare state protection of the population, like Belarus today, where Uncle Sam also tried to get "regime change", but military action is more difficult on the border of Russia, unless it is an accord as against Afghanistan or bought off. Moreover, Yugoslavia gave up only when Russia withdrew support after Uncle Sam successfully blackmailed political economically and partly bought it off in Berlin. Then there is Afghanistan (again with the help of Iran and Russia), and now again Iraq. Who`s next, Iran? Syria? Not Libya, it is now obediently making oil deals with Uncle Sam; and not North Korea, which made nukes to protect itself against precisely that.

Simple inspection of the facts on the ground reveals that, except for little Grenada, not a single one of these or any other US wars was ever won by military force, unless it be the Pacific one against Japan (World War II was won in Europe at Stalingrad in 1943 by Russian troops who would have reached Berlin even if Uncle Sam had not arrived later). Nonetheless, Uncle Sam has now already built 800 military bases around the world. Apart from that Bush has a new "Plan for the Middle East", which now stretches from Morocco beyond Pakistan - to Muslim Indonesia? Just what this plan involves is not yet clear, other than that Israel is to remain Uncle Sam`s political and military stalking horse in the region as it has always been. Only now it`s assigned its own reach and may also expand further. Bush himself went to Africa, especially West Africa, to look at its oil. In the Americas, his Plan Colombia (it has oil too) has been extended to the whole Andean region (Ecuador also exports oil), he has yet another plan for the Amazon (maybe some is to be found there and in the meantime he built a huge base there, allegedly for NASA, which is not unknown also to engage in military ventures), a plan to "take care of" with World Bank help the world`s largest underground deposit of sweet water under Iguazu Falls, where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet, and is already again training 40,000 Latin American military personnel at a time on US bases.

All this is a giant global military-political economic foundation on which to maintain Uncle Sam`s financial Ponzi Scheme Confidence Racket, and cheap at twice the price for those that end up with the dollars and as long as he can pay for it all with the self-made paper dollars that so far also maintains the global Ponzi business. Well, to be honest, it`s not only for the dollars. After all, they are only useful if you can actually buy something with them, especially the oil that keeps the foundation running.

All about oil
Not only does Uncle Sam have to buy ever more oil, today with self-printed dollars, but perhaps tomorrow with euros or yuan, he also has to try to make sure to have his hand on every spigot so he can control who else can, and especially who cannot, buy it. So that is why we now find him attempting political and financial control of the oil spigots, wherever he still can, and going in also for military presence as in Central Asia, or using military power to go in, as Iraq. That is both to use it as a lever of control and/or to warn its neighbors what may happen to them if they fail to continue to play along with Uncle Sam. Fortunately for him, most of East Asia and especially China also seem to be obliged to buy foreign oil, even if tomorrow perhaps no longer with dollars but with yuan/yen. On the other hand, sad but true, the world`s biggest seller of oil is Russia, whose spigots remain beyond Uncle Sam`s control. But how could Uncle Sam continue to pay for and maintain all these bold ventures in defense of freedom with those self-made paper dollars if nobody accepts them anymore?

The December 10 Financial Times (FT) offered some additional tip-of-the-iceberg examples of Uncle Sam`s Defense of Freedom in Iraq. Though poor Iraq sits on top of the world`s largest still-unexploited pool of ever-more-precious oil, it remains in the background or only at the bottom of this story that barely mentions it and, like the present essay, focuses instead on dollars. In two different reports, it relates how three helicopters flew 14 tons of $100 bills in to the Kurds. The money, much of the $1.8 billion US payoff to the Kurds, was part of Iraq`s earnings under the UN "oil for food" program. Initially, of course, the bills simply were the product of the self-same US printing press, for which Iraq had exported real oil. It did not come from the $18 billion that Uncle Sam`s Congress appropriated for "reconstruction" of Iraq. As an FT graph graphically shows, no more than $388 million - or 2.15% - of that US money had yet been spent, and only $5 billion of it having even been budgeted by Uncle Sam in Iraq by the time US proconsul L Paul Bremer went home from a job well done. No, instead in his wisdom the Good Uncle had thought it best to spend $13 billion of the $20 billion of Iraqi funds. That was 65% of the Iraqi money compared with the still only 2% of the nearly equivalent amount of original US money.

By the time the new Iraqi government took over some tasks from Uncle Sam, it discovered that a full $20 billion of their funds had been spent, $11 billion from sales of oil, according to the International Herald Tribune. Why? Simple, is the answer of the "responsible" finance officer, Admiral David Oliver, "I know we spent some money from [the Iraqi] fund. It was purely the matter that we`d run out of US money" - of which there was only another $17.5 billion-plus unspent. We might wonder whether the good admiral was schooled in Clausewitz and happened also to discover his good advice about making the conquered victim pay for his own military occupation, in this case by Uncle Sam.

The Iraqi representative on the funding disbursement and oversight committee attended all of one out of its 43 meetings; but then why bother with more, when most expenditures were authorized without any meeting at all. So although US funds were budgeted for all sorts of projects, they were nonetheless paid out of Iraqi funds. Of these, many disbursements were even made without any contract whatsoever, in one case a mere $1.4 billion. Most others occurred without any multiple competitive, nor even any previously vetted or subsequently evaluated, bids. The US funds, on the other hand, remained virtually unspent in Iraq. Maybe Admiral Oliver had "run out of US money" in Iraq because it remained at home in Washington; and if disbursed at all, it simply changed hands and bank accounts right there. After all, that is much more efficient than it would have been to send it back and forth, and a bit of it might not even get back. After all, it has long since been standard practice for the bulk of the dollars that Uncle Sam lends or even "gives" to Third World countries to stay at home, where it belongs and would return to anyway. No matter; Congress has already appropriated another $30 billion to "prepare for transition to elections" in Iraq this month.

All that being the case, it would of course be altogether undesirable for Iraqi, let alone Uncle Sam`s, funds to be squandered on any Iraqi service of old foreign debt to others. So it was only logical to strong-arm "allies" who can`t help already losing US debt to them also to forgive the Iraqi debt. This, as we may recall from above, while Uncle Sam still insists that the rest of the Third World must continue servicing their debts to him. For God forbid that any repayment of Iraqi debt should go instead to those ungodly Russians, traitorous Frenchmen or even to the Chinese best friend indeed, who most invested in Iraq, a dastardly thing to do in the first place, when Uncle Sam has much more worthy causes for the Iraqi money.

And what were and still are these grander, worthy causes? The largest single payment of $1.4 billion was to whom else but the self-same Vice President Cheney`s Halliburton. Yet we now know that at the same time it was also cheating even its generous benefactor Uncle Sam out of hundreds of millions more dollars on the side, buying petrol for $X in Kuwait and selling it in Iraq for $5-10X and other shenanigans. Altogether, Halliburton got Iraq contracts for a cool $10 billion plus change, according to the IHT.

Without the shadow of a doubt, most of the other Iraqi and US dollars went to other crony US - and some crumbs off the table for the UK - corporations and even to private and military individuals who have their fingers in the till. But alas, we will never know who they all are, since as per Uncle Sam`s inspector general, "I was, candidly, not interested in having army auditors because I thought we had to slide into the Iraqi system as quickly as possible."

Rewards of conquest
Frankly, being both non- and anti-military, I have not myself read Clausewitz. So I do not know what, if any, good advice he gives about relying on corruption as the first principle in cutting and dividing up the conquered pie.

All of the above speculation was written before the UN International Advisory and Monitoring Board for Development in Iraq (IAMBDI) issued a report on its findings about US stewardship. Before we get to the report, we should keep in mind that the FT observes diplomatically that "the UN has been reluctant to take the US to task publicly over its spending of Iraqi funds". The FT quotes directly from the report: "There were control weaknesses ... inadequate accounting systems, uneven application of agreed-upon contracting procedures and inadequate record keeping." The IHT also makes its own summary of the same report: "There had been widespread irregularities, including financial mismanagement, a failure to cut smuggling [outward of oil and other Iraqi physical property; nobody knows at what price and to whose benefit] and over-dependence on no-bid contracts." The FT, for its part, offers a few more specifics from the report: "Of particular concern ... were contracts with sometimes billions of dollars that were awarded to US companies such as Halliburton from Iraqi funds without competitive tender."

Last month Bush gave Uncle Sam`s highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom, to L Paul Bremer III, the US civilian proconsul who oversaw it all, and to General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion that made it all possible in the first place. George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that provided all the bogus information to "legitimate" the whole enterprise to begin with and has since been discredited and forced to resign was not forgotten either and received the third award. The IHT published a ceremonial photograph of the three, all smiles with George W, who was smiling too. We may rest pretty well assured that of the recipients of their beneficence and service to "freedom" (for whom and what, we may ask?), 99.99% were among the ones at whom the US Federal Reserve`s Alan Greenspan had already pointed his finger as the most privileged over-consumers who are totally responsible for US under-saving and whom he labeled simply as the upper 20% of US income earners. It is also they, he said, who are the most responsible also for the growing trade deficit about which the Doctor recently complained in Berlin. If we examine US income distribution, we may well learn also that among these 20%, the lion`s share of this money, like most of that from the Pentagon, ended up in the pockets or accounts of the upper 2% most super-privileged, so they can over-consume yet still more of the fat of the whole Earth. Who would deny that this is a worthy cause?

But as Bush himself told the world, it is only right that "we" exclude other countries from the trough and till in Iraq. After all, he explained, when the Iraqis accepted his invitation, it was "our boys who put their lives on the line". Alas, the personification of Uncle Sam neglected also to explain for what and for whom.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

Prof. Dr. Andre Gunder Frank

Jahrgang 1929
geboren in Berlin
lebt heute in Luxemburg
Vita
geboren 1929 in Berlin, ist Professor und Theoretiker für Wirtschaft und einer der Begründer der in den 60 er Jahren entwickelten „Dependence Theory.“ In jüngster Zeit richtete Frank sein Hauptaugenmerk auf die Analyse der Krise in der Weltwirtschaft sowie auf die Weltgeschichte. Als Kind musste Frank mit seinen Eltern vor den Nazis aus Deutschland fliehen und kam 1941 in die USA. Er studierte an der University of Chicago, wo er 1957 mit einer Dissertation über die Landwirtschaft in der Sowjetunion seinen Doktortitel in Wirtschaftswissenschaften erhielt. Dank seiner Lehrtätigkeit in vielen verschiedenen, vor allem lateinamerikanischen Ländern, in denen er Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie, Politologie und politische Geschichte unterrichtete, war Frank auch an den Reformen der Regierung Allendes in Chile beteiligt. Er ging anschließend nach Europa zurück, erhielt aber gleichzeitig Gastprofessuren in vielen Ländern und war zuletzt leitender Wissenschaftler am World History Center der Northeastern University in Boston und an der Università di Calabria. Zu seinen 43 Büchern gehören „The World System“ (mit Barry Gills) und „ReOrient“. Andre Gunder Frank lebt derzeit in Luxemburg.

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COLLINSVILLE, IL (IWR Parody News) - President Bush went on the road in Illinois to promote his malpractice bill that would protect big drug companies from what he called consumer terrorism, e.g., [urlpeople who file frivolous lawsuits for heart attacks and strokes after taking drugs like Celebrex or Vioxx.]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48417-2005Jan4.html

"Americans need to get used to bending over and spreading `em for my buddies in big business.

Looky here. It`s easy.

[Mr. Bush demonstrates the proper technique by bending over and clutching his buttocks and then pointing his rear at reporters.]

Face the facts, the Republicans and our fat cat benefactors are in control of all branches of this here government, and so, your precious individual rights and civil liberties don`t mean shit anymore.

And there ain`t nothing you Red State chumps can do about it!

Heh, heh, heh!

Things like accountability have always been a major drag on the economy, and besides it`s time for a little plundering, I mean, profit taking," said the President as he was mounted by an pinstripe suited oligarch with a cigar in his mouth.[/url]
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Roadside bomb kills 7 American soldiers in northwest Baghdad
03:02 AM EST Jan 07

BAGHDAD (AP) - A roadside bomb killed seven U.S. soldiers in northwest Baghdad, and two U.S. marines were killed in the volatile western Anbar province, the U.S. military said Friday.

The nine deaths Thursday made it the deadliest day for the U.S. military in Iraq since a suicide bombing at a mess tent in Mosul on Dec. 21 killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers and three American contractors.

The soldiers with Task Force Baghdad were on patrol Thursday evening when their Bradley fighting vehicle hit a roadside bomb, the military said in a statement. Everyone inside the Bradley was killed.

No other details were immediately available about the latest attack. But Iraq`s insurgents have frequently targeted American troops with crude explosives planted in roads and detonated remotely as patrols pass.

Two U.S. marines were killed in action Thursday in the volatile western Anbar province, the military said. The first death was announced during the day Thursday, and the second was announced early Friday.

The U.S. marines typically do not give details of how or where their troops are killed for fear of compromising security.

Several American troops have been killed in recent days in Baghdad and in Anbar, which is home to the volatile city of Fallujah. On Tuesday, five American troops were killed, including three Task Force Baghdad soldiers who died in a roadside bombing, one slain in Anbar, and another who died in Balad, north of Baghdad.

The military said the names of the troops who died Thursday were being withheld until their families are notified.

The latest deaths brought the number of U.S. troops killed since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to 1,350, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,063 died as a result of hostile action.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

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Military Fatalities: Total: 1501 , US: 1350 , Jan.05: 17

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January 7, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Promoting Torture`s Promoter
By BOB HERBERT

If the United States were to look into a mirror right now, it wouldn`t recognize itself.

The administration that thumbed its nose at the Geneva Conventions seems equally dismissive of such grand American values as honor, justice, integrity, due process and the truth. So there was Alberto Gonzales, counselor to the president and enabler in chief of the pro-torture lobby, interviewing on Capitol Hill yesterday for the post of attorney general, which just happens to be the highest law enforcement office in the land.

Mr. Gonzales shouldn`t be allowed anywhere near that office. His judgments regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners rounded up in Iraq and the so-called war on terror have been both unsound and shameful. Some of the practices that evolved from his judgments were appalling, gruesome, medieval.

But this is the Bush administration, where incompetence and outright failure are rewarded with the nation`s highest honors. (Remember the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded last month to George Tenet et al.?) So not only is Mr. Gonzales`s name being stenciled onto the attorney general`s door, but a plush judicial seat is being readied for his anticipated elevation to the Supreme Court.

It`s a measure of the irrelevance of the Democratic Party that a man who played such a significant role in the policies that led to the still-unfolding prisoner abuse and torture scandals is expected to win easy Senate confirmation and become attorney general. The Democrats have become the 98-pound weaklings of the 21st century.

The Bush administration and Mr. Gonzales are trying to sell the fiction that they`ve seen the light. In answer to a setup question at his Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Gonzales said he is against torture. And the Justice Department issued a legal opinion last week that said "torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms."

What took so long? Why were we ever - under any circumstances - torturing, maiming, sexually abusing and even killing prisoners? And where is the evidence that we`ve stopped?

The Bush administration hasn`t changed. This is an administration that believes it can do and say whatever it wants, and that attitude is changing the very nature of the United States. It is eroding the checks and balances so crucial to American-style democracy. It led the U.S., against the advice of most of the world, to launch the dreadful war in Iraq. It led Mr. Gonzales to ignore the expressed concerns of the State Department and top military brass as he blithely opened the gates for the prisoner abuse vehicles to roll through.

There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence. In the Bush administration, that mixture has been explosive. Forget the meant-to-be-comforting rhetoric surrounding Mr. Gonzales`s confirmation hearings. Nothing`s changed. As detailed in The Washington Post earlier this month, the administration is making secret plans for the possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists who will never even be charged.

Due process? That`s a laugh. Included among the detainees, the paper noted, are hundreds of people in military or C.I.A. custody "whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts." And there will be plenty more detainees to come.

Who knows who these folks are or what they may be guilty of? We`ll have to trust in the likes of Alberto Gonzales or Donald Rumsfeld or President Bush`s new appointee to head the C.I.A., Porter Goss, to see that the right thing is done in each and every case.

Americans have tended to view the U.S. as the guardian of the highest ideals of justice and fairness. But that is a belief that`s getting more and more difficult to sustain. If the Justice Department can be the fiefdom of John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales, those in search of the highest standards of justice have no choice but to look elsewhere.

It`s more fruitful now to look overseas. Last month Britain`s highest court ruled that the government could not continue to indefinitely detain foreigners suspected of terrorism without charging or trying them. One of the justices wrote that such detentions "call into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention."

That`s a sentiment completely lost on an Alberto Gonzales or George W. Bush.

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January 7, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Worse Than Fiction
By PAUL KRUGMAN

I`ve been thinking of writing a political novel. It will be a bad novel because there won`t be any nuance: the villains won`t just espouse an ideology I disagree with - they`ll be hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels.

In my bad novel, a famous moralist who demanded national outrage over an affair and writes best-selling books about virtue will turn out to be hiding an expensive gambling habit. A talk radio host who advocates harsh penalties for drug violators will turn out to be hiding his own drug addiction.

In my bad novel, crusaders for moral values will be driven by strange obsessions. One senator`s diatribe against gay marriage will link it to "man on dog" sex. Another will rant about the dangers of lesbians in high school bathrooms.

In my bad novel, the president will choose as head of homeland security a "good man" who turns out to have been the subject of an arrest warrant, who turned an apartment set aside for rescue workers into his personal love nest and who stalked at least one of his ex-lovers.

In my bad novel, a TV personality who claims to stand up for regular Americans against the elite will pay a large settlement in a sexual harassment case, in which he used his position of power to - on second thought, that story is too embarrassing even for a bad novel.

In my bad novel, apologists for the administration will charge foreign policy critics with anti-Semitism. But they will be silent when a prominent conservative declares that "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular."

In my bad novel the administration will use the slogan "support the troops" to suppress criticism of its war policy. But it will ignore repeated complaints that the troops lack armor.

The secretary of defense - another "good man," according to the president - won`t even bother signing letters to the families of soldiers killed in action.

Last but not least, in my bad novel the president, who portrays himself as the defender of good against evil, will preside over the widespread use of torture.

How did we find ourselves living in a bad novel? It was not ever thus. Hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels have always been with us, on both sides of the aisle. But 9/11 created an environment some liberals summarize with the acronym Iokiyar: it`s O.K. if you`re a Republican.

The public became unwilling to believe bad things about those who claim to be defending the nation against terrorism. And the hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels of the right, empowered by the public`s credulity, have come out in unprecedented force.

Apologists for the administration would like us to forget all about the Kerik affair, but Bernard Kerik perfectly symbolizes the times we live in. Like Rudolph Giuliani and, yes, President Bush, he wasn`t a hero of 9/11, but he played one on TV. And like Mr. Giuliani, he was quick to cash in, literally, on his undeserved reputation.

Once the New York newspapers began digging, it became clear that Mr. Kerik is, professionally and personally, a real piece of work. But that`s not unusual these days among people who successfully pass themselves off as patriots and defenders of moral values. Mr. Kerik must still be wondering why he, unlike so many others, didn`t get away with it.

And Alberto Gonzales must be hoping that senators don`t bring up the subject.

The principal objection to making Mr. Gonzales attorney general is that doing so will tell the world that America thinks it`s acceptable to torture people. But his confirmation will also be a statement about ethics.

As White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales was charged with vetting Mr. Kerik. He must have realized what kind of man he was dealing with - yet he declared Mr. Kerik fit to oversee homeland security.

Did Mr. Gonzales defer to the wishes of a president who wanted Mr. Kerik anyway, or did he decide that his boss wouldn`t want to know? (The Nelson Report, a respected newsletter, reports that Mr. Bush has made it clear to his subordinates that he doesn`t want to hear bad news about Iraq.)

Either way, when the Senate confirms Mr. Gonzales, it will mean that Iokiyar remains in effect, that the basic rules of ethics don`t apply to people aligned with the ruling party. And reality will continue to be worse than any fiction I could write.

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Friday, January 07, 2005

Guerrillas Kill 9 US Troops
18 Bodies of Lured Workers Found in Mosul

Guerrillas in northwest Baghdad detonated a roadside bomb on Thursday evening as US Bradley Fighting Vehicle went by, killing 7 American troops. In a separate incident or incidents in Anbar province west of the capital, guerrillas killed two US Marines. It was the highest one-day toll for US troops since the Mosul luncheon bombing in mid-December.

An insurgent posing as a labor contractor lured 18 young Shiite men from the southern Zi Qar province north to Mosul and then slaughtered them. Their bodies were found on Thursday. He told them they would get work at a US military base, according to their distraught families. The guerrillas were attempting yet again to send a signal to Iraqis not to cooperate with the US presence in Iraq.

Many Iraqi policemen are resigning from the force because they have been threatened by guerrillas.

Caretaket PM Iyad Allawi extended the emergency laws earlier passed, which allow the government to declare a curfew in select cities (it is already implemented in Baghdad, Mosul, Baquba and some other cities. Since the caretaker government lacks an effective army or police force, however, the emergency laws have made almost no difference to the actual security situation.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is mobilizing clerical networks to push Shiites to vote on January 30. He wants to ensure that the Shiite majority takes control of parliament, and that the constitution that it drafts defers to Islamic law on key points. Unlike the Khomeinist clerics in Iran, however, Sistani does not want a direct role in govering the state for clerics.

At a meeeting of foreign ministers, Iraq`s Sunni-majority neighbors, including Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, joined Egypt in urging Sunni Arabs in Iraq to take part in the elections scheduled for January 30. Several Sunni-ruled countries in the region, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, have significant Shiite populations that have largely been politically marginalized, and the Sunni Arab elites fear they will become more assertive if Iraq has an overwhelmingly Shiite government. The neighbors also fear that an Iraq where Sunni Arabs have no place at the table in government will continue to be a political, economic and security basket case.

For many Jordanians, for instance, Iraq`s situation is extremely frustrating. They know that if the country came together and achieved basic stability, its oil revenues would allow it to get rich and it would provide a vast and rich market for Jordanian goods. Jordan would have an advantage over Iraq with regard to the price of labor, and coule act as a major engine of Jordanian economic growth. Jordanians thus see it as essential that their Sunni Arab counterparts (90% of Jordanians are Sunnis) join the new government and make it a success.

According to Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, a US general met with Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani on Thursday to apologize to him for the US attack on a dormitory at Salahuddin University, which involved close air support. The general termed the operation, aimed at rooting out Ansar al-Islam terrorists, "a mistake."

Barzani in the meantime continued to say that while the Kurdish parties will support the elections if they are held, in his own view it is "fruitless" to attempt to hold them when the security situation is so bad.

posted by Juan @ 1/7/2005 02:13:41 AM

Saudi Tsunami Fundraising Drive Raises over $30 million in First Day

Saudi Arabia Television held a fundraising drive for the victims of the tsunami and raised a little over $30 million on the first day. Saudi Arabia`s per capita income is about $8500 per year according to the Atlas method, and there are about 15 million Saudi citizens. The one-day donation total equals $2 per citizen in absolute terms. Given the difference in per capita income and population, it is as though private US donors gave over $3 billion in a single day.

posted by Juan @ [url1/7/2005 01:58:29 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/saudi-tsunami-fundraising-drive-raises.html[/url]



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Latest Fatality: Jan 06, 2005

Weitere Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Die Zahlen sehen mal wieder gut aus. Nur die USA braucht alleine 2,5 Mio zusätzliche Arbeitsplätze bei der steigenden Bevölkerung um den Standart zu halten. Dann sind es alles Jobs im Dienstleistungsgewerbe d.h. da verkaufen Menschen Dinge, die aus China eingeführt werden. Es wurden alleine 50000 Jobs geschaffen für den Aufbau von Verkaufsfläche. Entscheidender ist, dass trotz der guten Wachstumsraten gerade einmal 96000 Arbeitsplätze in der Industrie geschaffen wurden in den letzten Jahren. Manufacturing companies, which shed more than two million jobs between 2000 and the end of 2003, added back only 96,000 jobs in 2004 - possibly the weakest rebound in factory employment of any economic recovery on record in the United States. Ob diese Art von Beschäftigungspolitik auf Dauer den US-Standart aufrechterhalten kann, ist zweifelhaft. Die USA als Mastschwein der Welt und das alles auf Pump ist eine zweifelhafte Lösung. Die Vorteile der USA, ihre unbeschränkte Verfügbarkeit über den Dollar und ihr perpetuum mobile der Rüstungsausgaben werden nur aufrechterhalten durch den dritte wesentliche Punkt, die von der US-Propaganda verbreiteten Ideologie der eigenen Stärke. Wenn das Vertrauen der Welt in diese Stärke weiter abnimmt und dadurch auch das Vertrauen in den Dollar, könnte es zu einer Krise kommen von nicht dagewesener Größe. Eins was mich am meisten stört, ist die Abhängigkeit der USA von China und anderen Gläubigerländern. Dadurch sind die USA durch Erpressungen verwundbar und dadurch auch die gesamte westliche Wirtschaft. Am 30.Mai ist der Weltuntergang...

January 7, 2005
Economy Adds 157,000 Jobs, Ending Best Year Since 1999
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - The economy added 157,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department said today, a sign that job creation remains steady but that employers in many industries are still cautious about hiring.

The increase in jobs, slightly less than what economists had been expecting, essentially matched the increase in population and left the unemployment rate unchanged at 5.4 percent.

During all of 2004, the nation added about 2.2 million jobs - the biggest gain since 1999 and the first growth since 2000 - but that was barely enough to replace the jobs lost during President Bush`s first term in office.

Economists said the new report reinforced the likelihood that economic growth would be moderate in 2005, but that growth as well as job creation would be slower than they were in 2004.

"It`s a wet firecracker," said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research, a forecasting firm in New York. "This is positive job creation, but it pales in comparison with what we have had in previous economic recoveries."

The financial markets reacted calmly to the December employment figures, and stock and bond prices were little changed by this afternoon.

The good news in today`s employment report was that job creation was stronger than originally estimated in October and November, with the Labor Department increasing its estimate for those two months by 34,000 jobs.

Despite sharp swings in monthly job creation all last year, and big revisions to many initial estimates, the overall trend over the past 12 months appears to have been one of steady if not spectacular employment gains.

But the report also provided many hints that employers are still trying to squeeze their labor costs as much as possible.

Hourly wages were almost stagnant last month, climbing just 0.1 percent in December and 2.7 percent for the year. Weekly wages climbed slightly faster, because workers put in more hours on average, but both measures of pay lagged behind the last year`s inflation rate of 3.5 percent.

Manufacturing companies, which shed more than two million jobs between 2000 and the end of 2003, added back only 96,000 jobs in 2004 - possibly the weakest rebound in factory employment of any economic recovery on record in the United States.

The December numbers provided no hint of better times ahead for factory workers. The nation added almost no factory jobs for the third month in a row, and the trend was discouraging: the Labor Department noted that almost all of the last year`s added jobs came at the very start of the year.

Economists said the employment report, while somewhat disappointing, pointed to an economy that is continuing to grow. Analysts are predicting that the economy will expand about 3.5 percent in 2005, slower than the rate of 4 percent or more achieved in 2004 but still faster than average.

"It`s a solid report," said Mark Zandi of Economy.com. "There were just enough jobs to create just enough income to keep consumers spending and the economy moving forward."

But Mr. Zandi said the sluggish rise in wages for a second straight month suggested that workers have little bargaining power with employers despite last year`s strong growth and climbing corporate profits.

"That`s good news for business - it means that profits should be strong - but not for the average American," Mr. Zandi said.

Today`s employment report shows that the economy has edged close to the number of jobs that existed before the 2001 recession began, although the adult population has grown by about four million since then.

Service industries have accounted for almost all the new job creation over the past year. The Labor Department said that employment in business and professional services increased by 546,000 jobs in 2004. Employment in health care services climbed 342,000.

But one notable weakness in the job market was in retail sales, which shed roughly 20,000 jobs in December on a seasonally adjusted basis. That was a sharp turnaround from earlier in the year.

Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, said the cuts "were presumably triggered by retailers` grim sales over the Thanksgiving weekend."

But Mr. Yamarone of Argus Research said decline was clear evidence of the encroachment of Internet sales on conventional stores. He noted that while sales forces were being cut, the number of temporary workers went up, an increase that he said that likely included holiday hiring by UPS and other delivery services.

"What it shows you is the presence of the Internet," Mr. Yamarone said. "You don`t need sales people anymore. You need people to deliver goods."

The figures come on the heels of reports from retailers indicating a modestly positive holiday season. Retail sales rose 3.1 percent compared with those a year earlier, but only after many merchants marked down a substantial portion of their inventories just before Christmas.

The new data is unlikely to have much impact on the Federal Reserve`s plan to keep raising interest rates at a gradual pace over the year ahead.

The central bank has been ratcheting up short-term rates since last June, gradually reversing the cheap-money policies it had imposed to shore up the economy during the recession of 2001 and the anemic recovery that followed.

Fed officials have become markedly more concerned in the last month or two about inflationary pressures. In minutes released this week from the Fed`s December meeting on interest rates, officials expressed concerned about higher oil prices, slowing productivity growth, "excessive speculation" and the inflationary impact of a weaker foreign exchange rate for the dollar.

If anything, the comments suggested that some Fed officials are pushing to raise rates more quickly and drop their previous pledge to move at a "measured" pace.

John O`Neil contributed reporting from New York for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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`Mississippi burning` hieß der Film, in dem diese Vorgänge von 1964 dargestellt worden.
Es liegen noch einige Leichen in den Kellern der Südstaaten der USA. Es scheint so, dass jetzt nach vielen Jahren der eine oder andere Fall aufgearbeitet werden.
In allen großen Zeitungen sind heute Berichte über den Prozeß.
NYTimes:
January 7, 2005
First Murder Charge in `64 Civil Rights Killings of 3
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/07/national/07mississippi.htm…
LATimes:
Not Guilty Plea Entered in `64 Rights Slaying
A preacher and reputed Ku Klux Klan leader pleaded not guilty today in Mississippi on murder charges in the deaths of three young civil rights workers.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-010705civi…
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Klansman Pleads Not Guilty to `Mississippi Burning` Murders
79-Year-Old Arrested for Killing 3 Civil Rights Workers in 1964

By Manuel Roig-Franzia and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 7, 2005; 4:46 PM

PHILADELPHIA, Miss., Jan. 7 -- A reputed Ku Klux Klan member pleaded not guilty Friday to state charges of murdering three civil rights workers more than 40 years ago in one of the most notorious crimes of Mississippi`s troubled past.

Wearing handcuffs and an orange prison jumpsuit, Edgar Ray Killen, 79, loudly answered "not guilty" three times when asked how he pleaded to the murder charges in the deaths of James Chaney, 21, of Mississippi, and two New Yorkers: Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24. The three were slain in June 1964 while working to promote voting rights among Mississippi`s blacks.

Killen, who was arrested Thursday after a grand jury heard evidence in the case, was taken to the Neshoba County Jail after his arraignment and held without bond pending a hearing next week. Shortly after the proceeding, authorities cleared the courthouse because of a bomb threat, but no explosives were found.

Neshoba County District Attorney Mark Duncan said he had sought indictments against seven other men in the case but that the grand jury decided to indict only Killen, the alleged ringleader of the group that killed the three civil rights workers.

"If the prosecution has the effect of healing people, particularly the families of the victims, I`m all for it," Duncan said after Friday`s brief arraignment hearing.

A former Baptist minister known as "The Preacher," Killen is the first person to be arrested on murder charges in the 41-year-old case, which was dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning." The names of the three murder victims have long been synonymous with the horrors that often accompanied attempts to desegregate the Deep South and bring basic voting rights to the disenfranchised.

"It`s something that was late in coming," Goodman`s mother, Carolyn Goodman, 89, said in a telephone interview Thursday from her home in New York. "I just knew that somehow this would happen -- it`s something that had to be."

Killen was one of 19 men arrested in December 1964 on federal conspiracy charges, but an all-white jury was unable to reach a verdict in his case when he went on trial three years later, and he was never retried.

The case, like so many slayings of the civil rights era, lingered in the minds of the next generations of civil rights activists. It came to be known as the "Mississippi Burning" case after the film`s release, but its mysteries remained unsolved. As the years passed, evidence surfaced, keeping the case alive for the victims` family members, who have maintained that justice was denied.

In 1999, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger published an interview with Sam Bowers, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who said he was glad to see the ringleader of the crime go free. Later, a group known as the Philadelphia Coalition pushed Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to reopen the investigation. Previous attorneys general had looked into the case, including Michael Moore, the former top Mississippi lawyer best known for his role in the nationwide settlement between the states and major tobacco companies. But no arrests had been made.

Mississippi has had some success over the years in exorcising demons of its past with high-profile prosecutions of decades-old cases. In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted in the 1963 assassination of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, 37. In 2003, Ernest Avants, 72, a reputed Klansman, was convicted of killing a black sharecropper named Ben Chester White as part of a plot to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. by luring him to southern Mississippi.

Avants had been acquitted in 1967 -- the same year that the men accused of killing Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney went on trial. One of those men -- Billy Wayne Posey, who was convicted of conspiracy in 1967 -- was among those who streamed into the grand jury room Thursday in Philadelphia, a pit-stop town of 7,300 northeast of the capital city of Jackson.

"After 40 years, to come back and do something like this is ridiculous . . . like a nightmare," Posey said, according to the Associated Press.

Reopening the case has not appeased all the victims` relatives. Ben Chaney, the younger brother of James Chaney, has called the latest investigation a sham that may target one or two unrepentant Klansmen but spare wealthy and influential whites who he said had a hand in the killings. Ben Chaney told the Associated Press that he and others had asked Hood early last year to turn the case over to the FBI with the goal of having a special prosecutor named to take up the investigation.

The slayings of the multiracial trio -- Schwerner and Goodman were white and Chaney was black -- took place during the fabled Freedom Summer, when hundreds of idealistic young people flooded into the South to educate blacks about voting rights. The three friends were arrested in Neshoba County but were allegedly handed over by a deputy sheriff to Klansmen led by Killen on the night of June 21, 1964. The three were later found buried in the muck of a country dam. They had been beaten and shot.

After a massive federal investigation, seven men were convicted on federal conspiracy charges in 1967, but none of the men faced murder charges and none served more than six years in prison. Killen went free when the jury could not reach a verdict on his guilt. One juror reportedly said he refused to vote to convict a preacher.

Carolyn Goodman said Thursday that she hoped the men who killed her son would someday be "behind bars and think about what they`ve done." She found herself thinking about the last time she spoke with her son. He was resolute, she said.

"He said, `Mom, these people are our people. I want to make our Constitution real to them,` " she recalled, her voice quavering slightly with the conflicting emotions of the day. "He said, `I have to go there.` It was hard for us to say, but we said, `Yes.` "

Branigin reported from Washington.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Wo bleibt das Positive? Bitte!
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“Miss Beazley has a bipartisan pedigree. Her father, Ch. Motherwell Alberta Clipper, was born Election Day 2000, and his call name is Clinton. (His siblings, Bush and Gore, did not survive.) Clinton is also Barney`s half brother, making Barney an uncle, of sorts. The first lady and her daughters named Beazley for a character in a children`s book, "The Enormous Egg," a fable written by Oliver Butterworth in 1956 in response to McCarthy-era abuses. Uncle Beazley, the book`s triceratops protagonist, outgrew his little town and came to Washington, where he fought a senator trying to have him exterminated for being out of place.”
[urlWashington Post]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54605-2005Jan6.html[/url]
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Wenn die Diskussion über die Wahl zu Verbesserungen im US-Wahlsystem führen würden, wäre viel erreicht.
Es wurde immer betrogen und das von beiden Seiten.
Interessant ist auch der Wahlsieg eines demokratischen Gouverneurs in Washington (State) mit 126 Stimmen, nachdem bei den ersten Auszählungen der Rep geführt hatte.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002144016_g…

GLOBE EDITORIAL
Ballot box basics

January 7, 2005

POLITICS OUTWEIGHED policy in yesterday`s congressional debate on voting irregularities in the presidential election. But those who objected to the partisanship will serve themselves and the nation better if they stop scrapping and take the steps needed -- some of them obvious -- to fix the problems.

Republicans claimed that Democrats took the unusual step of challenging the certification of President Bush`s victory in the Electoral College merely to give themselves a soapbox, and they are right. Many Democrats who debated heartily ended up voting to certify all 286 of Bush`s votes -- even those from disputed Ohio.

Still, it was a worthwhile move because the November elections showed that much more needs to be done to give American voters confidence that the electoral process is sound.

It is true, as some in the GOP said, that many voting problems are the fault of state and local officials. But this is all the more reason for Congress to go back to work and improve the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

To start: Computer voting systems should be required to leave paper records. The handling of provisional ballots should be standardized. Ineffective systems should be modernized. And access to the ballot should be comparable in areas that are rich and poor, white and minority, Democratic and Republican. At least in elections for federal office, these improvements should be mandated by Congress. It is a disgrace that the 2002 legislation fell so far short.

Apart from appearances, Republicans objected to the Democrats` challenge yesterday because even though many examples of voting problems have been found in many states, no evidence has been uncovered of any fraudulent effort to steal the election. And in any event, Bush won Ohio by more than 118,000 votes.

But this is just the point. If a loser takes the oath and serves as president, it doesn`t improve things a great deal if the mistake occurs by accident rather than theft. And the fact that Bush was the clear victor this time should only underline the need for certainty. His victory was clear but narrow -- a shift of only 60,000 votes in Ohio would have left the nation in turmoil for the second straight election.

Congress should establish electoral reform as a top priority for this session to improve balloting in the 2006 midterm elections and assure that the next president will be chosen by the voters, not by mischance, fraud, or the Supreme Court.

The two Democrats who demanded congressional debate on the issue yesterday -- Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio -- deserve credit, not scorn, for advancing a cause fundamental to the union.
Boston Globe

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#225

Eins was mich am meisten stört, ist die Abhängigkeit der USA von China und anderen Gläubigerländern.
Dadurch sind die USA durch Erpressungen verwundbar und dadurch auch die gesamte westliche Wirtschaft.

Vielleicht brauchen die USA ihre scheinbar überzogene Rüstung, um sich vor ihren Gläubigern zu schützen?

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Das erste Mal als ich von Dahr Jamail etwas gelesen habe, das war zum Ende 2003.
Er war mehr aus eigenem Antrieb mit wenig Geld nach Baghdad gereist. Der einzige Hintergrund, den er hatte, war eine unbekannte US-Menschenrechtgruppe.
Seine Artikel hatten von Anfang an immer eine Authentizität ohne Wehleidigkeit.
Er war zwischenzeitlich immer mal wieder weg, hat aber in diesem guten Jahr eine erstaunliche Bekanntheit erworben.
Eine erstaunliche Entwicklung.
Hier im Link einer der ersten Artikel von ihm, als er im Nov.03 in Baghad eintraf. Ist auch hier im Thread ab Ende 03 zu finden.
Er ist einer der Wenigen, der unabhängig aus dem Irak berichtet. Augenblicklich ist er wohl in Amman.
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/2003_11_23.php

Das ist sein neuster Artikel mit einigen Links in den Vorbemerkungen:
Tomgram: Dahr Jamail on Devastated Iraq

This post can be found at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2109

Measure Iraq any way you want and it adds up to disaster: Less electricity is now being delivered than in the Saddam Hussein years; infant malnourishment has, according to a Norwegian study, doubled in the same time period ("It`s on the level of some African countries," says the deputy director of the institute that conducted the study); attacks on the country`s oil infrastructure are now so severe that no oil whatsoever is leaving the country heading north; there are far more insurgents and sympathizers (over 200,000 and growing) than American troops in the country, according to a recent estimate by Iraq`s national intelligence chief; new plans with a distinctly Vietnam-ish ring to them are being developed to place sizeable numbers of American "advisers" with newly trained Iraqi military units that are under siege and crumbling (to "bolster the Iraqi will to fight") -- and that just scratches the surface of this moment.

Perhaps no item catches the moment more eerily than one I found at journalist Sam Smith`s Undernews blog. The "Iraqi capital Baghdad has degenerated from one of the Middle East`s most attractive and affluent cities in 1990 to `the least attractive city` in the world to live in" for expatriates, according to Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Mercer`s "quality of life" survey just ranked the Iraqi capital last, beaten out by the Central African Republic`s Bangui and the civil-war riven Congo`s Brazzaville.

And that`s but a tiny snapshot of the devastating Iraqi present. But for us memory is short. If it weren`t, Americans would be less continuously surprised about our ever more disastrous Iraq adventure. Below, freelance reporter Dahr Jamail returns to the early months of 2004 to remind us -- from his travels through Iraq -- just how much the seeds of the present lie in what, for us, is an already half-erased past.

Jamail is a remarkable young journalist; in some sense, possibly the only unembedded American reporter living in dangerous Iraq. The other American reporters, even when not embedded with the military, are essentially embedded in their own large media outfits with guards, fixers, support technicians, and special protective vehicles, and so almost as constrained as any American official in the capital`s Green Zone. In Iraq, the media itself has, at least in reports that have come to me, an almost military aspect to it (and that`s been true since our major papers and TV networks first "mobilized" for war in conjunction with the Pentagon).

Jamail, on the other hand, moves around as best he can alone (except for a translator) and quite undefended. He writes me:

"Not a believer in embedded journalism due to the censorship inherent in the process, I travel among the Iraqi people to get the story from the ground. Regularly invited into people`s homes and businesses, I try to directly report the experience of Iraqis and how they feel about the occupation and events unfolding in their country. Due to my independent style of reporting, I can go places where most reporters are unable to, and report on stories that are usually overlooked by most mainstream media outlets."

A former freelancer from Alaska, he`s proving in person that other kinds of reporting than those we normally experience are still possible in Iraq. If you want to learn more about him, click here or visit his own website and blog -- or just plunge into his Iraq. Tom

Iraq: The Devastation
By Dahr Jamail

The devastation of Iraq? Where do I start? After working 7 of the last 12 months in Iraq, I`m still overwhelmed by even the thought of trying to describe this.

The illegal war and occupation of Iraq was waged for three reasons, according to the Bush administration. First for weapons of mass destruction, which have yet to be found. Second, because the regime of Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda, which Mr. Bush has personally admitted have never been proven. The third reason -- embedded in the very name of the invasion, Operation Iraqi Freedom -- was to liberate the Iraqi people.

So Iraq is now a liberated country.

I`ve been in liberated Baghdad and environs on and off for 12 months, including being inside Fallujah during the April siege and having warning shots fired over my head more than once by soldiers. I`ve traveled in the south, north, and extensively around central Iraq. What I saw in the first months of 2004, however, when it was easier for a foreign reporter to travel the country, offered a powerful -- even predictive -- taste of the horrors to come in the rest of the year (and undoubtedly in 2005 as well). It`s worth returning to the now forgotten first half of last year and remembering just how terrible things were for Iraqis even relatively early in our occupation of their country.

Then, as now, for Iraqis, our invasion and occupation was a case of liberation from -- from human rights (think: the atrocities committed in Abu Ghraib which are still occurring daily there and elsewhere); liberation from functioning infrastructure (think: the malfunctioning electric system, the many-mile long gas lines, the raw sewage in the streets); liberation from an entire city to live in (think: Fallujah, most of which has by now been flattened by aerial bombardment and other means).

Iraqis were then already bitter, confused, and existing amid a desolation that came from myriads of Bush administration broken promises. Quite literally every liberated Iraqi I`ve gotten to know from my earliest days in the country has either had a family member or a friend killed by U.S. soldiers or from the effects of the war/occupation. These include such everyday facts of life as not having enough money for food or fuel due to massive unemployment and soaring energy prices, or any of the countless other horrors caused by the aforementioned. The broken promises, broken infrastructure, and broken cities of Iraq were plainly visible in those early months of 2004 -- and the sad thing is that the devastation I saw then has only grown worse since. The life Iraqis were living a year ago, horrendous as it was, was but a prelude to what was to come under the U.S. occupation. The warning signs were clear from a shattered infrastructure, to all the torturing, to a burgeoning, violent resistance.

Broken Promises

It was quickly apparent, even to a journalistic newcomer, even in those first months of last year that the real nature of the liberation we brought to Iraq was no news to Iraqis. Long before the American media decided it was time to report on the horrendous actions occurring inside Abu Ghraib prison, most Iraqis already knew that the "liberators" of their country were torturing and humiliating their countrymen.

In December 2003, for instance, a man in Baghdad, speaking of the Abu Ghraib atrocities, said to me, "Why do they use these actions? Even Saddam Hussein did not do that! This is not good behavior. They are not coming to liberate Iraq!" And by then the bleak jokes of the beleaguered had already begun to circulate. In the dark humor that has become so popular in Baghdad these days, one recently released Abu Ghraib detainee I interviewed said, "The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house!"

Sadiq Zoman is fairly typical of what I`ve seen. Taken from his home in Kirkuk in July, 2003, he was held in a military detention facility near Tikrit before being dropped off comatose at the Salahadin General Hospital by U.S. forces one month later. While the medical report accompanying him, signed by Lt. Col. Michael Hodges, stated that Mr. Zoman was comatose due to a heart attack brought on by heat stroke, it failed to mention that his head had been bludgeoned, or to note the electrical burn marks that scorched his penis and the bottoms of his feet, or the bruises and whip-like marks up and down his body.

I visited his wife Hashmiya and eight daughters in a nearly empty home in Baghdad. Its belongings had largely been sold on the black market to keep them all afloat. A fan twirled slowly over the bed as Zoman stared blankly at the ceiling. A small back-up generator hummed outside, as this neighborhood, like most of Baghdad, averaged only six hours of electricity per day.

Her daughter Rheem, who is in college, voiced the sentiments of the entire family when she said, "I hate the Americans for doing this. When they took my father they took my life. I pray for revenge on the Americans for destroying my father, my country, and my life."

In May of 2004, when I went to their house, a recent court-martial of one of the soldiers complicit in the widespread torturing of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib had already taken place. He had been sentenced to some modest prison time, but Iraqis were unimpressed. They had been convinced yet again -- not that they needed it -- that Bush administration promises to clean up its act regarding the treatment of detained Iraqis were no less empty than those being offered for assistance in building a safe and prosperous Iraq.

Last year, the empty promises to bring justice to those involved in such heinous acts, along with promises to make the prison at Abu Ghraib more transparent and accessible, fell on distraught family members who waited near the gates of the prison to see their loved ones inside. Under a scorching May sun I went to the dusty, dismal, heavily-guarded, razor-wire enclosed "waiting area" outside Abu Ghraib. There, I heard one horror story after another from melancholy family members doggedly gathered on this patch of barren earth, still hoping against hope to be granted a visit with someone inside the awful compound.

Sitting alone on the hard packed dirt in his white dishdasha, his head scarf languidly flapping in the dry, hot wind, Lilu Hammed stared unwaveringly at the high walls of the nearby prison as if he were attempting to see his 32 year-old son Abbas through the concrete walls. When my interpreter Abu Talat asked if he would speak with us, several seconds passed before Lilu slowly turned his head and said simply, "I am sitting here on the ground waiting for God`s help."

His son, never charged with an offense, had by then been in Abu Ghraib for 6 months following a raid on his home which produced no weapons. Lilu held a crumpled visitation permission slip that he had just obtained, promising a reunion with his son…three months away, on the 18th of August.

Along with every other person I interviewed there, Lilu had found consolation neither in the recent court martial, nor in the release of a few hundred prisoners. "This court-martial is nonsense. They said that Iraqis could come to the trial, but they could not. It was a false trial."

At that moment, a convoy of Humvees full of soldiers, guns pointing out the small windows, rumbled through the front gate of the penal complex, kicking up a huge dust cloud that quickly engulfed everyone. The parent of another prisoner, Mrs. Samir, waving away the clouds of dust said, "We hope the whole world can see the position we are in now!" and then added plaintively, "Why are they doing this to us?"

Last summer I interviewed a kind, 55 year-old woman who used to work as an English teacher. She had been detained for four months in as many prisons…in Samarra, Tikrit, Baghdad and, of course, at Abu Ghraib. She was never, she told me, allowed to sleep through a night. She was interrogated many times each day, not given enough food or water, or access to a lawyer or to her family. She was verbally and psychologically abused.

But that, she assured me, wasn`t the worst part. Not by far. Her 70 year-old husband was also detained and he was beaten. After seven months of beatings and interrogations, he died in U.S. military custody in prison.

She was crying as she spoke of him. "I miss my husband," she sobbed and stood up, speaking not to us but to the room, "I miss him so much." She shook her hands as if to fling water off them…then she held her chest and cried some more.

"Why are they doing this to us?" she asked. She simply couldn`t understand, she said, what was happening because two of her sons were also detained, and her family had been completely shattered. "We didn`t do anything wrong," she whimpered.

With the interview over, we were walking towards our car to leave when all of us realized that it was 10 pm, already too late at night to be out in dangerous Baghdad. So she asked us instead if we wouldn`t please stay for dinner, all the while thanking me for listening to her horrendous story, for my time, for writing about it. I found myself speechless.

"No, thank you, we must get home now," said Abu Talat. By this time, we were all crying.

In the car, as we drove quickly along a Baghdad highway directly into a full moon, Abu Talat and I were silent. Finally, he asked, "Can you say any words? Do you have any words?"

I had none. None at all.

Broken Infrastructure

Everything in Iraq is set against the backdrop of shattered infrastructure and a nearly complete lack of reconstruction. What the Americans turn out to be best at is, once again, promises -- and propaganda. During the period when the Coalition Provisional Authority ruled Iraq from Baghdad`s Green Zone, their handouts often read like this one released on May 21, 2004: "The Coalition Provisional Authority has recently given out hundreds of soccer balls to Iraqi children in Ramadi, Kerbala, and Hilla. Iraqi women from Hilla sewed the soccer balls, which are emblazoned with the phrase ‘All of Us Participate in a New Iraq.`"

And yet when it came to the basics of that New Iraq, unemployment was at 50% and increasing, better areas of Baghdad averaged 6 hours of electricity per day, and security was nowhere to be found. Even as far back as January, 2004, before the security situation had brought most reconstruction projects to the nearly complete standstill of the present moment, and 9 months after the war in Iraq had officially ended, the situation already verged on the catastrophic. For instance, lack of potable water was the norm throughout most of central and southern Iraq.

I was then working on a report that attempted to document exactly what reconstruction had occurred in the water sector -- a sector for which Bechtel was largely responsible. That giant corporation had been awarded a no-bid contract of $680 million behind closed doors on April 17, 2003, which in September was raised to $1.03 billion; then Bechtel won an additional contract worth $1.8 billion to extend its program through December 2005.

At the time, when travel for Western reporters was a lot easier, I stopped in several villages en route south from Baghdad through what the Americans now call "the triangle of death" to Hilla, Najaf, and Diwaniyah to check on people`s drinking-water situation. Near Hilla, an old man with a weathered face showed me his water pump, sitting lifeless with an empty container nearby -- as there was no electricity. What water his village did have was loaded with salt which was leaching into the water supply because Bechtel had not honored its contractual obligations to rehabilitate a nearby water treatment center. Another nearby village didn`t have the salt problem, but nausea, diarrhea, kidney stones, cramps, and even cases of cholera were on the rise. This too would be a steady trend for the villages I visited.

The rest of that trip involved a frenetic tour of villages, each without drinkable water, near or inside the city limits of Hilla, Najaf, and Diwaniya. Hilla, close to ancient Babylon, has a water treatment plant and distribution center managed by Chief Engineer Salmam Hassan Kadel. Mr. Kadel informed me that most of the villages in his jurisdiction had no potable water, nor did he have the piping needed to repair their broken-down water systems, nor had he had any contact with Bechtel or its subcontractors.

He spoke of large numbers of people coming down with the usual list of diseases. "Bechtel," he told me, "is spending all of their money without any studies. Bechtel is painting buildings, but this doesn`t give clean water to the people who have died from drinking contaminated water. We ask of them that instead of painting buildings, they give us one water pump and we`ll use it to give water service to more people. We have had no change since the Americans came here. We know Bechtel is wasting money, but we can`t prove it."

At another small village between Hilla and Najaf, 1,500 people were drinking water from a dirty stream which trickled slowly by their homes. Everyone had dysentery; many had kidney stones; a startling number, cholera. One villager, holding a sick child, told me, "It was much better before the invasion. We had twenty-four hours of running water then. Now we are drinking this garbage because it is all we have."

The next morning found me at a village on the outskirts of Najaf, which fell under the responsibility of Najaf`s water center. A large hole had been dug in the ground where the villagers tapped into already existing pipes to siphon off water. The dirty hole filled in the night, when water was collected. That morning, children were standing idly around the hole as women collected the residue of dirty water which sat at its bottom. Everyone, it seemed, was suffering from some water-born illness and several children, the villagers informed me, had been killed attempting to cross a busy highway to a nearby factory where clean water was actually available.

In June, six months later, I visited Chuwader Hospital, which then treated an average of 3,000 patients a day in Sadr City, the enormous Baghdad slum. Dr. Qasim al-Nuwesri, the head manager there, promptly began describing the struggles his hospital was facing under the occupation. "We are short of every medicine," he said and pointed out how rarely this had occurred before the invasion. "It is forbidden, but sometimes we have to reuse IV`s, even the needles. We have no choice."

And then, of course, he -- like the other doctors I spoke with – brought up their horrendous water problem, the unavailability of unpolluted water anywhere in the area. "Of course, we have typhoid, cholera, kidney stones," he said matter-of-factly, "but we now even have the very rare Hepatitis Type-E…and it has become common in our area."

Driving out of the sewage filled, garbage strewn streets of Sadr City we passed a wall with "Vietnam Street" spray painted on it. Just underneath was the sentence -- obviously aimed at the American liberators -- "We will make your graves in this place."

Today, in terms of collapsing infrastructure, other areas of Baghdad are beginning to suffer the way Sadr City did then, and still largely does. While reconstruction projects slated for Sadr City have received increased funding, most of the time there is little sign of any work being done, as is the case in most of Baghdad.

While an ongoing fuel crisis finds people waiting up to two days to fill their tanks at gas stations, all of the city is running on generators the majority of the time, and many less favored areas like Sadr City have only four hours of electricity a day.

Broken Cities

The heavy-handed tactics of the occupation forces have become a commonplace of Iraqi life. I`ve interviewed people who regularly sleep in their clothes because home raids are the norm. Many times when military patrols are attacked by resistance fighters in the cities of Iraq, soldiers simply open fire randomly on anything that moves. More commonly, heavy civilian casualties occur from air raids by occupation forces. These horrible circumstances have led to over 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties in the less than two year-old occupation.

Then there is Fallujah, a city three-quarters of which has by now been bombed or shelled into rubble, a city in whose ruins fighting continues even while most of its residents have yet to be allowed to return to their homes (many of which no longer exist). The atrocities committed there in the last month or so are, in many ways, similar to those observed during the failed U.S. Marine siege of the city last April, though on a far grander scale. This time, in addition, reports from families inside the city, along with photographic evidence, point toward the U.S. military`s use of chemical and phosphorous weapons as well as cluster bombs there. The few residents allowed to return in the final week of 2004 were handed military-produced leaflets instructing them not to eat any food from inside the city, nor to drink the water.

Last May, at the General Hospital of Fallujah, doctors spoke to me of the sorts of atrocities that occurred during the first month-long siege of the city. Dr. Abdul Jabbar, an orthopedic surgeon, said that it was difficult to keep track of the number of people they treated, as well as the number of dead, due to the lack of documentation. This was caused primarily by the fact that the main hospital, located on the opposite side of the Euphrates River from the city, was sealed off by the Marines for the majority of April, just as it would again be in November, 2004.

He estimated that at least 700 people were killed in Fallujah during that April. "I worked at five of the centers [community health clinics] myself, and if we collect the numbers from these places, then this is the number," he said. "And you must keep in mind that many people were buried before reaching our centers."

When the wind blew in from the nearby Julan quarter of the city, the putrid stench of decaying bodies (a smell evidently once again typical of the city) only confirmed his statement. Even then, Dr. Jabbar was insisting that American planes had dropped cluster bombs on the city. "Many people were injured and killed by cluster bombs. Of course they used cluster bombs. We heard them as well as treated people who had been hit by them!"

Dr. Rashid, another orthopedic surgeon, said, "Not less than sixty percent of the dead were women and children. You can go see the graves for yourself." I had already visited the Martyr Cemetery and had indeed observed the numerous tiny graves that had clearly been dug for children. He agreed with Dr. Jabbar about the use of cluster bombs, and added, "I saw the cluster bombs with my own eyes. We don`t need any evidence. Most of these bombs fell on those we then treated."

Speaking of the medical crisis that his hospital had to deal with, he pointed out that during the first 10 days of fighting the U.S. military did not allow any evacuations from Fallujah to Baghdad at all. He said, "Even transferring patients in the city was impossible. You can see our ambulances outside. Their snipers also shot into the main doors of one of our centers." Several ambulances were indeed in the hospital`s parking lot, two of them with bullet holes in their windshields.

Both doctors said they had not been contacted by the U.S. military, nor had any aid been delivered to them by the military. Dr. Rashid summed the situation up this way: "They send only bombs, not medicine."

As I walked to our car at one point amid what was already the desolation of Fallujah, a man tugged on my arm and yelled, "The Americans are cowboys! This is their history! Look at what they did to the Indians! Vietnam! Afghanistan! And now Iraq! This does not surprise us."

And that, of course, was before the total siege of the city began in November, 2004. The April campaign in Fallujah, which resulted in a rise in resistance proved -- like so much else in those early months of 2004 -- to be but a harbinger of things to come on a far larger scale. While the goal of the most recent siege was to squelch the resistance and bring greater security for elections scheduled for January 30, the result as in April has been anything but security.

In the wake of the destruction of Fallujah fighting has simply spread elsewhere and intensified. Families are now fleeing Mosul, Iraq`s third largest city, because of a warning of another upcoming air campaign against resistance fighters. At least one car bomb per day is now the norm in the capital city. Clashes erupt with deadly regularity throughout Baghdad as well as in cities like Ramadi, Samarra, Baquba and Balad.

The intensification is two-sided. With each ratchet upwards in violence, the tactics by the American military only grow more heavy-handed and, as they do, the Iraqi resistance just continues to grow in size and effectiveness. Any kind of "siege" of Mosul will only add to this dynamic.

Despite a media blackout in the aftermath of the recent assault on Fallujah, stories of dogs eating bodies in the streets of the city and of destroyed mosques have spread across Iraq like wildfire; and reports like these only underscore what most people in Iraq now believe -- that the liberators have become no more than brutal imperialist occupiers of their country. And then the resistance grows yet stronger.

Yet among Iraqis the growing resistance was predicted long ago. One telling moment for me came last June amid daily suicide car bombings in Baghdad. While footage of cars with broken glass and bullet holes in their frames flashed across a television screen, my translator Hamid, an older man who had already grown weary of the violence, said softly, "It has begun. These are only the start, and they will not stop. Even after June 30." That, of course, was the date of the long-promised handover of "sovereignty" to a new Iraqi government, after which, American officials fervently predicted, violence in the country would begin to subside. The same pattern of prediction and of a contrarian reality can now be seen in relation to the upcoming elections.

Three weeks ago, a friend of mine who is a sheikh from Baquba visited me in Baghdad and we had lunch with Abdulla, an older professor who is a friend of his. As we were eating, Abdulla expressed a sentiment now widely heard. "The mujahideen," he said, "are fighting for their country against the Americans. This resistance is acceptable to us."

The Bush administration has recently increased its troops in Iraq from 138,000 to 150,000 -- in order, officials said, to provide greater security for the upcoming elections. Such troop increases also occurred in Vietnam. Back then it was called escalation.

What I wonder is, will I be writing a piece next January still called, "Iraq: The Devastation," in which these last terrible months of 2004 (of which the first half of the year was but a foreshadowing) will prove in their turn but a predictive taste of horrors to come? And what then of 2006 and 2007?

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist from Anchorage, Alaska. He has spent 7 of the last 12 months reporting from inside occupied Iraq. His articles have been published in the Sunday Herald, Inter Press Service, the website of the Nation magazine, and the New Standard internet news site for which he was the Iraq correspondent. He is the special correspondent in Iraq for Flashpoints radio and also has appeared on the BBC, Democracy Now!, Free Speech Radio News, and Radio South Africa. This is his first piece for Tomdispatch.com.

Copyright C2004 Dahr Jamail

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January 8, 2005
CAPTURED INSURGENTS
U.S. Said to Hold More Foreigners in Iraq Fighting
By DOUGLAS JEHL and NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - After raids in recent months that captured hundreds of insurgents in Iraq, the United States has significantly increased the number of prisoners it says are foreign fighters, a group the Bush administration contends are not protected by the Geneva Conventions, American officials said.

A Pentagon official said Friday that the United States was now holding 325 foreign fighters in Iraq, a number that the official said had increased by 140 since Nov. 7, just before the invasion of Falluja. Many of the non-Iraqis were captured in or around that city.

Many of them are suspected of links to Al Qaeda or the related terror networks supporting the insurgency in Iraq, senior Bush administration officials said this week.

Some of the non-Iraqis who were involved in the insurgency there could be transferred out of the country for indefinite detention elsewhere, the officials said, as they have been deemed by the Justice Department not to be entitled to protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, testifying Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to become attorney general, noted that the Justice Department had issued a legal opinion last year saying non-Iraqis captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

"We had members of Al Qaeda, intent on killing Americans, flooding into or coming into Iraq," Mr. Gonzales testified. "And the question was legitimately raised, in my judgment, as to whether or not - what were the legal limits about how to deal with these terrorists."

"There was a fear about creating a sanctuary for terrorists if we were to say that if you come and fight against America in the conflict with Iraq, that you would receive the protections of a prisoner of war," he said.

He confirmed that the Justice Department had issued "some guidance with respect to whether or not non-Iraqis who came into Iraq as part of the insurgency, whether or not they would also or likewise enjoy the protection of the Geneva Convention. And I believe the conclusion was that they would not."

The disclosure about new foreign detainees comes as a high-level group in the administration is struggling to come up with a long-term plan for how to handle the hundreds of prisoners accused of links to the Taliban and Al Qaeda who are already in American custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

The administration has asserted an authority to detain such prisoners indefinitely, as unlawful combatants, but officials have acknowledged that they cannot say how or when the war on terrorism might be deemed to have reached an end.

A senior American official said in an interview this week that the vast majority of the 550 prisoners now held at the American detention center at Guantánamo no longer had any intelligence value and were no longer being regularly interrogated. Still, the official said the Defense Department planned to hold hundreds of them indefinitely, without trial, out of concern that they continue to pose a threat to the United States and cannot safely be sent to their home countries.

"You`re basically keeping them off the battlefield, and unfortunately in the war on terrorism, the battlefield is everywhere," a senior administration official said.

The extraordinary circumstances surrounding the suspected Qaeda and Taliban prisoners have prompted increasing statements of concern from members of Congress, who say the administration has shown little sign of willingness to put the prisoners on trial and who have questioned whether there is adequate legal basis for their indefinite detention.

"It is time for Congress to thoroughly consider whether locking them away for life on the coast of Cuba or wherever is the appropriate solution," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

As part of the plan for their long-term detention, a Pentagon proposal nearing final approval in the administration calls for the construction of a second, permanent prison at Guantánamo, at a cost of at least $25 million, to hold about 200 of the suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban who are seen as posing the highest security risk.

The original purpose of detaining the prisoners at Guantánamo was said to be to interrogate them for information about terrorist operations. But at least three-quarters of the 550 prisoners there are no longer seen as worthy of regular interrogation, the senior American official said, reflecting a judgment that he said had been made in recent months.

That assertion is at odds with statements made as recently as November by the top American commander at Guantánamo Bay, Brig. Gen. Jay Hood. He told reporters that the "vast majority" of the prisoners still had valuable information to impart.

"Are they still of potential intelligence value to our mission? Yes." General Hood said. Asked if many of the detainees were of little value, he said the vast majority were still useful as an intelligence resource.

The military has put in place two separate quasi-legal proceedings at Guantánamo that officials have said will confirm that almost all were properly imprisoned as enemy combatants and then will allow the authorities to reduce the population.

Most of the 550 prisoners at the camp have been through the first process and deemed to have been properly imprisoned as unlawful combatants. The military has just begun the second process, an annual review as to whether they could be released because they are no longer judged to be threats.

Military officials say no prisoners captured in Iraq have been transferred to Guantánamo. But government officials acknowledged last fall that about a dozen non-Iraqis suspected of ties to Al Qaeda had been transferred out of Iraq by the Central Intelligence Agency between March 2003 and March 2004 to undisclosed locations.

Asked about the review of non-Iraqi prisoners now under way, the officials have left open the possibility that more could be transferred to secret facilities run by the C.I.A. outside the United States. Those facilities are believed to house a total of about two dozen suspected high-ranking officials of Al Qaeda, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and others.

When administration officials first described the legal opinion on detainees in Iraq in October, they acknowledged that the transfer of non-Iraqis by the C.I.A. had already taken place.

Until last fall, the administration had asserted that the full protections of Geneva, including the prohibition on the transfer of prisoners, applied broadly to the conflict in Iraq, and had given no indication that any exception was being made for non-Iraqis.

Altogether, the United States military still holds about 8,500 prisoners in Iraq, including about 7,500 at three main prisons in Iraq and an 1,000 or so at temporary battlefield detention centers. All are classified as security detainees, American military officials say.

As for the American detention center at Guantánamo, intelligence veterans not associated with the prison camp have long indicated that it was highly unlikely that most of the detainees could still have any valuable intelligence.

A veteran interrogator at Guantánamo told The New York Times in a recent interview that it became clear over time that most of the detainees had little useful to say and that "they were just swept up" during the Afghanistan war with little evidence they played any significant role.

"These people had technical knowledge that expired very quickly after they were brought here," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"Most of the emphasis was on quantity, not quality," the interrogator said, adding that the number of pages generated from an interrogation was an important standard.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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January 9, 2005
Was Lincoln Gay?
By RICHARD BROOKHISER
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THE INTIMATE WORLD OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By C. A. Tripp.
Edited by Lewis Gannett.
343 pp. Free Press. $27.
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THIS book is already getting noticed. In ``The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln,`` C. A. Tripp contends that Lincoln had erotic attractions and attachments to men throughout his life, from his youth to his presidency. He further argues that Lincoln`s relationships with women were either invented by biographers (his love of Ann Rutledge) or were desolate botches (his courtship of Mary Owens and his marriage to Mary Todd). Tripp is not the first to argue that Lincoln was homosexual -- earlier writers have parsed his friendship with Joshua Speed, the young store owner he lived with after moving to Springfield, Ill. -- but he assembles a mass of evidence and tries to make sense of it.

Tripp died in May 2003, after finishing the manuscript of this book, which means he never had a chance to fix its flaws. The prose is both jumpy and lifeless, like a body receiving electric shocks. Tripp alternates shrewd guesses and modest judgments with bluster and fantasy. He drags in references to Alfred Kinsey (with whom he once worked) to give his arguments a (spurious) scientific sheen. And he has an ax to grind. He is, most famously, the author of ``The Homosexual Matrix.`` Published in 1975, it was a document of gay liberation. Since the other president sometimes thought to have been gay is the wretched James Buchanan, what gay activist wouldn`t want to trade up to Lincoln? Still, obsession can discover things that have been overlooked by less fevered minds.

Tripp surveys seven of Lincoln`s relationships, four with men and three with women, as well as two episodes from his early life. The discussion of Lincoln`s youth is worthless. Relying on Lincoln`s law partner and earliest biographer, William Herndon, Tripp decides that Lincoln reached puberty when he was 9 years old. Since Kinsey concluded that early maturing boys tended to become witty masturbators with lots of homosexual experience, Tripp concludes the same of Lincoln. He claims even more for Lincoln`s adolescence, including a source for his religious heterodoxy. ``Since Lincoln had already arrived on his own at the powerful pleasures of orgasm . . . one can be sure that like most precocious youngsters he was in no mood to give it all up for bookish or Bible reasons.`` One can be sure, if one is as credulous as Tripp.

Lincoln`s story becomes interesting when Tripp discusses real people. In 1831, when he was 22, Lincoln moved to New Salem, an Illinois frontier town, where he met Billy Greene. Greene coached Lincoln in grammar and shared a narrow bed with him. ``When one turned over the other had to do likewise,`` Greene told Herndon. Bed-sharing was common enough in raw settlements, but Greene also had vivid memories of Lincoln`s physique: ``His thighs were as perfect as a human being could be.`` Everyone saw that Lincoln was tall and strong, but this seems rather gushing.

Six years later, Lincoln moved to Springfield, where he met Joshua Speed, who became a close friend; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, two early biographers, called him ``the only -- as he was certainly the last -- intimate friend that Lincoln ever had.`` Lincoln and Speed shared a double bed in Speed`s store for four years (for two of those years, two other young men shared the room, though not the bed). More important than the sleeping arrangements was the tone of their friendship. Lincoln`s letters to Speed before and after Speed`s wedding in 1842 are as fretful as those of a general before a dubious engagement. Several of them are signed ``Yours forever.``

By contrast, Lincoln`s relations with women are either problematic or distant. Ann Rutledge was the daughter of a New Salem tavernkeeper with whom Lincoln boarded in 1832. Three years later she died of malaria and typhoid. Lincoln biographers have been feuding for decades over whether Lincoln loved her. Tripp, naturally, sides with the skeptics. He concedes that Lincoln was devastated by her death, but argues that it was death itself that distressed him.

In 1836 Lincoln courted Mary Owens. Tripp correctly characterizes his diffident suit as ``reaching forward while sharply leaning back.`` In 1837 Owens broke the relationship off. Lincoln then wrote a jeering letter to a friend, explaining that he had lost interest because Owens was so fat. ``I knew she was oversize, but now she appeared a fair match for Falstaff.`` The nervous hostility of this letter, disguised as humor, is cringe-making. (Tripp finds it hilarious.)

The longest relationship of Lincoln`s life was with his wife, Mary Todd, whom he married in 1842; they had four children, on whom Lincoln doted. Mary Lincoln`s character is also dark and bloody ground for biographers. Tripp unhelpfully suggests that she had a psychopathic personality, like ``various outlaw types, from Hitler down to myriad petty criminals.`` Explosive, imperious, profligate, she may well have been mad. But in fairness to her, Lincoln was maddening -- remote and unavailable, when he was not physically absent.

Tripp highlights two relations with men from Lincoln`s presidency. Col. Elmer Ellsworth was a flashy young drillmaster, ``the greatest little man I ever met,`` as Lincoln put it. Lincoln recruited him to his Springfield law office, made him part of his presidential campaign and gave him a high military post as war loomed. A few weeks after the fall of Fort Sumter, Ellsworth was killed hauling a rebel flag down from a hotel in Alexandria, Va. Lincoln was shattered.

For nearly eight months in 1862-3, Capt. David Derickson led the brigade that guarded Lincoln at the Soldiers` Home in the District of Columbia, the Camp David of the day. Derickson, in the words of his regiment`s history, published three decades later, ``advanced so far in the president`s confidence and esteem that in Mrs. Lincoln`s absence he frequently spent the night at his cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him, and -- it is said -- making use of his Excellency`s night shirt!``

Tripp can lay out a case, but his discussion of its implications is so erratic that the reader is often left on his own. One wonders: What does it mean to be homosexual? Not all of the men Lincoln admired were. Ellsworth seems straight as a ruler: he was engaged to a woman he passionately loved when he died. Even Derickson married twice and fathered 10 children (one son was serving in his unit while he was sleeping with Lincoln). Tripp argues that a cultural innocence -- the word ``homosexual`` had not yet been coined -- allowed acts of physical closeness between men that had no deeper meaning, as well as acts that did but could escape scrutiny. We know more than our ancestors, and our reward is that, in some ways, we may do less. In any case, on the evidence before us, Lincoln loved men, at least some of whom loved him back. Their words tell us more than their sleeping arrangements.

What does Lincoln`s erotic life tell us about Lincoln? For a gregarious, popular man, he had few intimates (Tripp`s very title is a misnomer). Like many secretive types -- Benjamin Franklin comes to mind -- he kept the world at bay with a screen of banter. Yet behind the laughs lay an almost bottomless sadness, and sympathy for those he saw as fellow sufferers. There were many Lincolns: the joker, the pol, the logician, the skeptical theologian. But the man of sorrows may be the most important. ``The president has a curious vein of sentiment running through his thought which is his most valuable mental attribute,`` as his secretary of state, William Seward, said. Desiring what he could not consistently have did not make him grieve -- what Virgil called the tears of things did that -- but it may have deepened his grief.

Towering above these Lincolns is the man who saw liberty and equality as facets of the same thing, and who maintained his (he called it his and the founders`) vision in the face of Northern confusion and Southern fury. This is the Lincoln that matters. The rest is biography.

Richard Brookhiser is the author of ``Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution.``


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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The Independent
A routine tale of our times: abuse, beatings, imprisonment and injustice
Saturday, 8th January 2005, by Robert Fisk


I travelled down to Zarqa on Christmas Eve - Zarqa as in "Zarqawi", for it is indeed the home town of the latest of America’s bogeymen, a grey, dirt-poor, windy town south of Amman. The man I went to see was palpably innocent of any crime - indeed, he even has a document from the American military to prove it - but he spent almost two years of his life locked up in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay. Hussein Abdelkader Youssef Mustafa’s story tells you a lot about the "war on terror" and about the abuses that go with it.

Mustafa is a thin, ascetic man with a long pepper-and-salt beard, and he sat on the concrete floor of his brother’s home dressed in a long cloak and a black woollen hat and frameless spectacles. He is a Palestinian by birth but had been a resident in Pakistan since 1985, working in a school near Peshawar, teaching Afghans who had fled the 1980 Soviet invasion, visiting Afghanistan just once, in 1988, to teach at a school near Mazar-e-Sharif. Then on 25 May 2002, Pakistani soldiers and plain-clothes police stormed into his home, tied Mustafa up, led him out of the house past two Westerners, a man and a woman in civilian clothes - he assumes they were American FBI agents - and dumped him in the old Khaibar prison for 10 days. He was interrogated there by a blond, Arabic-speaking American and then taken to Peshawar airport where he was freighted off with 34 other Arabs - illegally under international law - to the large American base at Bagram in Afghanistan.

"We had been hooded in the plane, and when we arrived they stripped us naked and gave us overalls with numbers on. I was 171 and then I spent two months under interrogation," Mustafa told me. "They were Americans, usually in uniform but without names. They wanted to know about my life, about what Afghans I’d met, about where false passports came from. I knew nothing about this. I told them all about myself. I said I was innocent. They made me stand on one leg in the sun. They wouldn’t let me sleep for more than two hours. We had only a barrel for a toilet and had to use it in front of everyone."

In the hours to come, I will learn that the Jordanian authorities have told Mustafa not to talk any more about his experiences - no doubt, the Americans told the Jordanians to shut him up. But he would admit later: "My torture was even less than what they did to others. A broomstick was inserted in my backside and I was beaten severely and water was thrown on me before facing an air conditioner." And why did he think the Americans did this to him? "If a prisoner did not comply and cooperate in details in Bagram, he would be abused according to how convinced the interrogator thought he was guilty; and to reach the stage of ’not guilty’ in the eyes of the interrogator, one went through a long period of being physically abused."

After two months, and 15 interrogations, Mustafa says one of his American questioners told him he believed he was innocent. "He said to me: ’Have you seen Cuba on the television? I’m going to make you one of the prisoners there. I’m very sorry, it’s out of our hands. Your names are in Washington now. You have to go to Cuba.’ We were tied up, blindfolded, handcuffed and chains were attached to us. They put dark eyeglasses on us so we couldn’t see. They covered our ears and nose and mouth so I could hardly breathe. On the plane, they pushed three or four pills into my mouth, drugs. I felt all the time I was between sleeping and waking. It took 24 hours to reach Cuba and we stopped once on the way and changed planes about four hours after leaving Bagram."

Diego Garcia? Was this the mystery airbase? Were these chained, hooded, drugged Muslims taken via our very own and very British Diego Garcia?

Mustafa says he was less harshly treated at Guantanamo Bay. One of his interrogators was an American Iraqi. "I was shut up first in isolation in a room made all of metal. Even the floor was metal. There was just a small slit in the door. They kept going through my background papers, asking me the same questions over and over. Why was I a teacher in Pakistan? Why had I gone to Afghanistan? Sometimes in the showers, the American women soldiers could see us naked. They shaved off our beards. If we didn’t obey orders quickly, they sprayed mace in our faces. In Bagram, they beat the men with sticks. Here they didn’t do that. But many men tried to commit suicide in Guantanamo. I remember at least 30. We’d see them hanging themselves and shout: "Soldiers! Quickly!", and the Americans would come and take them down."

In all, Mustafa spent 20 months in Cuba, and in the last 10 of those months, he says, no one asked him a single question. "Then one day, they gave me a lie detector test and medical tests and fitted me for clothes and gave me jeans and a jacket and trainers. Three days later, an American translator said we were leaving. I asked where to, and he said: "I have no idea, but we have nothing more to do with you."

After five days, hooded and bound, Mustafa was put on an aircraft with an Iraqi, a Turk and two Tajiks and flown back to Bagram. The irises of his eyes were photographed. "We were told we were now ’guests’, but I spent another four months in Bagram. Then an American officer came to see us and said: ’As you know, we were subject to a very big attack and thousands of our people were murdered. That’s why we took in all these people. Now you will return to your country as any other citizen and you don’t have any kind of problem to face.’ And that was it? No apology, nothing. I was flown back to Amman."

Mustafa was given a document by the US Combined Joint Task Force 76 at Bagram. "This individual," it says, "has been determined to pose no threat to the United States armed forces or its interests in Afghanistan. This individual has been released into the vicinity of his capture location."

The Red Cross confirmed Mustafa’s release on a paper which named his home village of birth as "Silat al-Hatezia, Palestine". But the Americans didn’t have that much courage. Faced with the little problem of Mustafa’s country of birth, you can see how they must have fretted over this one. Dare they put the word "Palestine"? Of course not. So beside "Country", they wrote "West Bank".

Mustafa is out of work now, living with his family in Zarqa, but with no future. Two years were taken out of his life, and his story - shameful though it is - is now so routine as to be forgettable. When the Red Cross first disclosed to me back in 2002 that Mustafa had been taken illegally from Pakistan to Afghanistan, I wrote about this in The Independent. Not a single newspaper picked up on the story. But it tells us a lot about the illegal world in which George Bush believes we must live. September 11, 2001 has become a piece of legislation. It allows us to arrest who we want, question who we want, abuse who we want, lock up who we want, invade whatever countries we want. This is the Bush administration’s memorial to the dead of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Beat, abuse, imprison the innocent - only, it is clear in Mustafa’s case, for information - and to hell with it. Why, you can even invent a new name for the prisoner’s country. West Bank, indeed!

Von Gestern:
The Independent
Suddenly, there is debate in Beirut: how can Syria keep Lebanon while condemning Israel?
Friday, 7th January 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://www.selvesandothers.org/article7509.html

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/

Heute mal verlinkt.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Election Woes

[urlNancy Yousef of Knight Ridder]http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/10592636.htm[/url] reports from Baghdad that campaigning for the January 30 elections has worsened ethnic tensions. Her interviews with university students reveal that the Shiites she talked to are determined to vote, where the Sunnis are afraid to do so, having received death threats.

Speaking of death threats, she reveals that 2 members of Nasser Chadirchi`s 48-person Arab nationalist list have resigned on receiving such threats, and that the others are afraid to reveal their names. He estimates that each candidate needs 8 bodyguards if the person is to actively campaign.

[urlBorzou Daragahi reports for AP]http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-19/1104907387307830.xml[/url] that Sadr City, with ten percent of the country`s population, has put up its own electoral list. Regionally-based lists should not do as well as national ones, given the way the electoral rules have been set up. But if Sadr City does give its list any significant number of votes, and if some Sadrists elsewhere vote for the list on ideological grounds, it could get 10 or 15 seats in the 227-member parliament. A similar number of at least vaguely pro-Sadr delegates is likely to be seated in the United Iraqi Alliance. So it is not impossible that Sadrist will form five to ten percent of the new parliament. On many religious issues they could form strong alliances with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and al-Dawa, the other major Shiite groupings, to put through puritanical laws.

[urlOn the other hand, initial opinion polling]http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d0be3802-60d2-11d9-af5a-00000e2511c8.html[/url] in Baghdad and the Shiite south suggests that the list of secular ex-Baathist Iyad Allawi, the current interim prime minister, may get as much as 22 percent of the vote. The United Iraqi Alliance, the list cobbled together at Grand Ayatollah Sistani`s behest, comes in with 27% in the poll.

I very much doubt that when the elections actually come, Allawi`s list will do that well, or the UIA that poorly. A lot of Iraqis will make up their minds at the last moment, and get good information only at that time. The Dawa Party alone had 18 percent support in one recent poll, and it is only one element of the United Iraqi Alliance.

The guerrilla insurgency is attempting to derail the elections with bombings and attacks. [urlAir force Brig.-Gen. Erv Lessel,]http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050107/w010774.html[/url] the deputy chief of staff for strategic communications in Iraq, predicted spectacular attacks in the period running up to the elections, but said he had no specific intelligence on that score.

Meanwhile, the big death tolls from single bombing instances in past weeks have leadthe Pentagon to send a wideranging investigative team to Iraq with a charge to improve the way things are being done and to find ways of accelerating the training of Iraqi troops.

posted by Juan @ [url1/8/2005 02:51:08 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/election-woes-nancy-yousef-of-knight.html[/url]

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January 9, 2005
Germany Looks Into a U.S. Link in Kidnapping and Torture Claim
By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and SOUAD MEKHENNET

MUNICH - On the afternoon of Dec. 31, 2003, Khaled el-Masri was traveling on a tourist bus headed for the Macedonian capital, Skopje, where he was hoping to escape the "holiday pressures" of home life during a weeklong vacation.

When the bus reached the Serbia-Macedonia border, Mr. Masri said, he was asked the usual questions: Where are you going? How long will you be staying? Mr. Masri, a German citizen, did not think much of it, until he realized that the border guards had confiscated his passport.

The bus moved on, but an increasingly panicked Mr. Masri was ordered to stay behind. A few hours later, Mr. Masri, a 41-year-old unemployed car salesman, said he was taken to a small, windowless room and was accused of being a terrorist by three men who were dressed in civilian clothes but carrying pistols.

"They asked a lot of questions - if I have relations with Al Qaeda, Al Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood," recalled Mr. Masri, who was born in Lebanon. "I kept saying no, but they did not believe me."

It was the first day of what Mr. Masri said would become five months in captivity. In an interview, he said that after being kidnapped by the Macedonian authorities at the border, he was turned over to officials he believed were from the United States. He said they flew him to a prison in Afghanistan, where he said he was shackled, beaten repeatedly, photographed nude, injected with drugs and questioned by interrogators about what they insisted were his ties to Al Qaeda.

He was released without ever being charged with a crime. The German police and prosecutors have been investigating Mr. Masri`s allegations since he reported the matter to them last June, two weeks after his return to Germany. Martin Hofmann, the lead German prosecutor in Munich, who is in charge of the case, and another official, a senior organized crime investigator in southern Germany, say they believe Mr. Masri`s story. They said investigators interviewed him for 17 hours over two days, that his story was very detailed and that he recounted it consistently. In addition, the officials said they have verified specific elements of the case, including that Mr. Masri was forced off the bus at the border.

Still, much of Mr. Masri`s story has not been corroborated. His assertion that he was held by Americans in Afghanistan, for example, is solely based on what he said he observed or was told after he was taken off the bus in Macedonia.

Mr. Masri said he was confounded by his captors` insistence that he was a Qaeda operative. He attends a mosque in Ulm, Germany, that has been closely watched by the authorities because several suspected terrorists have worshiped there. But those authorities say Mr. Masri has never been a suspect.

Mr. Masri`s lawyer, Manfred R. Gnjidic, said he suspected that his client was swept into the C.I.A.`s policy of "renditions" - handing custody of a prisoner from United States control to another country for the purposes of interrogation - because he shares the same name, with a slightly different spelling, as a man wanted in the Sept. 11 attacks. The policy has come under increasing criticism as other cases have come to light recently.

Although the German authorities says they have no specific suspects in the Masri case, they say they are looking into the possible role of the United States and other countries.

"It is an unusual case," Mr. Hofmann said. "The political dimension is huge. Under German law, we can charge a person with kidnapping, but not a country. Countries cannot kidnap people."

Officials at Germany`s national intelligence agency said they are also investigating. They said they asked the F.B.I. for assistance last fall but have received little help.

In a series of interviews, neither the C.I.A. nor the F.B.I. would deny or confirm Mr. Masri`s allegations. A C.I.A. spokeswoman said the agency would not comment at all. Senior F.B.I. officials in Washington acknowledged that they received a request for help from the Germans last October, and said they were assisting in the investigation. The officials disputed that they had not worked aggressively on the case.

"This is a very ongoing thing, and we are working together with the Germans to resolve it," a senior official said. "Our hope is we can get to the bottom of it." The official declined to discuss whether the bureau had had any contact with the C.I.A. or Pentagon about the allegations.

Golan Pavlovski, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Macedonia, said he had no information about Mr. Masri`s case.

Similar Cases

When he returned home last June, Mr. Masri said, he felt relief but also rage. Asked whom he blames, Mr. Masri, a burly, soft-spoken man, looked at his hands for a long moment before saying, "Of course, I blame the Americans first."

Mr. Masri`s allegations bear similarities to the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian born in Syriawho was suspected of being a Qaeda operative. Mr. Arar, who was detained in New York in 2002, says he was sent by the United States to Syria, where he says he was repeatedly tortured during 10 months in prison.

A second detainee, Mamdouh Habib, an Australian, has asserted in court papers that he was tortured in an Egyptian prison for nearly six months in 2001 before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The allegations were contained in a motion filed with a federal court recently. Mr. Habib`s lawyer has asked the federal district court in Washington to block the Bush administration from sending him back to Egypt, asserting that he would be tortured again there.

The C.I.A. began the renditions program in the early 1990`s, but its use has increased since the Sept. 11 attacks. Human rights organizations, who say the policy is tantamount to government-sponsored kidnapping, estimate that dozens of "high value" detainees are being held in secret locations around the world. C.I.A. officials have acknowledged that the agency conducts renditions, but say they do not condone the use of torture during interrogations.

Mr. Masri, who had not gone public with his case, agreed to give an interview last month after being approached by The New York Times. During the interview, he spoke without notes, and in great detail, about his case. He said he was able to recount his time in captivity because he wrote down his experiences right after he was released.

The timeline was corroborated by documents, including a bus ticket and a stamp on his passport in Albania on May 29, the date he said he was released. He returned to Germany on June 3. His account also matched details in a report about his case written by Amnesty International, whose officials interviewed Mr. Masri on June 21.

"Mr. Masri had been questioned twice for a lot of hours, and he always has said the same things, he never changed details," Mr. Hofmann said in an interview about his country`s investigation. "Therefore I don`t think it would be possible that someone could invent such a story."

Mr. Masri said his ordeal began after he decided to go on a short holiday without his family after arguing with his wife, choosing Skopje because it was inexpensive and friends had recommended it.

After being interrogated the first night in Macedonia, Mr. Masri, who speaks German and Arabic, was taken to a motel on the outskirts of Skopje, where he said several men held him for 23 days. "They told me: `You are not arrested. You aren`t handcuffed, are you?` " Mr. Masri recalled. But he said he was not permitted to leave.

He said the men continued to question him about Al Qaeda. After several days, Mr. Masri said he lost his temper, demanded to speak with officials from the German government and tried to escape. "One man put his pistol in his hand and showed it to me, to stop me from leaving," Mr. Masri said.

Another week went by, he said, before another man arrived to question him. "He was nice to me," he recalled. "He said we`ll make a deal - you say you are an Al Qaeda member, and sign a paper saying that, and we`ll put you back on a plane and you will be deported to Germany."

Mr. Masri said he refused. The man left only to return two days later, he said, but this time he was more combative. "He said I`m not cooperative, I bring problems on myself, they know everything about me," Mr. Masri said. He said the man asserted that Mr. Masri was originally from Egypt and had been to a Qaeda training camp in Pakistan - allegations that Mr. Masri said he repeatedly denied.

After three and a half weeks, Mr. Masri said he was told that he could return to Germany. The Macedonians took a statement from him on videotape to show he was in good health when he left their country, he said. Afterward, Mr. Masri said he was permitted to leave the motel, but a few steps down the road, a pickup truck pulled up next to him, and several men grabbed him.

A Flight to Kabul

Mr. Masri said that a hood was put over his head but that he believed he was driven to the airport because he could hear the roar of planes. He said he was brought to a room and beaten. He said his clothes were cut off him with knives and he heard the sounds of cameras taking pictures. "After I was naked they took off my mask so I could see, and all the people were in black clothes and black masks," he said. "There were seven or eight people."

Mr. Masri said a couple of men put him in a blue warm-up suit, handcuffed him and tied his hands to his belt, put earplugs in and blindfolded him. He said he was put on a plane, where he was forced to lie on the floor. Someone injected his arm, and he said he fell into a deep sleep.

After an unknown number of hours, he said, he awoke to find that the plane had landed. He said he was taken to a building, where he was imprisoned in a tiny, cold cell. "Everything was dirty - a dirty blanket, dirty water - like from a fish aquarium," he said.

On the walls in his cell were words written in Arabic and what he believed was Farsi. Mr. Masri said that his captors and fellow prisoners told him he was in Kabul, Afghanistan.

That first evening in prison, Mr. Masri said, a man he assumed was a doctor, wearing a thin black mask, came to his cell to take a vial of blood. He said he believed that the doctor was American because he spoke English. Mr. Masri said he was repeatedly punched in the head and neck by several guards who accompanied the doctor. He also said he was forced to run up and down stairs with his arms shackled behind his back.

The following morning, Mr. Masri said, an interrogator walked into his cell and, in a thick Lebanese accent, began shouting at him. "He told me, `Where you are right now there is no law, no rights, no one knows you are here, and no one cares about you.` "

Mr. Masri said the man had a stack of documents and told him they knew "everything" about him, including that he was an associate of Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who is believed to have helped the hijackers. They also accused him of being a senior Qaeda operative who was trained in Jalalabad, he said. "I denied everything - I kept saying, `No, no, no.` "

His lawyer, Mr. Gnjidic, said he thought that his client had been confused with the Sept. 11 suspect because that man, Khalid al-Masri, is believed by American authorities to have had contact with Mr. bin al-Shibh and Mr. Atta and to have been partly responsible for directing them to a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. It was there that the two men met Osama bin Laden, who enlisted them for the Sept. 11 mission.

More weeks went by, and Mr. Masri said he then met a man who presented himself as a top lieutenant at the prison. He believes that man was also an American, based on his accent.

"They asked me about Ulm, how many people go to the mosque, how often do they pray," he said. "I told them. When I asked why I was there, I never got an answer."

In March, Mr. Masri said he began a hunger strike. On the 35th day, he said an Afghan prison guard told him, "The Americans don`t care if you live or die."

Two days later, he said he was beaten once again and forcibly fed liquid through a tube shoved down his throat.

Mr. Masri said he then ended his hunger strike. He said he was getting to know his fellow prisoners - there were two Pakistani brothers and a man from Tanzania who had been there for several months. He also said there was a Pakistani man who had been there nearly two years.

"I`m sure those men will take revenge, after what was done to them," Mr. Masri said. "Some said to me - we hope to get out of here and then have the power to make something happen against the Americans."

Weeks went by. In May, Mr. Masri said he met a man he believed was German and was introduced as "Sam." The man posed the same series of questions - mostly about any dealings he may have had with Mr. Atta and Mr. bin al-Shibh. "He was friendly," Mr. Masri said. "So I said, `Can you please tell me if my family knows where I am?` And the German said, `No, they don`t know.` "

The German authorities said they were unable to confirm that a German agent was in the prison.

The Return Home

A week later, Mr. Masri said, he was blindfolded, taken to the airport and put on a flight, and then placed on a bus, where he was driven for six or seven hours. His blindfold was removed, and a man told him to walk down a deserted, winding mountain road, he said. "I had the feeling after a few steps, they`d shoot me in the back," he said.

He walked around the bend and came upon another border crossing, where three men in uniforms waited for him, he said. Mr. Masri said he told one of the men about his five months in captivity. "The man was laughing at me," he said. "He said: `Don`t tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh.` "

Mr. Masri asked where they were; the man said in northern Albania, near the Macedonian border. The border officer handed Mr. Masri a plastic box containing the belongings that were taken from him on the first day of his captivity, including his passport and cash, he said. The man told him he was free to go, and his passport was stamped by the nation of Albania, on May 29, 2004.

From there, he bought an airplane ticket and flew to Frankfurt. Once in Germany, Mr. Masri said he returned to his hometown, Ulm, but his wife and four sons, ages 6 to 2, were not at home. "I feared the worst - I feared something happened to my family," he said. Four days later, he found them at his wife`s mother`s home in Lebanon.

In an interview, Mr. Masri`s wife, Aischa, said she had moved back to Lebanon after not hearing from her husband. She said she began thinking, "Maybe he has gone to marry another woman."

Mrs. Masri, 29, said she did not expect to see him again. "The boys have cried a lot in Lebanon. They always have asked me, "Why are we here, Mom, and where is Daddy,` " she said, and then began to weep. "From time to time, I called his friends in Germany and asked them if they heard anything from him or about him. But no one knew anything."

Mr. Masri said he was still trying to rebuild his life. He said he had no steady employment, and almost no friends. "The phone doesn`t ring - people have heard, and they don`t want to see me," he said.

It was not until last August that Mr. Masri was told by his lawyer that he shared the same name as the Sept. 11 suspect.

Mr. Masri said he was bedeviled by questions that he and the German authorities still could not answer. "There are so many questions," he said. "How did it happen? Why did it happen? I don`t know."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Meritocracy in America

Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend
Dec 29th 2004 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
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Whatever happened to the belief that any American could get to the top?

THE United States likes to think of itself as the very embodiment of meritocracy: a country where people are judged on their individual abilities rather than their family connections. The original colonies were settled by refugees from a Europe in which the restrictions on social mobility were woven into the fabric of the state, and the American revolution was partly a revolt against feudalism. From the outset, Americans believed that equality of opportunity gave them an edge over the Old World, freeing them from debilitating snobberies and at the same time enabling everyone to benefit from the abilities of the entire population. They still do.

To be sure, America has often betrayed its fine ideals. The Founding Fathers did not admit women or blacks to their meritocratic republic. The country`s elites have repeatedly flirted with the aristocratic principle, whether among the brahmins of Boston or, more flagrantly, the rural ruling class in the South. Yet America has repeatedly succeeded in living up to its best self, and today most Americans believe that their country still does a reasonable job of providing opportunities for everybody, including blacks and women. In Europe, majorities of people in every country except Britain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia believe that forces beyond their personal control determine their success. In America only 32% take such a fatalistic view.

But are they right? A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace: would-be Horatio Algers are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of the social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society.

The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in inequality in America. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, argues that between 1979 and 2000 the real income of households in the lowest fifth (the bottom 20% of earners) grew by 6.4%, while that of households in the top fifth grew by 70%. The family income of the top 1% grew by 184%—and that of the top 0.1% or 0.01% grew even faster. Back in 1979 the average income of the top 1% was 133 times that of the bottom 20%; by 2000 the income of the top 1% had risen to 189 times that of the bottom fifth.

Thirty years ago the average real annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was $1.3m: 39 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is $37.5m: over 1,000 times the pay of the average worker. In 2001 the top 1% of households earned 20% of all income and held 33.4% of all net worth. Not since pre-Depression days has the top 1% taken such a big whack.

More dynastic than dynamic

Most Americans see nothing wrong with inequality of income so long as it comes with plenty of social mobility: it is simply the price paid for a dynamic economy. But the new rise in inequality does not seem to have come with a commensurate rise in mobility. There may even have been a fall.

The most vivid evidence of social sclerosis comes from politics. A country where every child is supposed to be able to dream of becoming president is beginning to produce a self-perpetuating political elite. George Bush is the son of a president, the grandson of a senator, and the sprig of America`s business aristocracy. John Kerry, thanks to a rich wife, is the richest man in a Senate full of plutocrats. He is also a Boston brahmin, educated at St Paul`s, a posh private school, and Yale—where, like the Bushes, he belonged to the ultra-select Skull and Bones society.

Mr Kerry`s predecessor as the Democrats` presidential nominee, Al Gore, was the son of a senator. Mr Gore, too, was educated at a posh private school, St Albans, and then at Harvard. And Mr Kerry`s main challenger from the left of his party? Howard Brush Dean was the product of the same blue-blooded world of private schools and unchanging middle names as Mr Bush (one of Mr Bush`s grandmothers was even a bridesmaid to one of Mr Dean`s). Mr Dean grew up in the Hamptons and on New York`s Park Avenue.

The most remarkable feature of the continuing power of America`s elite—and its growing grip on the political system—is how little comment it arouses. Britain would be in high dudgeon if its party leaders all came from Eton and Harrow. Perhaps one reason why the rise of caste politics raises so little comment is that something similar is happening throughout American society. Everywhere you look in modern America—in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts—you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.

It`s sticky out there

All this may sound a bit impressionistic. But more and more evidence from social scientists suggests that American society is much “stickier” than most Americans assume. Some researchers claim that social mobility is actually declining. A classic social survey in 1978 found that 23% of adult men who had been born in the bottom fifth of the population (as ranked by social and economic status) had made it into the top fifth. Earl Wysong of Indiana University and two colleagues recently decided to update the study. They compared the incomes of 2,749 father-and-son pairs from 1979 to 1998 and found that few sons had moved up the class ladder. Nearly 70% of the sons in 1998 had remained either at the same level or were doing worse than their fathers in 1979. The biggest increase in mobility had been at the top of society, with affluent sons moving upwards more often than their fathers had. They found that only 10% of the adult men born in the bottom quarter had made it to the top quarter.

The Economic Policy Institute also argues that social mobility has declined since the 1970s. In the 1990s 36% of those who started in the second-poorest 20% stayed put, compared with 28% in the 1970s and 32% in the 1980s. In the 1970s 12% of the population moved from the bottom fifth to either the fourth or the top fifth. In the 1980s and 1990s the figures shrank to below 11% for both decades. The figure for those who stayed in the top fifth increased slightly but steadily over the three decades, reinforcing the sense of diminished social mobility.

Not all social scientists accept the conclusion that mobility is declining. Gary Solon, of the University of Michigan, argues that there is no evidence of any change in social-mobility rates, down or up. But, at the least, most people agree that the dramatic increase in income inequality over the past two decades has not been accompanied by an equally dramatic increase in social mobility.

Take the study carried out by Thomas Hertz, an economist at American University in Washington, DC, who studied a representative sample of 6,273 American families (both black and white) over 32 years or two generations. He found that 42% of those born into the poorest fifth ended up where they started—at the bottom. Another 24% moved up slightly to the next-to-bottom group. Only 6% made it to the top fifth. Upward mobility was particularly low for black families. On the other hand, 37% of those born into the top fifth remained there, whereas barely 7% of those born into the top 20% ended up in the bottom fifth. A person born into the top fifth is over five times as likely to end up at the top as a person born into the bottom fifth.

Jonathan Fisher and David Johnson, two economists at the Bureau of Labour Statistics, looked at inequality and social mobility using measures of both income and consumption. They found that mobility “slightly decreased” in the 1990s. In 1984-90, 56% and 54% of households changed their rankings in terms of income and consumption respectively. In 1994-99, only 52% and 49% changed their rankings.

Two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston analysed family incomes over three decades. They found that 40% of families remained stuck in the same income bracket in the 1990s, compared with 37% of families in the 1980s and 36% in the 1970s. Aaron Bernstein of Business Week points out that, even though the 1990s boom lifted pay rates for low-earners, it did not help them to get better jobs.

There is also growing evidence that America is less socially mobile than many other rich countries. Mr Solon finds that the correlation between the incomes of fathers and sons is higher in the United States than in Germany, Sweden, Finland or Canada. Such cross-national comparisons are rife with problems: different studies use different methods and different definitions of social status. But Americans are clearly mistaken if they believe they live in the world`s most mobile society.

Back to the 1880s

This is not the first time that America has looked as if it was about to succumb to what might be termed the British temptation. America witnessed a similar widening of the income gap in the Gilded Age. It also witnessed the formation of a British-style ruling class. The robber barons of the late 19th century sent their children to private boarding schools and made sure that they married the daughters of the old elite, preferably from across the Atlantic. Politics fell into the hands of the members of a limited circle—so much so that the Senate was known as the millionaires` club.

Yet the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a concerted attempt to prevent America from degenerating into a class-based society. Progressive politicians improved state education. Philanthropists—many of them the robber barons reborn in new guise—tried to provide ladders to help the lads-o`-parts (Andrew Carnegie poured millions into free libraries). Such reforms were motivated partly out of a desire to do good works and partly out of a real fear of the implications of class-based society. Teddy Roosevelt advocated an inheritance tax because he thought that huge inherited fortunes would ruin the character of the republic. James Conant, the president of Harvard in 1933-53, advocated radical educational reform—particularly the transformation of his own university into a meritocracy—in order to prevent America from producing an aristocracy.

Pushy parents, driven brats

The evils that Roosevelt and Conant worried about are clearly beginning to reappear. But so far there are few signs of a reform movement. Why not?

The main reason may be a paradoxical one: because the meritocratic revolution of the first half of the 20th century has been at least half successful. Members of the American elite live in an intensely competitive universe. As children, they are ferried from piano lessons to ballet lessons to early-reading classes. As adolescents, they cram in as much after-school coaching as possible. As students, they compete to get into the best graduate schools. As young professionals, they burn the midnight oil for their employers. And, as parents, they agonise about getting their children into the best universities. It is hard for such people to imagine that America is anything but a meritocracy: their lives are a perpetual competition. Yet it is a competition among people very much like themselves—the offspring of a tiny slither of society—rather than among the full range of talents that the country has to offer.

The second reason is that America`s engines of upward mobility are no longer working as effectively as they once were. The most obvious example lies in the education system. Upward mobility is increasingly determined by education. The income of people with just a high-school diploma was flat in 1975-99, whereas that of people with a bachelor`s degree rose substantially, and that of people with advanced degrees rocketed.


The education system is increasingly stratified by social class, and poor children have a double disadvantage. They attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries (school finances are largely determined by local property taxes). And they have to deal with the legacy of what Michael Barone, a conservative commentator, has labelled “soft America”. Soft America is allergic to introducing accountability and measurement in education, particularly if it takes the form of merit pay for successful teachers or rewards for outstanding pupils. Dumbed-down schools are particularly harmful to poor children, who are unlikely to be able to compensate for them at home.

America`s great universities are increasingly reinforcing rather than reducing these educational inequalities. Poorer students are at a huge disadvantage, both when they try to get in and, if they are successful, in their ability to make the most of what is on offer. This disadvantage is most marked in the elite colleges that hold the keys to the best jobs. Three-quarters of the students at the country`s top 146 colleges come from the richest socio-economic fourth, compared with just 3% who come from the poorest fourth (the median family income at Harvard, for example, is $150,000). This means that, at an elite university, you are 25 times as likely to run into a rich student as a poor one.

One reason for this is government money. The main federal programme supporting poorer students is the Pell grant: 90% of such grants go to families with incomes below $41,000. But the federal government has been shifting resources from Pell grants to other forms of aid to higher education. Student loans are unrelated to family resources. Federal tax breaks for higher education benefit the rich. State subsidies for higher education benefit rich and poor alike. At the same time, colleges are increasingly using financial aid to attract talented students away from competitors rather than to help the poor.

Another reason may be “affirmative action”—programmes designed to help members of racial minorities. These are increasingly used by elite universities, in the belief that race is a reasonable proxy for social disadvantage, which it may not be. Flawed as it may be, however, this kind of affirmative action is much less pernicious than another practised by many universities: “legacy preferences”, a programme for the children of alumni—as if privileged children were not already doing well enough out of the education system.

In most Ivy League institutions, the eight supposedly most select universities of the north-east, “legacies” make up between 10% and 15% of every class. At Harvard they are over three times more likely to be admitted than others. The students in America`s places of higher education are increasingly becoming an oligarchy tempered by racial preferences. This is sad in itself, but even sadder when you consider the extraordinary role that the same universities—particularly Conant`s Harvard—played in promoting meritocracy in the first half of the 20th century.

All snakes, no ladders

America`s great companies are also becoming less successful agents of upward mobility. The years from 1880 to 1960 were a period of great corporate behemoths. These produced a new class of Americans—professional managers. They built elaborate internal hierarchies, and also accepted their responsibilities to both their workers and their local communities. But since the 1970s the pressure of competition has forced these behemoths to become much leaner—to reduce their layers, contract out some activities, and shift from full-time to part-time employees. It has became harder for people to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchy by dint of hard work and self-improvement. And it has also become harder for managers to keep their jobs in a single company.

There are a few shafts of sun on the horizon. George Bush`s No Child Left Behind Act tries to use a mixture of tests and punishments for lousy schools to improve the performance of minority children. Senator Edward Kennedy bangs the drum against legacy preferences. But the bad news outdoes the good. The Republicans, by getting rid of inheritance tax, seem hell-bent on ignoring Teddy Roosevelt`s warnings about the dangers of a hereditary aristocracy. The Democrats are more interested in preferment for minorities than building ladders of opportunity for all.

In his classic “The Promise of American Life”, Herbert Croly noted that “a democracy, not less than a monarchy or an aristocracy, must recognise political, economic, and social distinctions, but it must also withdraw its consent whenever these discriminations show any tendency to excessive endurance.” So far Americans have been fairly tolerant of economic distinctions. But that tolerance may not last for ever, if the current trend towards “excessive endurance” is not reversed.


Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

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January 9, 2005
For Unemployed, Wait for New Work Grows Longer
By JOHN LELAND

When Fabiola Quitiaquez lost her job in New York City last May, she moved to the Atlanta area, confident that she would easily find work there.

"I thought maybe it would take two or three months," she said.

But after six months Ms. Quitiaquez was still unable to find a job, even cleaning houses or caring for the elderly. As her unemployment benefits ran out in November, she found herself at odds with news reports of economic recovery. "I realized what all these people like me were going through," she said.

Ms. Quitiaquez, 50, is one of about 3.6 million American workers who ran out of unemployment insurance benefits last year, the most in at least three decades, said Isaac Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and advocacy group that supports extending unemployment benefits.

Even as overall unemployment dropped last year, the share of unemployed workers who have been jobless for more than six months - the point at which most state benefits run out - has remained historically high. As of November, about 1.8 million, or one in five, unemployed workers were jobless for more than six months, compared with 1.1 million when the recession officially ended in November 2001.

Since the start of the recession in March 2001, the average length of unemployment has risen to 20 weeks from 13.

"Usually at this point in a recovery, job creation is skyrocketing, but so far that hasn`t happened," said Kevin A. Hassett, economic director at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a conservative organization. "It`s not a partisan issue, it`s a fact. The labor market is worse than in the typical recovery."

For Ms. Quitiaquez and many others who run out of unemployment benefits, this has meant a steady stream of difficult choices, as well as emotional and economic stress. She needed emergency dental work. Her daughter`s car required expensive repairs.

"When I was working, things like that would happen, but I was getting a check every week, so I just said, `I`ll pay for this now, but next week I`ll get another check,` " she said.

At Pfizer, where she processed data for clinical studies, Ms. Quitiaquez said she made as much as $1,002 a week before taxes. Her weekly unemployment check was $405, which she supplemented by drawing on savings and a severance package from Pfizer that she said she could not discuss. She sold her modest apartment in New York and bought a house in Atlanta.

Now she has cut corners on her medical care, and she has put off the car repair, even though her daughter has to use a screwdriver to change gears. "I don`t know how much that`s going to cost us," she said. "Then I have high blood pressure and cholesterol. But if you go to a doctor, that`s a luxury."

Ellie Wegener, executive director of the Employment Support Center, a nonprofit group that works with unemployed job seekers in Washington, D.C., said that compared with past years more of the people coming to her group "are living on thin ice," with higher expenses and lower savings.

"There`s a lot of different responses," Ms. Wegener said. "One of the major errors people make when they`re suddenly unemployed, whether they`re skilled or unskilled, is say, `O.K., I`ll take a vacation.` They feel that they`ll get a job easily."

When they do not find work, unemployment begins what Richard H. Price, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, calls a "chain of adversity," which can include marital tension, psychological stress and other problems not immediately tied to the loss of income.

Dr. Price studied 756 people for two years after they lost their jobs. "The first thing that people don`t understand about job loss is that it isn`t the job loss that gets you," he said. "It`s the cascade of negative life events that follow and that reverberate through families. You lose your health benefits, then, if someone in the family has an illness, the family is forced to ration health care. Or you can`t send a child to college, or make a car payment - and then you don`t have transportation to look for a job. Or you can`t sell your house because everyone else in the neighborhood is unemployed, so property values are down."

Cleon Cox, who runs a support group called Job Finders in Portland, Ore., said Internet job boards have added to the stress for some people by creating false expectations and soaking up time and money.

"In the beginning, the Internet is exciting because there are so many listings out there," Mr. Cox said. "People say, `This is great.` But most of the time they end up very frustrated and depressed. One guy said, `It`s as though my incoming phone line has been cut, because I`m sending stuff out there and getting nothing back.` I had a guy who sent 500 résumés, and what got him is he didn`t get one response."

Mark Laska, a computer programmer in Hopkins, Minn., navigates a different pattern of long-term unemployment. For most of the last decade, he has found short periods of well-paid work, sometimes as a computer consultant, alternating with longer stretches without a job. This year he was unemployed until August, except for a one-day-a-week job he found at Walgreens. He does not have health insurance and goes to the emergency room when he needs medical care. He has not exhausted his unemployment benefits, but he has been homeless and once lived in the basement of a laundry.

"They say stress is highest when you don`t know what`s going to happen next," Mr. Laska said. "That`s what I deal with day to day."

Though he would like a permanent job, he said, his résumé and the job market make that difficult.

"If I tell people all the jobs I did, they say, `You`re not steady,` or `It looks like you don`t want a permanent job, because you haven`t worked one,` " he said. "But I can`t find one. Nowadays in the job market, the type of work available is part-time or contract work, or now they`re calling it `seasonal work.` You don`t get benefits."

When Loretta and Eleanor Jones, sisters who live together in Hempstead, N.Y., both were laid off in May, they made a point not to run up credit card debt. They cut down on expenses, and were determined to make the most of their time. They cared for their mother, and both enrolled in training programs for certificates in electrocardiography and phlebotomy.

Loretta Jones, 42, lost her job as a lab assistant at Nassau University Medical Center. Her sister, 43, a senior collector at Chase Manhattan, said her department was moved to Texas and Florida. Their unemployment benefits ran out last month.

"We`re both going to be looking for jobs, but we hope school will improve us," Loretta Jones said. "Our mother was already sick, so it gave us a chance to make sure she was being taken care of."

For Ms. Quitiaquez in Atlanta, being out of work and without unemployment benefits holds no such prospects. If she cannot find a job, she said, she will have to move in with her parents in the Bronx. Her lengthy unemployment has made her think differently about work and the self-esteem associated with it.

"When I was working, I was always thinking of getting ahead, and my title was so important," she said. "Now I don`t care if I have a title. All I care about is to get a job. And to have health benefits."

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The Maestro Slips Out of Tune
By PAUL KRUGMAN

he time has come, in my judgment, to consider a budgetary strategy that is consistent with a pre-emptive smoothing of the glide path to zero federal debt or, more realistically, to the level of federal debt that is an effective irreducible minimum.`` Translation: Go ahead and cut taxes.

With those words, delivered in Senate testimony on Jan. 25, 2001, Alan Greenspan -- revered during the 1990`s as the nonpartisan architect of America`s prosperity -- inserted himself decisively into politics, on the side of George W. Bush. The chairman of the Federal Reserve didn`t specifically endorse Bush`s plans, but his words were exactly what Bush needed. Before Greenspan`s testimony, many political observers questioned whether the victor in a disputed election could get an enormous, controversial tax cut through Congress. After Greenspan spoke, much of the resistance collapsed.

Yet in retrospect we know that Greenspan`s ``judgment`` -- that tax cuts were needed to prevent excessive budget surpluses -- was a misjudgment of Rumsfeldian proportions. In fact, the United States is headed for a budget deficit of more than $400 billion this year, more than half of it a result of tax cuts passed since Greenspan gave Bush his support.

Greenspan is still a figure of enormous prestige and power; he is to economic policy what J. Edgar Hoover once was to law enforcement. After 17 years as Fed chairman, Greenspan has become an icon, and it`s hard to imagine America without him; indeed, last month the president nominated him for a fifth term. Yet his reputation is not what it once was. At the height of the boom, he was the monetary maestro whose advice was sought on many aspects of economic policy. Now his record as a monetary leader has been called into question, and his judgment on fiscal policy has been proved disastrously wrong. Worse, he seems to have abandoned the long tradition that places the Fed above the political fray.

The Making of a Maestro Greenspan is, without question, a very smart man. He has also been very lucky.

He had the good fortune to follow an illustrious predecessor. Paul Volcker assumed office at a time of double-digit inflation. During Volcker`s eight years as Fed chairman, he tamed inflation and steered the world through a major financial crisis, then oversaw a powerful economic recovery. On becoming chairman in August 1987, Greenspan inherited both a healthy economy and an office whose prestige had never been higher.

He enhanced that prestige with his deft handling of the stock market crash of October 1987. Still, in the early 1990`s few would have considered Greenspan a great Fed chairman. When the economy stalled in 1990, Greenspan`s Fed was caught by surprise and was too slow to react by cutting interest rates. What resulted was a nasty if brief recession that, among other things, ensured the first George Bush`s electoral defeat. (Some Wall Street analysts suggest that the second George Bush delayed Greenspan`s latest reappointment to pressure him to keep interest rates low until after the election.)

But then came the great boom.

Greenspan jump-started that boom by cutting interest rates once he realized that the economy was weakening, but any Fed chairman would have done the same thing. After the recovery began, he again followed standard operating procedure. William McChesney Martin, who was Fed chairman from 1951 to 1970, famously said that the Fed`s job is to take away the punch bowl just when the party really gets going -- that is, to raise interest rates and slow down a booming economy before the boom turns into an inflationary spiral. Greenspan dutifully raised interest rates through 1994.

But as the boom continued and the unemployment rate dropped to new lows, he did something unexpected: nothing.

Around 1994, some businessmen began talking about a ``new economy,`` in which old rules no longer applied. In the 70`s and 80`s, an unemployment rate below 6 percent signaled an overheating economy, on the verge of inflation. The new-economy advocates claimed, however, that this was no longer true -- that thanks to accelerating productivity growth and increased competition, it was possible to run much closer to full employment without a takeoff in inflation.

Unlike most economists at the time, Greenspan took those claims seriously. And sure enough, the optimists were right. Over the next six years unemployment fell to 4 percent, a level not seen in 30 years, yet inflation remained quiescent. Greenspan didn`t create the economic miracle of the 90`s, but -- to his great credit -- he didn`t stand in its way. And his name therefore became associated with the boom.

Bubble Trouble ``But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions, as they have in Japan over the past decade?`` Greenspan asked this question in December 1996, expressing his concern that a bubble was developing in the stock market. He had reason to think so: traditional measures of stock valuation, like the price-earnings ratio, were rapidly moving off the charts, and investor psychology was already starting to remind those who knew economic history of the 20`s.

Greenspan`s ``irrational exuberance`` speech was clearly intended to caution the markets. Soon afterward, he raised interest rates slightly, again with the clear intention of sending a warning signal to investors. But then he backed off. There were no more rate increases, and Greenspan began lauding the economy`s achievements. Bad call: his first instinct was right. It was a bubble, after all.

Critics say that by letting the bubble develop unchecked, Greenspan set the stage not just for future market losses but also for trouble in the economy as a whole. Greenspan counters that the Fed can`t target stock prices the way it targets inflation, because you can`t know whether a bull market is a bubble until it bursts. The Fed, he says, should not consider asset prices part of its brief. Is he right?

When the bubble burst, the United States` economy went into recession, just as critics of Greenspan`s inaction feared. Still, if he had been able to lead our economy into a quick, decisive recovery, his position would have been clearly vindicated. But though recovery was quick -- the recession of 2001 officially lasted only eight months -- it wasn`t decisive. On the other hand, if the economy had fallen into a Japan-type deflationary trap, Greenspan would have been proved clearly wrong. That didn`t happen, either. Over the last few months, the recovery has finally started to look like the real thing. We seem to have avoided a Japan syndrome, at least this time.

On balance, I think the critics are right and Greenspan is wrong. We avoided becoming Japan after the bubble burst, but it was a near miss: with interest rates down to 1 percent, the Fed had almost run out of ammunition before the economy turned around. And even if the economy is finally on the mend, over the last three years millions of American workers lost their savings or suffered the indignity and financial hardship of prolonged unemployment -- pain that could have been avoided if Greenspan had burst the bubble before it grew so big.

But this argument will probably go on forever. Fifty years from now, economic historians will still be arguing over whether Greenspan`s performance as monetary manager deserves an A or a B-. What they won`t argue about is Greenspan`s culpability for America`s plunge into deficit.

The Partisan Chairman In the first days of the Bush administration, as we`ve seen, Greenspan gave decisive aid and comfort to the new president, urging Congress to cut taxes in order to prevent excessive budget surpluses. Three years and at least $900 billion in additional debt later, that argument seems ludicrous. And besides giving bad advice, Greenspan was engaging in highly questionable behavior. Since then, rather than make amends, he has compounded the sin.

As an institution, the Federal Reserve is set up more like the Supreme Court than like an ordinary government agency. Members of the Federal Reserve Board serve for long terms; chairmen typically serve across several administrations from both parties. There`s a reason for this: economists often argue that the Fed, like the Supreme Court, must be insulated from the political process so that it can make necessary but unpopular decisions. The quid pro quo for this insulation, however, is that the Fed must stand above the political fray. Like Supreme Court justices, the members of the Fed board undermine the rationale for their independence if they use their power for partisan purposes.

So was that 2001 testimony partisan? Yes. Greenspan argued on the basis of budget projections -- which he must have known are notoriously unreliable -- that the federal government would pay off all its debt in a few years. If this happened, the government would be forced to invest future surpluses in the financial markets -- which, he argued, would be a bad thing. To avoid this outcome, he claimed, surpluses had to be reduced with tax cuts.

It was a peculiar, tortured argument, full of holes. For example, partial privatization of Social Security -- which Greenspan supports -- would impose ``transition costs`` in the trillions of dollars, easily taking care of the supposed problem of excessive budget surpluses. As many warned at the time, Greenspan was also completely wrong about the budget prospect -- projections of huge surpluses quickly gave way to projections of huge deficits.

Above all, Greenspan`s fear-of-surpluses argument was at complete odds with what he had said in the past. All through the Clinton years, Greenspan preached the virtues of fiscal restraint, and he did not change his views when the budget deficits of the 80`s and early 90`s vanished. Just six months before his 2001 testimony, Greenspan saw no problem with large projected budget surpluses. ``The Congress and the administration,`` he said in July 2000, ``have wisely avoided steps that would materially reduce these budget surpluses. Continued fiscal discipline will contribute to maintaining robust expansion of the American economy in the future.`` But then a Republican entered the White House, brandishing a tax-cut proposal -- and Greenspan suddenly developed an elaborate theory of why it was necessary to reduce those surpluses, after all.

Any doubts that Greenspan holds George Bush to different standards than he held Bill Clinton were dispelled in the years that followed. He didn`t call for a reconsideration of the 2001 tax cut when the budget surplus evaporated. He didn`t even offer strong objections to a second major round of tax cuts in 2003, when the budget was already deep in deficit.

Since then, Greenspan has gone back to warning against the evils of budget deficits. But he still hasn`t called for a reconsideration of recent tax cuts; on the contrary, he has endorsed Bush`s plan to make the tax cuts permanent. Instead he calls for spending cuts, emphasizing the need to trim Social Security benefits. I went back to testimony Greenspan gave in February 2001; sure enough, he assured nervous senators that tax cuts would not threaten future Social Security benefits.

But it`s even worse than that. Before Greenspan became Fed chairman, he headed a commission that recommended changes in Social Security to secure its future. The most important recommendation, adopted by Congress, was for an increase in the payroll tax -- a regressive tax that falls much more heavily on lower- and middle-income families than it does on the well-off. The ostensible purpose was to generate a surplus within the Social Security system, building up a trust fund to pay benefits once the baby boomers retire.

That was the bait; now Greenspan has pulled the switch. The sequence looks like this: he pushed through an increase in taxes on working Americans, generating a Social Security surplus. Then he used the overall surplus, mainly coming from Social Security, to argue for tax cuts that deliver very little relief to most people but are worth a lot to those making more than $300,000 a year. And now that those tax cuts have contributed to a soaring deficit, he wants to maintain the tax cuts while cutting Social Security benefits. He never said, ``Let`s raise taxes and cut benefits for working families so that we can give big tax cuts to the rich!`` But that`s the end result of his advice.

Why did he do it? There are two possible interpretations. The more generous one is that he never gave up the ideals of his younger days. Into his 40`s, Greenspan was an acolyte of Ayn Rand, the libertarian novelist and philosopher, and Greenspan has never repudiated his Randian association. Nonetheless, during the Clinton years he came to be viewed as a moderate. Maybe that was a mask, and all those years he was just waiting for an opportunity to use the prestige of his office to undermine the hated institutions of the welfare state.

The less generous interpretation is that Greenspan simply abused his position to help his friends. Kenneth Thomas, a finance professor at the Wharton School, has calculated that Greenspan visits the White House about once a week, as The Christian Science Monitor reported last month, and that is almost four times as often as he did when Clinton was president.

Part of the genius of George Bush`s political operatives is their ability to persuade people (Colin Powell, Tony Blair) to betray their principles, to say and do things they will later regret, in support of a presumed shared cause. Paul O`Neill, Bush`s first treasury secretary, falls into the same category: he was a moderate Republican who for a time played good soldier, defending the Bush tax cuts despite private qualms, to help the new president -- a man he thought shared his values -- by giving him an early political victory. And guess what: O`Neill was a close friend of Greenspan`s.

According to Ron Suskind`s book ``The Price of Loyalty,`` written with O`Neill`s cooperation, Greenspan told O`Neill that a tax cut without triggers -- that is, conditions that would cancel the cut if projected surpluses didn`t materialize -- was ``irresponsible fiscal policy.`` Yet Greenspan never made a forceful public case against a trigger-free tax cut, perhaps because he did not want to make trouble for his friend O`Neill. And by the time he realized just how irresponsible the tax cut really was, he was trapped -- too deeply associated with the administration`s policies to change course without losing face.

Either way, Greenspan did something remarkable. After becoming a symbol of America`s economic turnaround in the 90`s, and anointing himself the nation`s high priest of fiscal probity, he lent crucial aid and comfort to the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history. In the end, that will be his most important legacy.

Paul Krugman is a Times columnist and a professor at Princeton. His latest book is ``The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century.``


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Die große Frage bleibt. Wie kann man die Wahl noch drehen, dass ein der USA genehmes Ergebnis rauskommt. Fachleute dafür hat die USA genügnend.
Zur Not wird halt solange gewählt bis das Ergebnis passt.
Nur so wie es jetzt auszieht wird jedes Ergebnis eine Katastrophe.

January 9, 2005
U.S. Is Haunted by Initial Plan for Iraq Voting
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - In its struggle to transfer sovereignty back to Iraq last spring, the Bush administration made some tough decisions about the makeup of the political system and how Iraqi elections could occur quickly and fairly. But now a little-noticed decision on election procedures has come back to haunt administration officials, just weeks before the vote is to take place, administration and United Nations officials say.

The fundamental decision set up one nationwide vote for a new national assembly, rather than elections by districts and provinces. With a violent insurgency spreading through the Sunni Arab areas of the country, it now looks as if fewer Sunnis will vote, distorting the balance of the legislature and casting doubt on whether the election will be seen as legitimate.

According to officials planning the election, the decision was driven by the realities of an unstable Iraq and the unrelenting pressure to speed the country to a vote by the end of January 2005, as demanded by many Iraqis. To make that deadline, it was believed, there was no time to conduct a census or go through the politically divisive chore of drawing district lines.

A national constituency also made it easier to meet the demands of the former exiles installed in power in Baghdad to let millions of Iraqis living outside the country vote, and the demands of others to ensure that 25 percent of the legislators were women. The experts reasoned that it would be much easier to find women for slates running nationwide than for each of many smaller districts.

"We looked at a lot of alternatives and presented them to the Iraqis and everyone else," said an official involved in the decision-making process. "Basically, a nationwide constituency solved a lot of problems and made our lives a lot easier."

But now, with the violent insurgency and more than 7,000 candidates, many in alliances with other candidates, running for 275 seats nationwide, the disadvantages of the current system are becoming all too apparent, according to American, Iraqi and United Nations officials.

For one thing, these officials say, there is no possibility of postponing the election selectively in those districts gripped by the insurgency. For another, the expected low turnout in perhaps a fifth of the country, where the Sunni minority lives, will presumably lessen the chances of candidates who are popular there.

This problem is discouraging Sunnis from running or campaigning, and a failure of these candidates to win proportionate to their share of Iraq`s population, could easily reinforce the Sunnis` alienation from the Shiite majority.

Thus an election intended to bring Iraq together and quell the insurgency could produce the opposite outcome, in part because of the way it has been organized.

In a speech Thursday at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington, Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser of President George H. W. Bush and an increasingly vocal critic of the war, warned of the danger of the election worsening the conflict. "The Iraqi elections, rather than turning out to be a promising turning point, have the great potential for deepening the conflict," he said.

The problem of underrepresentation of Sunnis in a future legislature has already stirred talk among Americans, Iraqis and United Nations officials of making adjustments after the voting. Among the ideas being discussed are simply adding seats to the 275-member legislature, or guaranteeing that the future government or constitution-writing committees have a fixed percentage of Sunni representatives.

The decision to set up the election this way was made by L. Paul Bremer III late in his tenure as the American administrator in Iraq. His aides say the decision was urged on him by United Nations experts who argued that there was no other way to ensure elections quickly.

The decision was discussed in Washington, but it is not clear whether it was formally approved at the White House.

It was overshadowed by other decisions by Mr. Bremer, particularly his efforts to persuade Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, to put the elections off until January.

But the national-constituency choice is now rued by at least some members of Mr. Bremer`s team.

"It was well-intentioned, but it was a mistake," said Larry Diamond, a former adviser who is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

"It`s clear now that one of the major concerns motivating the Sunni boycott is their fear that they`ll wind up severely underrepresented under this system."

Another former adviser to Mr. Bremer, Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argues further that the system favors the dominant Shiite parties with national organizations over local candidates known only in their areas. This in turn is reinforcing Sunni anxiety about voting, he says.

Other former aides to Mr. Bremer say there was never any intention to cement Shiite control over Iraq. They say that while they would have preferred electing the new legislators from smaller districts, the practical problems were overwhelming. Some also say that while they were focusing on the transition, they deferred to the United Nations on election mechanics.

"Ambassador Bremer was open to hearing a number of arguments from various elections experts," said Dan Senor, spokesman for the American occupation last year. "The United Nations experts told us unequivocally that elections could not be held by the end of January based on any other system."

Carina Perelli, chief of the United Nations electoral assistance mission in Iraq, reached her conclusion based on an assessment of the practical problems and after consulting with Iraqis, officials said. The driving factor was the American promise to hold the vote in January 2005.

"In the time frame we had, and given the elements that we had, it was the best possible choice we could have made," Ms. Perelli said in an interview. "As long as Iraqis were insisting on an election by Jan. 30, we chose the best way to have a minimum disenfranchisement of voters and candidates."

Mr. Bremer declined to comment for this article, Mr. Senor said. But several American officials said that in recalling the deference shown to Ms. Perelli and her team, they were not trying to blame her for a bad decision. Rather, they said, at the time all agreed it was the right decision and the fairest way of conducting the election.

In the system being used this month, most candidates are running in blocs and will receive votes as a group. But, several officials noted that any candidate running alone and getting one-275th of the national vote will get a seat in the assembly, and that candidates popular in their communities should have no trouble amassing that kind of a vote, even in spite of security problems.

Most former occupation officials interviewed said there was a consensus around Mr. Bremer that drawing district lines in the heat of the occupation would have itself divided Iraqis. "We were always running into the fairness question," said an official in Baghdad. "We knew the environment was one of conflict. Why make plans for an election that by themselves create even more opportunities for friction?"

But some officials said Mr. Bremer`s advisers were now blaming Ms. Perelli for the decision. One said that he had attended a meeting with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser and secretary of state-designate, at which she simply shrugged off the decision and said it had been made by the United Nations.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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January 9, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Defining Victory Down
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

The president prides himself on being a pig-headed guy. He is determined to win in Iraq even if he is not winning in Iraq.

So get ready for a Mohammedan mountain of spin defining victory down. Come what may - civil war over oil, Iranian-style fatwas du jour or men on prayer rugs reciting the Koran all day on the Iraqi TV network our own geniuses created - this administration will call it a triumph.

Even for a White House steeped in hooey, it`s a challenge. President Bush will have to emulate the parsing and prevaricating he disdained in his predecessor: It depends on what the meaning of the word "win" is.

The president`s still got a paper bag over his head, claiming that the daily horrors out of Iraq reflect just a few soreheads standing in the way of a glorious democracy, even though his commander of ground forces there concedes that the areas where more than half of Iraqis live are not secure enough for them to vote - an acknowledgment that the insurgency is resilient and growing. It`s like saying Montana and North Dakota are safe to vote, but New York, Philadelphia and L.A. are not. What`s a little disenfranchisement among friends?

"I know it`s hard, but it`s hard for a reason," Mr. Bush said on Friday, a day after seven G.I.`s and two marines died. "And the reason it`s hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom." If it`s just a handful, how come it`s so hard?

Then the president added: "And I look at the elections as a - as a - you know, as a - as - as a historical marker for our Iraq policy."

Well, that`s clear. Mr. Bush is huddled in his bubble, but he`s in a pickle. The administration that had no plan for what to do with Iraq when it got it, now has no plan for getting out.

The mood in Washington about our misadventure seemed to grow darker last week, maybe because lawmakers were back after visiting with their increasingly worried constituents and - even more alarming - visiting Iraq, where you still can`t drive from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone without fearing for your life.

"It`s going to be ugly," Joe Biden told Charlie Rose about the election.

The arrogant Bush war council never admits a mistake. Paul Wolfowitz, a walking mistake, said on Friday he`s been asked to remain in the administration. But the "idealists," as the myopic dunderheads think of themselves, are obviously worried enough, now that Mr. Bush is safely re-elected, to let a little reality seep in. Rummy tapped a respected retired four-star general to go to Iraq this week for an open-ended review of the entire military meshugas.

Mr. Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on, while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush`s lieutenant who warned Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That`s the backward nature of this beast: Deceive, you`re golden; tell the truth, you`re gone.

Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo`s ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president`s absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word "realist" into a "pejorative." He predicted that the elections "have the great potential for deepening the conflict" by exacerbating the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried that there would be "an incipient civil war," and said the best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO.

Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter`s national security adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and military failure. If we can`t send 500,000 troops, spend $500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the conflict should be "terminated," he said, adding that far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.

The Iraqi election that was meant to be the solution to the problem - like the installation of a new Iraqi government and the transfer of sovereignty and all the other steps that were supposed to make things better - may actually be making things worse. The election is going to expand the control of the Shiite theocrats, even beyond what their numbers would entitle them to have, because of the way the Bush team has set it up and the danger that if you`re a Sunni, the vote you cast may be your last.

It is a lesson never learned: Matters of state and the heart that start with a lie rarely end well.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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http://www.counterpunch.org/

January 8 / 9, 2005
The Horrors of Uday`s Boudoir
Say, Waiter, Where`s the Blood on My Margarita Glass?

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The new year promises a rich manure of hypocrisy and bad faith. Take the current tumult here in the US about the UN high command and the oil-for-food imbroglio, which right-wing columnists are gnawing on with relish. There are no good guys here, just vistas of corruption and bad faith stretching into the distance.

Certainly, weep not for Kofi Annan, whose servility toward the imperatives of Empire was comically revealed in the very same press conference where a pertinacious journalist extorted from the reluctant Secretary General the grudging admission that the war on Iraq was illegal. Later on, Annan offhandedly invoked "our allies," a term that should be alien to the lips of any UN Secretary General, but that accurately reflects political realities.

The private dealings of the Annan family may well be fragrant with corruption, but it`s hard to get too excited about alleged skims off the oil-for-food deals, against so vivid a backdrop as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, many of them infants, being starved to death or dying for lack of suitable medicines under the UN sanctions commanded by the United States.

On one calculation by Jude Wanniski, if sanctions had been lifted in 1991 Iraq would have collected $126 billion in oil revenues in the fourteen years thereafter, thus paying off its international debts and feeding its population. PR-wise for the United States, the sanctions were dire enough in terms of killing defenseless Iraqis that the oil-for-food program was installed in 1996, benefiting, among others, the Kurds, who have fine representation in Washington and who were to get a big slice of the oil revenues.

From his side, Saddam was able to organize oil-revenue kickbacks to the Iraqi government from some customers which weren`t filched by the program`s supervisors in New York. So what? Any capable leader in the same situation would have done likewise. But of course the neocon lobby here, through such willing conduits as Senator Norm Coleman, the New York Sun and that diva of drivel from the Wall Street Journal`s editorial page, Claudia Rosett, have hyped the oil-for-food "scandal" as a way of somersaulting the war lobby past the great disaster of 2004, the nondiscovery of WMDs.

The second rule of propaganda is that when the first Big Lie explodes, immediately make up another one. Vigilant students of last October`s report from the US government`s Iraq Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer, on the nonexistence of WMDs noted that Duelfer tried to shift attention from the embarrassment of nonapparent WMDs by suggesting that they were not only eternally immanent but also imminent as long as Saddam Hussein led Iraq, because he might well have used revenues from the oil-for-food program to ramp up his old WMD programs. Of course, the Bush Administration pounced on this morsel, and the neocon press has been chewing on it ever since.

It would take the brush of Hieronymus Bosch to do proper justice to the moral darkness prevailing in the New York residence of Richard Holbrooke, as the man who vied with Joseph Biden to be John Kerry`s Secretary of State assembled a posse to rub Annan`s nose in the UN`s woes, and proffer Mark Malloch Brown as the savior. Brown, whose private lobbying roster has included such clients as the ineffable and unlamented Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada of Bolivia, will now return to UN HQ as US-designated commissar at Annan`s elbow, just in time to prompt the Secretary General to acclamations for whatever result issues from the elections in Iraq at the end of January.

On the topic of the Beast of Baghdad, January`s Esquire brings an interesting article by Sara Solovitch reporting her discovery that Jumana Hanna`s accounts of rape and torture at the hands of Uday Hussein don`t appear to have the intimate connection to reality trumpeted by the Bush Administration and by such reporters as Peter Finn of the Washington Post, who promoted her in the Post in July of 2003.

Hanna poured out her story to many eager ears belonging to Finn; Bernard Kerik (surely an expert in mendacity); a New Jersey Superior Court Judge called Donald Campbell, who was the coalition`s top legal adviser; Paul Wolfowitz; Hanna`s shrink, Paul Linde; and finally Solovitch, who was hired to co-write Hanna`s story. Solovitch says she began to entertain some doubts when pondering Hanna`s claim to have received an MA in accounting from Oxford, but somehow put off making a simple phone call to Oxford till she had spent a lengthy period of presumably well-paid toil checking other aspects of Hanna`s story.

I could have saved the publishers a wad of money. In atrocity stories there are some things that don`t ring true, even when dealing with such well-credentialed butchers as Saddam and his sons. Take the story, subsequently identified as one concocted by a Western intelligence agency, that Uday had put some of his victims through a wood chipper. Anyone using these chippers knows the damn things jam if inconvenienced by anything with a diameter larger than that of a stick of asparagus, let alone an Iraqi human, however scrawny. Uday`s chipper, whose origin can probably be traced to a scene in the movie Fargo, just didn`t pass muster, same as the incubator story from the first Gulf War, first identified in this column as intrinsically preposterous.

Among the horrors of Uday`s boudoir divulged by Hanna to many, including Solovitch, was the following:

"She was raped for days. A virgin when she entered, she heard the guards ask "Master Uday" what he wanted to do with her blood. He ordered them to sprinkle it around the rim of his whiskey glass like salt on a margarita."

That`s the point at which any person equipped with minimal power to suspend willing belief should have said, "Oh, come on!" No call to Oxford would have been necessary. But then, there`s no ear more credulous than the one that yearns to believe.

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January 2005, Volume 143, Issue 1

The American Dream

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041222_mfe_dre…

By Sara Solovitch

In all of Iraq, Jumana Hanna was the bravest witness to the horror of Saddam`s regime, telling the Americans of torture, rape, and mass murder. In Washington, Hanna became a potent symbol of Iraqi liberation, and the Bush administration brought Hanna and her children to the United States for their protection. Then the author discovered the really horrible truth.
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An emotional Hanna revisiting the place
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Jumana Mikhail Hanna sits on the edge of an overstuffed floral-patterned love seat, digging excitedly into the black leather handbag she once carried into a meeting with Uday Hussein. The meeting had been scheduled at her request, and by the time it was over�two years, three months, and seven days of imprisonment later�the strap of her handbag was broken and the bag had become a re-pository of memories and talismans arising from that fateful encounter.

"You must see this," she says, her voice as soft and confiding as Marilyn Monroe`s. She is clasping a worn shred of green fabric between her fingers as if it were some kind of holy relic. "This belonged to Fatma. Do you remember I told you about Fatma?"

How could I forget? Fatma was the young girl who had been beaten to death, the one who spit in her jailer`s face and became, in that fatal act of defiance, a real-life saint to Hanna and the fifteen other women in Loose Dogs Prison in Baghdad.

She digs a little deeper into the bag and draws out a torn piece of paper with this message from two Shiite sisters: "We need help desperately. Thank you for carrying this letter." Another search produces a tiny prayer bag of holy sand from Karbala and Najaf, a gift from Sindus, a sixteen-year-old girl killed by electric torture; a black-and-white photograph of a heavy-featured woman named Lila Shah, buried alive; a little envelope with six passport-sized photographs of a debonair-looking man, eaten alive by dogs; the ID card of a Christian woman named Amira who passed it to Hanna with these last words: "I`m going to torture now. Hide and keep it for me."

Silently, without explanation, Hanna then presses a laminated card into my hands. I stare, not sure what I`m looking at: a picture of a wide-faced girl in braids that reminds me of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. "Me," Hanna says, almost shyly. "Please. I want you to have it."

I am deeply touched because now I know exactly what I am looking at: a childhood ID card that is one of Hanna`s last remaining mementos from her life before prison. I think I will keep it with me always.

Of all the poor souls locked inside Loose Dogs Prison, Hanna was the only woman to come out alive. Today, she is seven thousand miles removed from Baghdad, yet when she opens her window in northern California, the smell of honeysuckle reminds her of the scent of flowers carried on Iraq`s west wind. Freed from jail nearly nine years ago, she relives her torture and imprisonment�even while enjoying the good life in a two-bedroom condo that`s been stuffed to the gills with all the accoutrements of Silicon Valley: a computer with a DSL line, satellite and cable TV, two phone lines, and a steady supply of Belgian chocolate.

It`s been two years since she arrived like the Angel Gabriel in Baghdad`s Green Zone: the bearer of revelations. Like thousands of Iraqi men and women, the forty-year-old mother had been arrested, imprisoned, and tortured by the Baathist regime. But Hanna, unlike anyone else before or since, had the courage to come forward and name her attackers. In July 2003, three months after the formation of the coalition government, she led U. S. officials to the overgrown prison yard where, she declared, scores of bodies lay buried. She showed them the dead tree trunk where she was tied like a dog, sodomized, and prodded with electric shocks. There was the cell in which she was hung from a rod and mercilessly beaten during her imprisonment. Here was where her husband was murdered and his brutally tortured corpse handed through a steel gate like a piece of butcher`s meat. She identified her jailers with such point-blank accuracy that occupation forces ultimately arrested nine Iraqi officers, including a brigadier general, on her word alone.

In July 2003, The Washington Post published a heartrending front-page story about Hanna under the headline A LONE WOMAN TESTIFIES TO IRAQ`S ORDER OF TERROR. Post reporter Peter Finn had accompanied her on a tour of Al Kelab al Sayba, Loose Dogs Prison, and his piece turned her into a bona fide hero. Fearful that her outspokenness had put her life in jeopardy, U. S. authorities moved Hanna, her seventy-two-year-old mother, and her two young children out of a homeless shelter and into a trailer in the Green Zone. There, for the next three months, they lived under twenty-four-hour guard, just a few feet from the office of Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, head of Iraq`s Coalition Provisional Authority, in one of Saddam`s palaces. Everybody in the palace knew Hanna. The soldiers photographed her in one of Saddam`s golden thrones, her seven-year-old daughter, Sabr, and five-year-old son, Ayyub, perched on its gilded arms. In their free time, the Americans taught the kids how to swim in Saddam`s Olympic-sized pool, and in the evenings, a couple of the young women, including Bremer`s assistant, snuggled up in bed beside the kids to allay their fears and help them fall asleep.

Hanna became a symbol of survival, of the indomitability of the human spirit in one of the most repressive states in modern history. "I`ve been in seventy countries and taken testimony about many atrocities�including right after My Lai," said Donald Campbell, a New Jersey superior court judge who served as the coalition`s top judicial advisor. "And I have to tell you that I found her story to be the most compelling and tragic I`ve ever heard."

Her case was given top priority by Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who was in Iraq as senior policy advisor at the interior ministry; he assigned two military investigators to look into her claims. Their investigation lasted four months. Having heard her description of the prison concealed behind the Baghdad Police Academy, with its dead tree stumps still trussed with barbed wire for yoking and raping women prisoners, Kerik went to see for himself. "To be physically there, to look at the barbed wire that was hooked into the trees, to think about the stories she told and then actually see the devices they used . . ." He paused. "It was sickening."

Her memory for details was superb, and unlike most Iraqi women, Hanna seemed fully at ease with American men�even while recounting the most graphic events. She told them that she was the only daughter of a prominent Assyrian Christian family from Arassat al-Hindya, a part of Baghdad frequently compared to Beverly Hills. Following the death of her much-loved father, Mikhail Hanna, a pharmacist, when she was eleven, Hanna traveled throughout the world with her mother, Jeanne d`Arc Bihnam. She went on to attend Oxford University, where she received a master`s degree in accounting. Later, she opened a fashionable boutique in Baghdad, catering to the city`s wealthiest women.

Because of her wealthy and privileged background, suitors clamored for her hand. But Hanna was determined to marry for love, and in 1993, at the age of thirty, she began a courtship with a wood-carver, the son of Indian immigrants who had come to Iraq along with thousands of Indians during the British occupation of 1919 to 1932. Haytham Jamil Anwar was uneducated, poor, and�despite being born in Iraq�not deemed an Iraqi. In a country where tribal bonds trump citizenship and genealogy defines identity, Hanna`s choice was considered shameful. Her mother opposed the marriage.

That was just the start of her problems. As Hanna later explained, Saddam had made it illegal for Iraqi citizens to marry non-nationals. By marrying Anwar, she would be breaking the law and risking state backlash. But Hanna was a risk taker, and on August 15, 1993, she and Anwar found a sympathetic priest to perform the ceremony. Afterward, anxious to make it right with the state, she considered applying for an exemption to Saddam`s dictate. Instead, anticipating a bureaucratic logjam, she decided to use her family and business connections and go straight to the top.

She asked for an appointment with Uday Hussein, the son of Saddam and Sajida. Why not? Hussein`s first wife was a backward peasant who shopped at Hanna`s boutique and came to rely on the young woman`s consummate fashion sense�from how to dress to how to cross her legs like a lady. After Sajida confided that Saddam, her first cousin from Tikrit, no longer showed any interest in the marital bed, Hanna showed her how to create romance with candles and designed her a set of sexy black pajamas. The way Hanna saw it, Sajida`s son owed her a debt of gratitude. He granted her an appointment, and at 10:00 a.m. on November 15, 1993, she arrived at his office at the Olympic Committee, was shown to a reception room, and instructed to wait. Hours passed. Her cigarette lighter wasn`t working, and as she waited, she grew increasingly anxious. Finally, three men entered the room, slipped a black hood over her head, tied her hands behind her back, and steered her down a narrow corridor, into an elevator, and out into a garden, where her high heels sank into the sand. They half carried, half dragged her into another building, pushed her into a room, and tied her, spread-eagle, to a bed. "Please," she begged. "I`m like your sister." "If our sister married an Indian, we would kill her," they responded.

She was raped for days. A virgin when she entered, she heard the guards ask "Master Uday" what he wanted to do with her blood. He ordered them to sprinkle it around the rim of his whiskey glass like salt on a margarita. "I called out to Jesus, to Mary, and to Muhammad," she said. "They damned them all."

On the fifth day, a commander entered the room, accused Hanna of spying for the British, and applied electric shocks through a rod inserted in her vagina. She lost consciousness and, when she awoke, found herself in Loose Dogs Prison, where the daily regimen comprised torture, rape, and a diet of green soup and one slice of bread.

Her mother assumed that Hanna had eloped with Anwar. But he, too, had been arrested and was being held in the men`s cellblock�no farther than a football field away from his wife. After seven months, three men appeared at Jeanne d`Arc`s mansion with a handwritten letter from Hanna, asking her mother to sign over her house in order to secure her release. Jeanne d`Arc agreed, eventually signing away two houses. Still, Hanna wasn`t returned. For nineteen months, the men drained Jeanne d`Arc of all her remaining wealth until, homeless, she was forced to lodge with a poor Muslim man who opened his door in an act of charity. By the time Hanna was released in 1996, her head shaved, Jeanne d`Arc didn`t even recognize her.

Anwar, too, was a changed man. He had been sodomized and beaten, his nose had been broken, and he walked with a heavy limp. He had become a heavy drinker who now beat his wife regularly. For the next seven years, Hanna walked the streets of Baghdad, begging for food and drink. The couple had two children, but because the marriage remained unsanctioned by the state, they were considered illegal aliens. In January 2001, Hanna sent her husband to the Ministry of the Interior to obtain the documentation required for Sabr and Ayyub to attend school. It was a bad idea. Once again, Anwar was arrested and returned to the very cellblock where he was previously held. This time, he never came home.


THE STORY OF HANNA`S sufferings won the hearts and minds of the Americans in Baghdad. Grateful for her cooperation in identifying her attackers�several of whom were then being considered for important positions in the new government�the Coalition Provisional Authority bestowed medallions of honor on Hanna. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz toured Loose Dogs Prison and testified about her before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Her courage in coming forward to offer U. S. officials what is very likely credible information," he said, would help the coalition "root out" Baathist killers. Her story became a defining parable in Washington of a world gone mad, in which dictators had been given license to terrorize their people without consequence. But all that was changing now, as strongmen always fall, and Hanna was left standing to write the history of the horror. Her story became a favorite in particular among conservatives. The blogs spread the word; one, Townhall.com, proclaimed it "justification alone for Bush`s Operation Iraqi Freedom."

I met Hanna on August 24, 2004, eleven months after she, her mother, and her children were airlifted by U. S. military transport out of Baghdad to California. She had just signed a book contract with a literary agent in New York, having been referred by her psychiatrist, Paul R. Linde, who wrote Of Spirits and Madness, about his experiences working in Zimbabwe. It is a measure of Hanna`s warmth and engaging personality�as well as the power of The Washington Post�that Linde immediately saw the importance and commercial potential of her story and tipped off his agent. Hanna needed a writer, and someone mentioned my name. Was I interested? As soon as I read the Post article, there was no question: I thought it was one of the most powerful stories I`d ever heard. The image of this woman in black "walking hurriedly, as if in a trance, oblivious to the weakness in her legs" as she led horrified Americans on a tour of the prison moved me deeply. I signed a contract to coauthor a book about her life and went to her house, happy to meet a modern-day hero.

She was a heavyset woman with mournful eyes and an expressive face that didn`t hold anything back. Her tears could come on fast and hard, and she occasionally showed her contempt with loud clicks of the tongue. But she had an openhearted, ingratiating smile. Her e-mails always arrived with the same distinctive subject line: "Big Love." I liked her.

"You are my voice, you are my candle," she told me many times, her voice aching with love and gratitude. "I think you are not my writer; you are myself now. Because I don`t have the language, you are my mouth." She filled my head with cinematic stories, and when I pressed for details, provided them effortlessly. It wasn`t so much her harrowing accounts of torture that seduced me as her stories of growing up privileged in the Middle East. Like the one about her graduation from high school, when Jeanne d`Arc arranged an elaborate party at the Christian Hindya Club. The school principal was paid to deliver Hanna`s diploma in person. But the climax of the evening came as Hanna mounted a platform of stairs to reach her monstrous cake, which hung suspended by cables from the ceiling so that she could cut it into slices with a bedouin sword.

We met two or three times a week, sometimes at her house, where her mother would prepare a traditional Iraqi lunch: kubba, a meat-filled pastry with raisins, nuts, and spices; quozi, fried minced lamb; and jajeek, yogurt made with mint, dill, and garlic. Other times, we met at a café, where Hanna struggled to comply with the no-smoking law. I brought a tape recorder for her to talk into, and a translator typed her words into English, which I then used to question her more deeply: Who were her friends growing up, and what happened to them? What were Uday`s mother and sisters like? And what was she thinking when she walked into the lion`s den of his Olympic Committee office? I began calling dozens of people: distant relatives in Detroit; high-ranking coalition authorities and their secretaries, aides, and interpreters; the American cops who originally debriefed her in Baghdad; her military investigators, now back in the States; women`s-rights advocates in Iraq; therapists, volunteers, acquaintances, and friends in California.

Despite my enthusiasm, I had one immediate misgiving. Hanna claimed to have attended Oxford University from 1982 to 1984, graduating with a master`s degree in accounting. That seemed unlikely: Her spoken English was limited, her written language literally indecipherable. I fought back my doubts. It is widely accepted that torture, complicated by untreated post-traumatic stress disorder, can affect a person in complicated ways. It might distort memory or sense of time. It could lead to a dissociation between mind and body. Perhaps, I told myself, it could even expunge the memory of a second language.

In my readings about Iraq, I had come across a passage by Primo Levi about a recurring dream that many Holocaust survivors recounted: "They had returned home and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved one, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to. In the most typical (and cruelest) form, the interlocutor turned and left in silence."

I did not want to be that cruel interlocutor.


AT OUR SECOND MEETING, I told Hanna that I would be confirming every aspect of her story. I mentioned a recent scandal involving a book called Forbidden Love, about the honor killing of a young Muslim woman in Jordan who had fallen in love with a Catholic army officer. Their relationship crossed religious and societal barriers and, uncannily, seemed to prefigure Hanna and Anwar`s own star-crossed marriage. In Forbidden Love, the Jordanian couple`s relationship was discovered by the young woman`s father, who slashed her throat for dishonoring the family name. The book was a runaway best-seller in Australia until July, just a few weeks before I met Hanna, when it was revealed that the author had fabricated the entire story, and the publisher, Random House, withdrew it from stores.

I stressed to Hanna that we couldn`t risk any inaccuracy. I hoped she wouldn`t be insulted if I double-checked her claims; ultimately, such care would be in both our interests. She looked at me soulfully, clasped her hands together in a kind of prayer, and smiled at me as if I were her guru. "Oh, yes, thank you," she said.

She gave me a copy of a medical report by a California doctor who worked for a local center for torture victims. The report described faint circular scars on her forearms that matched the diameter of a cigarette and linear scars on her wrists "suggestive of tight restraints." A scar at the elbow was "consistent with, though not diagnostic of, a dog bite." There was no mention of the word traitor, which Hanna told me had been branded, in Arabic, across her left breast. Instead, the doctor described two five-millimeter scars that were "consistent with injury from a sharp pointed object such as heated pincers" but that "could conceivably be produced accidentally, e.g., by falling on sharp stones." The report was hardly confirmation of the odious torture that Hanna had described, but that didn`t mean her account wasn`t true. Torture practices have become increasingly sophisticated, and it is possible to inflict great pain while leaving little physical evidence. Indeed, one Iraqi dossier discovered after the Gulf war suggested that torture should be "artistic."

While still in Baghdad, Hanna had also undergone a medical examination by a respected gynecologist. The American lawyers who were preparing her case for prosecution had sought a doctor`s verification for her claims of rape and abuse; to their disappointment, Dr. Said Hakki discounted her story and all but accused Hanna of lying. Hanna countered that she recognized him as the very man who had signed the death certificates of her fellow inmates, writing that they had died of natural causes when they had obviously been executed or tortured to death. Though no one took her accusation seriously, the doctor`s failure to endorse her claims infuriated the two American investigators, who dismissed him as incompetent.

Specialists Daniel Dryden and Luis Mejia were both members of the Alabama National Guard, and they became close friends while working on this case. Dryden, who was activated two days before his service with the guard was due to end, had been a detective in the Montgomery Police Department. In the time he spent on Hanna`s investigation, he fell in love with an Iraqi interpreter, whom he now plans to marry.

Mejia, a patrolman with the Sylacauga, Alabama, Police Department, grew up in El Salvador. Being in Iraq reminded him of his own war-torn homeland, while Hanna, he said, reminded him of one of his aunts back in the old country�a woman who "worked hard all her whole life, was always tired, but still had time to care about people." Last summer, when Mejia drove out to visit his parents in Las Vegas, he made a special trip to California just to see Hanna.

The two young men were ill-prepared for the job in many ways. "I was overwhelmed," says Dryden. "I was so misinformed about what the crimes were. I was told it was a rape case, but I never imagined it would be rape, sodomy, physical and sexual torture. I never imagined so many suspects and so many victims. When I met her and heard her story directly, I couldn`t believe she was in front of me. But she always smiled. I think the only thing she cared about was whether we were comfortable."

The logistics of the investigation were also a nightmare. "They all told me how high-profile and important this case was," Dryden said. "Paul Bremer, he wanted something done. Bernie Kerik, he tells me how important the job is: `Get it done.` "

They were given few resources�not even a shovel or a backhoe with which to exhume the bodies that Hanna said lay buried in the prison yard. Frustrated, the two men started digging up the ground with a metal bowl. By the time they finally rounded up an excavation team, the water and sewer mains had burst, flooding the area and making further excavation difficult.

One day, however, Mejia struck gold: He unearthed a number of large bones. "I was very happy," he recalled. "I called Daniel and said, `Man, I scored!` I took the bones to the experts and they told me, `No, they`re not human bones; they`re cow bones.` It was so disappointing."

Hanna had told me�not just once but many times�that 120 bodies had been unearthed based on her testimony. I repeated that to Mejia, who now chuckled. "Well, maybe she didn`t understand. We didn`t really want to tell her about all the problems we were having."

Was it a language problem? Or perhaps a simple misunderstanding, exacerbated by a young soldier`s well-intentioned desire to protect a woman who not only touched his heart but also happened to remind him of a beloved aunt?

Whatever the reason, the discrepancy troubled me. In a country dotted with mass graves, the one this new American hero�Jumana Mikhail Hanna�described in such harrowing detail did not exist. What else in her story was not true?

I didn`t know what to think, and then one day in the middle of September, Hanna seized upon a series of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle about an Iraqi man and his nine-year-old son. The boy had been severely injured in an explosion back in his impoverished village: His abdomen was ripped open, his left eye was gone, both hands were blown off. Somehow he`d survived and was being treated by doctors at Children`s Hospital in Oakland.

"I know that man!" Hanna cried, thrusting the newspaper at me. "He is a very bad man." She tapped away at the front-page photograph, an unnerving image of a man and boy in sunny California, clutching at each other with something that seemed more akin to despair than love. "He is a bad man!" Hanna repeated. "I will never forget that man. On the day my friend Sindus was killed, they brought a new electric machine to the jail. They give her big shock and she died; her whole body turned black. He was the boss of this decision. How," she asked plaintively, "could the Americans bring him here?"

How rich, I thought; yet another example of history repeating itself. Just as the American government had once turned a blind eye to the immigration of former Nazi prison guards to the U. S., it was now allowing in the worst Iraqi violators of human rights. I thought it was outrageous and, admittedly, somewhat exciting�though a little part of me wondered how it was that coincidence seemed to follow Hanna wherever she went.

She had a plan. She would go to the San Francisco District Attorney`s office and file a formal complaint against this prison guard who was masquerading as a devoted father and demand that he be arrested. She would bring a copy of the Washington Post story, as well as the medallions that the coalition government had given her. That would surely convince the DA`s office.

Wait, I insisted, this had to be confirmed. Who else would recognize this man? Hanna didn`t hesitate for a second: Her investigators would know him at once. They had a picture of him in their files. "General Ahmed will also know him!" she insisted.

Currently deputy ambassador to the Iraqi mission to the United Nations, Ahmed Ibrahim had been deputy minister of the interior while the CPA governed Iraq. It was in that role that he arrested Salah Mahmoud Kadhem, the highest-ranking officer among the nine men implicated by Hanna. Ahmed was himself imprisoned under Saddam Hussein`s regime for denouncing the dictator in a private conversation. If anyone would recognize this man, said Hanna, it would be Ahmed.

But Ahmed didn`t recognize the face in the Chronicle. Neither did Dryden. Ahmed, however, was very upset, having just learned that all nine of the men identified by Hanna in Baghdad had been released. They had been set free months earlier for lack of evidence�and financially compensated for wrongful imprisonment. Some had been reinstated in their old jobs.

According to Hanna, most had been low-level prison guards who raped her and sicced dogs on her. But a couple of the men ranked high in the chain of command. One was an officer named Hussain Fathel, whom Hanna identified as Major Khaldun, the sadist who ran the prison and loved to torture, "especially in the sensitive spot." Hussain disputed all of Hanna`s charges, said he`d never even met her, and certainly wasn`t "the Major." Based on his statements, however, military investigators inferred that he had been a member of the Iraqi secret police and had him arrested. Salah had been one of three candidates for Baghdad police chief before being implicated by Hanna. Out of all the men she implicated, he was the big catch.

Could Salah have been innocent? "That`s what I`m afraid of," Olivia Troye, Bremer`s assistant, who had snuggled Hanna`s children, told me grimly. "The odds are that he was one of her torturers. But we just don`t know. The thing about Iraq is you could put a hundred men in a room and the odds are that all of them tortured somebody at one point or another."

"I wouldn`t be surprised if she fabricated," Troye added. "There were some problems. She was a key witness, and she`d point people out and then realize later that she didn`t know who she was pointing to. She was very accurate when she was in the prison, where things happened, but as time went on I think her stories became embellished."

What had at first been a nagging suspicion that Hanna was capable of exaggeration had become, after a month spent with her and reporting her story, a crippling doubt. Iraq, the context for her amazing story, was an astonishment of human cruelty. That is why her story was so terribly believable. She was telling a larger truth. And the American government, out of sincere altruism or rank political opportunism, responded to this truth. Even if it wasn`t her truth. Even if it was, in fact, a mirage. Even if she was, after all, a liar.


THE MOMENT I WAS DREADING had arrived. It was time to call Oxford, though by now, of course, I knew what the answer would be: Hanna had never graduated or attended the school, which didn`t even offer a degree in accounting. The significance of this falsehood was immediately obvious: It opened her entire story to doubt. If she lied about Oxford, a claim that could be so easily refuted, what else was she lying about?

Jeanne d`Arc would certainly know the truth of Jumana`s story. She was home alone when my translator arrived. Had her daughter ever lived in England and attended Oxford? he asked. Jeanne d`Arc, sheepishly, said she hadn`t. She was terrified of Hanna. That`s why she had never said anything.

Now Hanna walked in the door. She looked at her mother and, sensing the mood in the room, asked what was wrong. Jeanne d`Arc said something, and Hanna shrieked, "I did go to Oxford! I did! I did go to Oxford!" Her pupils shot straight up into her head. "I will write to them," she announced, and sat down at the computer. She tried typing a few words, but her agitation was too great. Enraged, she gave the computer mouse a few good thwacks against the table, then flung it at the ceiling.

"I will call!" she cried, running into the kitchen. The recorded message informing her that she had misdialed played�one, two, three times�until, in frustration, she threw the phone hard against the kitchen wall.

"You ruined my life!" she screamed at her mother, who sat shaking in her favorite chair. "I will never forgive you. You betrayed me once, and now this is the second time!"

Jeanne d`Arc`s face had turned blue. "No, no," she protested. "I didn`t say you never went to Oxford. All I said was that I forgot where you went exactly."

But Hanna had already begun throwing things: a crystal ashtray, a brass candleholder, a greeting card welcoming her to America, several framed photographs, an almost full cup of coffee. She made a clean sweep of everything on the coffee table, hurling the objects straight at her mother.

The book was finished, she said. She wanted nothing more to do with me.

Her recklessness shocked me. I`d been a reporter for twenty-five years and considered myself a professional skeptic, yet I`d been duped. I consoled myself with the thought that I was in good company. If I`d been duped, so had the Pentagon, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and one of the nation`s most esteemed newspapers. On the other hand, I understand that the relationship between a journalist and a source is based on trust. I`d never met anyone who played with that relationship as cynically as Hanna. She could coolly size up her audience, calculate what they wanted to hear, and work it to her advantage.

"She was very poised, very credible," recalled Gerald Burke, a retired Massachusetts State Police major who met Hanna soon after he arrived in Iraq as advisor to the Baghdad police chief. "For just coming in country, it was a perfect case: someone coming forward with our worst expectations of what the regime was like." He, too, believed Hanna, though a part of him wondered whether her story seemed a little too perfect. "Occasionally, we would even say to ourselves, If this is a con job, then she deserves to go to the United States, or even Hollywood."

Far from being a story about the indomitability of the human spirit, Hanna`s tale now seemed to open a window on the coalition`s naivete�the willingness of its leaders to believe almost anything that fit their agenda.

I began cataloging the details that once sounded so rich but now seemed improbable, then started a new round of phone calls.

Was it true that two of her four bodyguards had been killed while protecting her?

No, Dryden said, never heard that one. And by the way, she didn`t have four bodyguards. Only one.

Was it true that her old prison had been turned into a museum, which was then named in her honor? No on both counts. The prison was bulldozed and excavated to make way for a new addition to the Baghdad Police Academy.

Was it true that she was physically unable to stand (and therefore work) for long periods of time because her uterus leaked as a consequence of horrific torture? Hardly. An ultrasound had shown that she was merely going through early menopause. And according to one Iraqi friend, she could stand for hours if it entailed a shopping trip.

Perhaps if American officials had been more knowledgeable about Middle Eastern culture, they would have questioned her claim about her husband`s heritage. His name provided a clue: Haytham Jamil Anwar is an Arabic name, not an Indian name. He was, according to numerous Iraqis who knew Hanna, an Iraqi Arab�a simple fact that undermines the very premise of her story. But the American investigators never talked to any Iraqi citizens about Hanna. Dryden and Mejia were so isolated in the Green Zone that they couldn`t do basic detective work. They didn`t even have a car.

"I don`t think the U. S. did much to verify her story," Judge Campbell told me in September, when I called him to discuss what I was learning. "Once the Washington Post article came out, we treated it as gospel. We were skeptical; as lawyers, we are always skeptical. But once the investigators looked me in the eye and said they believed her story, I accepted it. Nevertheless, they were young men, not seasoned investigators."

Family members told me that Hanna had gone to prison but that the real reason bore no resemblance to what she told authorities, the Post, or even what she wrote on her application for asylum. She had been jailed, she said, for marrying an Indian, violating an Iraqi law that forbade marriage to a non-national without government permission. In fact, there was never any such law. While intermarriage may have been discouraged, it did not require special approval, a point confirmed for me by a specialist at the Library of Congress.

I asked Judge Campbell, who had a staff of twenty American lawyers and fifty Iraqi lawyers during his six-month tenure in Baghdad, if anyone had ever checked this detail. It was, after all, central to Hanna`s story. No, he said, nobody had done so.

To be fair, there was no law library in existence by the time the Americans reached Baghdad. Still, even if Anwar were an Indian, he never would have been arrested for seeking citizenship papers for his children to attend school. According to a November 2003 report published by Human Rights Watch, Iraqi women could pass on citizenship to their children by virtue of a law that had been on the books since 1986. This is not to say that there wasn`t tribal or societal prejudice against intermarriage. There was. But it wasn`t a law that prevented Hanna from marrying outside her community. It was her mother.

If the Americans had spoken to Iraqi neighbors or family, they might have learned one of the most persistent rumors surrounding Hanna: that it was Jeanne d`Arc, the nurturing grandmother who whiled away her days in the Green Zone flipping through a deck of cards, who sent her daughter to jail, on charges of prostitution.

It sounded preposterous. But a couple of weeks after the confrontation about Oxford, Hanna called me up. No longer angry, she was eager to know how my work on the book was coming along. How could she be angry with me�her voice, her candle? We met in the café where she had once demanded that I do something about the man on the Chronicle`s front page. Yes, she now admitted, she had lied about the reasons for her imprisonment. It was Jeanne d`Arc, determined to teach her daughter a lesson and put a stop to an ill-advised marriage, who had arranged for her arrest on seven charges, including prostitution, theft, spying for the British, and plotting to overthrow the government.

"My mom made contract with General Salah to scare me, to put me in jail so I wouldn`t be a bad girl anymore. She paid 75,000 dinars [at that time, equivalent to about $1,000], and he promised her that he would take me inside for three or five days so I would stop thinking about marriage with Anwar."

Last spring, a distraught Hanna called Olivia Troye. She had just discovered that her old nemesis, Salah, had been released from jail; he had visited her family in Baghdad, she cried, and threatened to kill them all unless they divulged her new location. "She sent me on a wild goose chase," Troye said. "I had conference calls at 2:00 a.m. I called Ambassador [Patrick] Kennedy about it. I worked for two straight days and didn`t sleep at night, I was so worried. Because it`s true, the U. S. military did release people it shouldn`t have. And that`s why we`re having problems now. But the question is, Was Salah an accidental release or a deliberate release? Nobody could confirm what Jumana was saying. And it turned out that Salah was in charge of helping us with the insurgency. He was on our side!"

In California, Hanna`s claims turned brazen. She seemed compelled to tell her story over and over, brandishing copies of the Post article to strangers on the street, during shopping visits to Costco, and at her children`s elementary school. Mostly she used it to ask people for money. "Read it!" she urged. "This is my story."

She told one therapist that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, met her plane on the tarmac and presented her with a $20,000 check�which Catholic Charities, her initial sponsor in California, promptly confiscated. As always, she was so compelling that the therapist called the governor`s office to confirm the story. It was pure fiction.


SEVERAL THERAPISTS, speaking off the record, have concluded that she is delusional�and very smart. On at least two occasions, she was prescribed Seroquel, an antipsychotic medication. She has refused to take it. "I have many misgivings about her stability and, therefore, the accuracy of her claims," one therapist told me. "But I think the Americans in Baghdad believed it 200 percent."

Her behavior puzzled another therapist, who said it contradicted that of most torture victims, who cannot bear to relive the horror of their experience. Hanna seemed to revel in it. Yet another therapist got fed up with her manipulations. "She knows that charity income can`t legally affect her welfare status, so she seeks out every church she sees," he said. "She shows them the Washington Post article, weeps, and says, `I`m a refugee from Iraq, a widow raising two orphans and supporting a disabled mother.` I know of at least eight churches she`s gone to, and they always help her. One even appointed a council of volunteers to ensure that her needs were being met. Then, when they find out she`s already getting services and they question her, she disappears and cuts ties."

Several Iraqi exiles have expressed discomfort with her story. A Shiite dissident questioned how she could have known the names of her attackers in prison. "I was imprisoned many, many times," he told me, "but I never learned the names of my guards. They didn`t want you to know them. I don`t want to question the lady; many strange things happened in Iraq. But this doesn`t make sense to me. Still," he added, "you could believe anything in Iraq while Saddam was in power."

Shortly before this article went to press, I received information about her husband, Haytham Jamil Anwar�whose corpse had been handed through the prison gate like a "piece of butcher`s meat," as the Post put it. Family members in Iraq insist that he is alive and well�though destitute�in Baghdad. Indeed, his two children, Sabr and Ayyub, on several occasions told their teachers in California that they had seen their father right before they moved into the Green Zone. The teachers had assumed that the kids were in denial and arranged a service on a sunny day in which balloons were released into the sky so that Sabr and Ayyub could say goodbye to their father up in heaven.

If anything in Iraq was believable, then Hanna could say anything. All her evidence was in that big black bag full of photographs, mementos, and hastily scribbled pleas. After she left prison, she said, she tried contacting each of the families of her fellow prisoners. Every attempt was met with rebuff, some families offering bags of money in return for her silence, some threatening her with death. Many of the families denied that their daughters and sisters had ever existed.

This in itself didn`t sound improbable. Hanna had defied cultural norms by talking about rape in a world where family honor is fixed in a woman`s body. Of course people would be angry with her. But she wasn`t content to stop there. She went further, claiming that one of her murdered compatriots was a young woman named Shukriya, the sister of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose militia has been waging an insurgency against U. S. forces in the city of Najaf. When al-Sadr discovered what Hanna was saying about his sister, he issued a fatwa against her. Hundreds, no thousands, of angry Shiites marched outside the CPA`s palace walls, chanting for Hanna to be put to death. The demonstrations were broadcast on Al-Jazeera.

I checked. There were no such protests.

She urged me to call Manal Omar, an American women`s-rights activist working in Baghdad as director of Iraq`s Women for Women International. Omar had sat right beside her as she called the families; she could confirm everything Hanna was now saying. I reached Omar, who did not confirm a single thing.

"Jumana has a lot of issues," Omar said. "We were getting many different stories, not only about her past but about her present and her future. That`s the way things are in Iraq. It`s hard, it`s virtually impossible, to tell fact from fiction. So Jumana�she`s part of that."

Hanna no longer speaks to many of the Iraqi émigrés who befriended her when she arrived in the U. S. She has also alienated many Californians. She has threatened to sue several acquaintances, including an old friend who begged her to stop soliciting money from a Greek Orthodox priest who was in the midst of losing his house to foreclosure. One after another, Hanna has enlisted and driven away five different charitable agencies. Volunteers have been irritated by her high-spending ways, including the fact that she thinks nothing of taking a seventy-dollar cab ride instead of riding the bus.

"I want the same treatment I had in the Green Zone," Hanna told me. "It was such a good life. They treated me like a queen."

In many ways, she still lives like one. Her monthly phone bill is astronomical, often topping $1,000�mostly because she spends hours on the phone with her boyfriend in Baghdad. On more than one occasion, she has wired him large sums of money�as much as $1,200 every few weeks, according to two sources. His name is Mohamed Jiwad, which is also the name of the prison guard who confirmed her story about her husband to the military investigators nearly two years ago. They never suspected that Jiwad may have been her boyfriend. She`d told them that they had met only once�on that day back in 2001 when she received her husband`s body through the prison fence.

Dryden wasn`t troubled by this latest revelation. "If she told me today that she lied to me, I wouldn`t even care," he said. "It got me four months out of the combat zone. It got me four months in the palace, where I had a lot of fun, in an air-conditioned building with e-mail and a phone line home. And I met a fantastic woman who I`m going to marry. So it wouldn`t bother me one bit if Jumana told me she`d made it all up. I`d say okay."

He sounded amused.

I felt stupid and gullible. The artfulness of her deceptions took a few days to sink in, and then I went to see her again. She gave me a big hug. Her mother sat facing us on the overstuffed chair, her face bland and unperturbed as I informed Hanna that I wouldn`t be writing the book after all.

"No!" she screamed. "This is my story! Not anybody else`s story! All America say Jumana Hanna is right! I had investigation by CIA, by Pentagon. If I am not right, why do they put me on army airplane and bring me to America? Because I have pretty eyes?"

She grabbed her cell phone and began punching in numbers. "Pakeza!" she screamed into the phone. "Tell Sara how you came with me to the jail where your cousin died! Remember when you came with me and Luis and Daniel, you cried for your cousin Fatma!" She thrust the phone in my face, and I heard an irritated Pakeza Alexander, who is the president of a Kurdish humanitarian organization, saying that she was in the middle of a meeting and did not appreciate the interruption.

"Just answer this question," I said. "Was your cousin in Jumana`s prison?"

"I am sure you are a very intelligent young woman," she said witheringly. "So you know that in Iraq, the name Fatma is as common as the name Joe Smith is here in the United States."

Hanna grabbed the phone and punched in another number. "Give me Luis," she commanded. "Wake him up and tell him that this is Jumana Hanna!" Then I heard Mejia`s voice, slow and raspy, on the other end. "Luis, this is very important. Please! Stay awake! Five minutes only. You must tell Sara . . ."

For the next half hour, she screamed while her mother sat unruffled, smiled sympathetically, and occasionally urged Hanna to lower her voice.

"Why do these people lie?" Hanna demanded. "We will fly to Washington, look them in the eye, and make them tell the truth!" I wasn`t going anywhere, I said. "I will find a good writer and you will read my story everywhere," she said with a contemptuous click of her tongue. "Everywhere!"

"Just tell me one thing," I said. "Why did you lie about Oxford?" For a second, she looked confused, and I thought, yes, finally, she was going to come clean.

"I went to Oxford!" she screamed. "Oxford College of Accounting on Oxford Street in London. It is right next to Louis the Five Hotel. I`ll take you there!"

I shook my head.

"Leave before I start throwing things," she ordered, and as I walked out the door, her mother nodded graciously, like a real lady, and clasped her hands in a Buddhist-like way of thanks.

It was over, I assured myself as I started the car. And then, halfway home, I started to wonder: Could she possibly be telling the truth? Maybe there was a school called Oxford College of Accounting. On a hairpin turn in the middle of the Santa Cruz Mountains, I suddenly had to know. I called a colleague and asked her to quickly search in London for any listing at all for Oxford College of Accounting on Oxford Street.

It took only a few moments. I had my answer.

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January 9, 2005
TRUE BELIEVERS
More Religion, but Not the Old-Time Kind
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

ALMOST anywhere you look around the world, with the glaring exception of Western Europe, religion is now a rising force. Former Communist countries are humming with mosque builders, Christian missionaries and freelance spiritual entrepreneurs of every possible persuasion. In China, underground "house churches" are proliferating so quickly that neither the authorities nor Christian leaders can keep reliable count. In much of South and Central America, exuberant Pentecostal churches, where worshipers catch the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues, continue to spread, challenging the Roman Catholic tradition. And in the United States, religious conservatives, triumphant over their role in the re-election of President Bush, are increasingly asserting their power in politics, the media and culture.

The tsunami in Asia could spur religious revival as well, as victims and onlookers turn to mosques, temples and churches both to help them fathom the catastrophe and to provide humanitarian assistance.

What does all this rising religiosity add up to? It is easy to assume that a more religious world means a more fractious world, where violent conflict is fueled by violent fundamentalist movements.

But some religion experts say that while it is clear that religiosity is on the rise, it is not at all clear that fundamentalism is. Indeed, there may be a rising backlash against violent fundamentalism of any faith.

The world`s fastest growing religion is not any type of fundamentalism, but the Pentecostal wing of Christianity. While Christian fundamentalists are focused on doctrine and the inerrancy of Scripture, , what is most important for Pentecostals is what they call "spirit-filled" worship, including speaking in tongues and miracle healing. Brazil, where American missionaries planted Pentecostalism in the early 20th century, now has a congregation with its owns TV station, soccer team and political party.

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Most scholars of Christianity believe that the world`s largest church is a Pentecostal one - the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, which was founded in 1958 by a converted Buddhist who held a prayer meeting in a tent he set up in a slum. More than 250,000 people show up for worship on a typical Sunday.

"If I were to buy stock in global Christianity, I would buy it in Pentecostalism," said Martin E. Marty, professor emeritus of the history of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a coauthor of a study of fundamentalist movements. "I would not buy it in fundamentalism."

After the American presidential election in November, some liberal commentators warned that the nation was on the verge of a takeover by Christian "fundamentalists."

But in the United States today, most of the Protestants who make up what some call the Christian right are not fundamentalists, who are more prone to create separatist enclaves, but evangelicals, who engage the culture and share their faith. Professor Marty defines fundamentalism as essentially a backlash against secularism and modernity.

For example, at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, in Greenville, S.C., students are not allowed to listen to contemporary music of any kind, even Christian rock or rap. But at Wheaton College in Illinois, a leading evangelical school, contemporary Christian music is regular fare for many students.

Christian fundamentalism emerged in the United States in the 1920`s, but was already in decline by the 1960`s. By then, it had been superceded by evangelicalism, with its Billy Graham-style revival meetings, radio stations and seminaries.

The word "fundamentalist" itself has fallen out of favor among conservative Christians in the United States, not least because it has come to be associated with extremism and violence overseas.

Fundamentalism in non-Christian faiths became a phenomenon in the rest of the world in the 1970`s with "the failure and the bankruptcy of secular, nationalistic liberal creeds around the world," said Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. Among the "creeds cracking up" were nationalism, Marxism, socialism, pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism.

"From the 1970`s on, you get the growth of not just more conservative religion, but religion with a political bent," said Professor Jenkins, the author of "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity."

Now, the future of fundamentalism is murky, with several contradictory trends at work simultaneously.

There is little doubt that one fundamentalism can feed another, spurring recruitment and escalating into a sort of religious arms race. In Nigeria`s central Plateau State, Muslim and Christian gangs have razed one another`s villages in the last few years, leaving tens of thousands of dead and displaced. In rioting in India in 2002, more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed by Hindus in Gujarat state - retaliation for a Muslim attack a day earlier on a train full of Hindus, which killed 59.

Husain Haqqani, a Pakistani political commentator and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said that insurgents in Falluja, Iraq, recruited fighters with the false rumor that Christian crusaders with the Rev. Franklin Graham`s aid organization, Samaritan`s Purse, were on the way over to convert Muslims. (Mr. Graham is known throughout the Muslim world for his statement that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion.") Fundamentalism does not necessarily lead to intolerance, said Professor Jenkins of Pennsylvania State. "People with very convinced, traditional views can get along together for a very long time," he said. "But sometimes we get into cycles where they can`t, and we seem to be in one of those cycles right now."

Analysts are also seeing signs of a backlash as religious believers grow disenchanted with movements that have produced little but bloodshed, economic stagnation and social repression.

In last year`s elections in India, voters repudiated the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist group whose cadres had helped stir up violence in some Indian states against Muslims and others.

And in Indonesia, the world`s largest Muslim country, mainstream Islamic groups in September helped elect as president a secular general who had been relatively outspoken about the threat posed by the radical group Jemaah Islamiyah, which is responsible for several acts of terrorism, including the bombing in Bali in 2002.

Fundamentalist movements also stumble because they plan for the overthrow, but not for the governing. Half the Muslim world is illiterate, Mr. Haqqani said, but the Taliban didn`t make a dent in improving literacy when it ruled in Afghanistan. If Iran had a free and fair plebiscite today, Professor Marty said, "the ayatollahs would be dumped."

For reasons like this, said R. Scott Appleby, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame and director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, "it would be misleading to say fundamentalism is on the rise now." He added: "I would say we`re just more aware of it because these people are better organized, more mobile and more vocal than ever before."

In 2003, Professor Appleby and two other scholars, Gabriel A. Almond and Emmanuel Sivan, published "Strong Religion," a book based on research done with Professor Marty for the Fundamentalism Project. The book`s subtitle was the "The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World."

Now, Mr. Appleby said, "There is some evidence, some literature that says fundamentalism is on the decline, that it has peaked or is peaking precisely because it has a tendency toward violence and intolerance, and those ultimately don`t work. They lead to bloodshed, loss of life, and no recognizable economic upturn, and there is an exhaustion with it."

That is not to say that he does not foresee more bitter, sometimes violent religious clashes. By their very nature, fundamentalists endure because they are motivated by transcendant ideas like salvation or, in some places, martyrdom. Mr. Appleby said he did not expect to see growth, but a persistence of "deadly pockets of would-be revolutionaries who are empowered to a greater degree than ever by a little technological savvy and organizational ability."

The American government is poorly prepared to make the necessary distinctions between what is merely religious fervor and what is potentially dangerous fundamentalism, said Thomas F. Farr, who left his post as director of the office of international religious freedom in the State Department about a year ago.

"Most of my foreign service friends would rather have root canal than talk to a Muslim imam about religion," said Mr. Farr, who now works with the Institute for Global Engagement, a Washington-based group working on international religious freedom.

What they need to ask, he said, is: "Do these religions have within them exclusivist tendencies in an absolutist sense, or can they be open to other human beings outside their circle? These are inevitably theological questions."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Sunday, January 09, 2005

Sistani: Sunnis Must have Effective Participation

Al-Hayat: A source close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf affirmed Saturday that the new permanent constitution for Iraq must not be sectarian in character, whatever the results of the elections to be held on January 30. He said that "The center of religious authority is eager that all participate in drafting the constitution." He complained that the newspapers had reported that Sistani had ruled that Iraqis must participate in the elections or they would go to hell. He said that Sistani had never said any such thing. [The remark on non-voters going to hell was by Shaikh Ahmad Safi, Sistani`s representative in Karbala. - J. Cole]

Indeed, he insisted, the attitude of the religious center toward the elections was conditioned on many factors. If Sistani became convinced that there was a likelihood of widespread fraud in the elections, he would not hesitate to urge that they be boycotted. But for the moment, he said, the alternative to elections seems to be chaos. There is a timetable and a UN security council resolution prescribing the institutions be elected that can then undertake to draft the constitution. It is entirely possible, he said, that the same institutions might demand that the Occupying powers depart from Iraq, supporting this stance by its popular legitimacy."

He said that "The representation of our Sunni brethren in the coming government must be effective, regardless of the results of the elections." He said Sistani opposed an American suggestion that a Sunni bloc of MPs be appointed to the new parliament, a suggestion he said that the Sunnis rejected even before the Shiites did."

He noted that the Shiite center of authority had undertaken "a bitter struggle to derail the original American plan of appointing a committee to draft the constitution, and struggled mightily on behalf of holding direct elections before June [of 2004], when sovereignty was transferred and a cabinet was appointed, in which we had no confidence, to form the new government. We were convince that holding the elections before the transfer of sovereignty was possible with a good chance of transparency and fairness. Wnad we informed [UN envoy] Lakhdar Brahimi] that the voice of moderates was [at that time, spring 2004] strong--but that Iraq was headed in the direction of greater extremism. The experts advising the United Nations decided to hold elections after seven months [i.e. at the end of January 2005]. We concurred,a nd worked to quieten the turmoil in the Shiite popular base.

He continued, "We do not accuse those who asked for a postponement of the elections then, and among them was the [Sunni] Association of Muslim Scholars, of conspiring with the Americans (who also wanted the seven-month delay), but we are now being accused of complicity with the Americans in insisting that the election be held on schedule.

He pointed out that the partisans of postponing the elections had said that they couldn`t be held on the basis of the old food rationing cards, and that a delay was necessary so that a census could be taken. But in the end it was decided to use the ration cards [which means that the elections might as well have been held in May, 2004 as Sistani wanted.]

He went on to ask, So why should there now be a delay? Can anyone guarantee that the situation will be better in six months? Is there any guarantee that those now boycotting will participate in six months? What exactly are the goals of a delay? No one is answering this question.

The source also addressed the charges that the United Iraqi Alliance, which was put together under Sistani`s auspices, is a stalking horse for Iran. This accusation derives from the prominence in its ranks of members of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI], which was based in Tehran 1982-2003, and the Dawa Party, which had a prominent Tehran branch consisting of Iraqi expatriates during the same period. The spokesman said, "These are Iraqi parties that fought against the former regime. The proportion of SCIRI and Dawa representatives on the list is no more than 22 percent. And those who accuse these two parties today of being "Iranian" were not doing so when they confined all Shiite representation in the temporary national council to these two . . ."

[This is a reference to the Americans, who all along have favored SCIRI and Dawa for high government appointments, but who are now complaining about their Iran links.]

He also rejected charges that the United Iraqi Alliance is a Shiite ticket designed to grab power. He said that the very reason the list only put up 228 candidates for 275 seats was to signal that they did not want to exclude anyone. He contrasted this approach with that of the [Sunni] Iraqi Islamic Party before it withdrew from the elections, which had put up a full 275-member slate. But it, he said, was not termed "the Sunni slate."

As for the charge that a "Shiite arc" was forming in the Middle East, the spokesman said that Sistani had no desire to take Iraq toward sectarianism and that he would not spend time refuting a position he never held in the first place.

He said that the issues concering possible involvement of Syria and Iran in violence in Iraq were matters beyond the purview of Sistani, and were the responsibility of the Iraqi state.


[Arabic URL for this story.]

Meanwhile, the drumbeat of violence continued on Saturday, with the US dropping a 5 hundred pound bomb on the wrong house in a village near Mosul, the kidnapping of an election official, the discovery of the body of the governor of the province of Salahuddin, a car bomb in Mahaweel, the murder of a translator for the US military, etc.

The Washington Post also reports:


` Rebel Shi`ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr joined Sunnis in calling for a delay in the vote, saying that elections cannot happen if Sunnis cannot fairly participate. In a statement read by his aides, Sadr also said that elections cannot happen until the foreign coalition troops leave because elections held under occupation are illegitimate. The occupying forces are "trying to lead us to sectarian state and civil war, God forbid. Therefore, be cautious and be careful to reject all that could lead to that, including the election process," Sadr said in his statement. "Know that when our dear Sunnis do not participate, it will give no importance to the elections." `


posted by Juan @ [url1/9/2005 06:38:18 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/sistani-sunnis-must-have-effective.html[/url]

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Latest Fatality: Jan 09, 2005
7 ukrainische Soldaten getötet. Ist bei den US-News keine Meldung wert.
Military Fatalities: Total: 1513 , US: 1353 , Jan.05: 29

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Sunday, January 09, 2005
<>War News for Sunday, January 09, 2005

Yankeedoodle hat sich krank gemeldet s. Ende des Postings.
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

"There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." - George W. Bush, July 2, 2003, referring to attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.

Bring ‘em on: American troops kill two Iraqi police and three civilians when they open fire after roadside bombing south of Baghdad. (Iraqi doctor at local hospital reports eight dead and twelve wounded.)

(Fox News headline on the above incident: U.S. Troops Retaliate After Attack, Kill 5. There are no words strong enough to describe the contempt I feel for that organization. Not only did they characterize this tragedy, where US troops blasted anything that moved after a bomb went off and killed five innocent people, with this scurrilous headline that claimed it was retaliation, as if the police and civilians who were killed had set the bomb, but on the same web page they have a set of headline links. One says “US Troops Kill Five Terrorists”. Click on it and it takes you back to this very same story. I don’t have profanity strong enough to express my loathing of these pissant Goebbels wannabes. Here’s the link. Does anyone know how to store the web page?)

Bring ‘em on: American forces bomb wrong house in Aitha, killing five “possibly innocent” people (Iraqi sources and an AP photographer at the scene claim seven adults and seven children were killed in the attack.)

Bring ‘em on: Manager of Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord Party assassinated in Baghdad. Mayor of Salaheddine province and an aide to the province’s governor kidnapped in Baghdad. (Scroll down)

Bring ‘em on: Two Marines killed in separate attacks in Al Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Tribal leader killed in Baghdad. Iraqi translator beheaded in Baquoba. Human Rights Organization representative kidnapped south of Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi civilians killed and nineteen wounded in suicide bombing in Mahaweel.

Bring ‘em on: US soldier assigned to Task Force Baghdad killed in roadside bombing.

Bring ‘em on: Acting police chief of Samarra assassinated.

Bring ‘em on: Police captain killed in drive-by shooting in Abu Ghraib. Policeman shot to death by gunmen in Mosul. Iraqi killed by roadside bomb in Samarra. (Scroll down below the part where GW Bush expresses optimism about the elections which he states will be “an incredibly hopeful experience”.)

Seven Ukrainian soldiers and one Kazakh soldier killed in an explosion while loading aviation ordnance in Iraq.


In Our Name

Possibly innocent: American troops opened fire after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing at least two policemen and three civilians, police said Sunday, a day after the U.S. military acknowledged five people were killed when it bombed the wrong house during a search operation in northern Iraq.

An Associated Press photographer at the scene said seven children and seven adults died. The discrepancy between the death counts could not be reconciled.

The U.S. military later released a statement saying it regretted the loss of "possibly innocent lives" in the strike.


Our Brave New World: The Pentagon is debating whether to set up elite hit-squads to target leaders of the Iraq insurgency in a new strategy based on tactics used against leftist guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago, Newsweek magazine reported on Saturday.

The squads may operate across the border in Syria, Newsweek said on its web site, but added it was unclear whether they would assassinate leaders or be involved in ``snatch`` operations.

The magazine said the plan is being called ``the Salvador option`` after strategy instigated during the Reagan administration`s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.


Prescription torture: At Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and "undisclosed locations," some U.S. military interrogators used troubling methods to try to get their captives to talk. Many of their efforts have been widely reported; some may have risen to the level of torture under international law. What is less known — but equally disturbing — is that military doctors become arbiters, even planners, of aggressive interrogation practice, including prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation and exposure to temperature extremes.

Such conduct violated U.S. obligations under the Geneva Convention, which bar threatening, insulting and other abusive treatment of prisoners. There is also probable cause to suspect that some physicians were complicit in the use of interrogation methods that constitute torture under international law.


Stories That Belong Together

Mistaken calculations: In Al-Fallujah, hundreds if not thousands of homes were in a shambles after months of airstrikes. So far, about 40,000 people, or less than 20 percent of the town`s population, have begun coming back, according to Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the senior U.S. ground commander in Iraq.

Many Iraqis contend that in their attempt to quash the insurgency, U.S. troops may have only strengthened its ranks, creating a generation so inflamed by the assault that they take up arms.

"In the coming days, there will be suicide attacks on that town. They will use the same methods as the Hamas movement,`` said Salman al-Jumaili, a Baghdad University professor, insurgency expert and Al-Fallujah native.

Nadhim Jassour agreed. A professor of international relations at Baghdad University, Jassour said, ``The Americans were mistaken in their calculations. . . . They must understand that revenge is an Arab characteristic.``


A startling toll: The strain of fighting an insurgency war in Iraq, on a scale not foreseen even a year ago and with no end in sight, is taking a startling toll on the U.S. military.

The U.S. death count is rising by 70 or more each month, adding to the more than 1,330 deaths already recorded.

Costs of the occupation and rebuilding are also escalating--at more than $1 billion a week, with the total now exceeding $100 billion.

The question is being raised: How does the military retain an all-volunteer force at the current level of U.S. commitment overseas?


Digging deeper: Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is to send 650 extra troops to Iraq amid fears of escalating violence ahead of the country`s elections, it has been reported.

Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, Royal Highland Fusiliers are expected to move to British-controlled Basra from their Cyprus base ahead of the January 30 poll.

A senior Army officer told the Sunday Telegraph the move follows intelligence warning of a wave of violence at polling stations.

(Hey, that`s some kind of good intelligence those Brits have. I wonder if we could get some good intelligence like that?)


Family values: Sitting in the mess hall after a long day’s work on the streets of Samarra, several soldiers talked about how they avoid telling family members back home about getting shot at, breaking down doors or avoiding mines.

"The stuff we’ve seen and done, you can only talk about here,” said Spc. Rob Yurkanin, 23, of Port Murray, N.J., his eyes drifting over to a football game on a distant television. “No one else can understand it.”

Sgt. Royd Nuckols, 30, of Folcroft, Pa., agreed: “I don’t want my wife or my kids to know the stuff I’ve had to do or see.”


Privatization: The United States has engaged a record number of private military contractors in the war in Iraq, and a record number of them have been killed, kidnapped or maimed.

Now the hostilities have escalated and spilled into another battlefield: the courtroom.

Families of four contractors killed in an ambush in Fallujah in March 2004 have sued North Carolina-based Blackwater Security Services for fraud and wrongful death. The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, is the first in the nation to be filed against a private military contractor for death on the battlefield, according to military, legal and industry experts.


The Forever War: Now comes our self-styled war on terror, which snugly fits this pattern. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are full of zealots dedicated to eliminating the shadow cast by American power over the Muslim world. But they cannot hope to defeat American military forces in the field.

For our part, we believe that by conquering and democratizing rogue nations we can somehow defeat the terrorist networks arrayed against us. Yet we can`t ever find enough of their fighters to stage a decisive battle, nor can we stem the tide of their recruitment. Isn`t this the definition of stalemate -- a recipe for war that goes on year after year after year?


Dahr Jamail

Dahr Jamail reports: Then, as now, for Iraqis, our invasion and occupation was a case of liberation from – from human rights (think: the atrocities committed in Abu Ghraib which are still occurring daily there and elsewhere); liberation from functioning infrastructure (think: the malfunctioning electric system, the many-mile long gas lines, the raw sewage in the streets); liberation from an entire city to live in (think: Fallujah, most of which has by now been flattened by aerial bombardment and other means).

Iraqis were then already bitter, confused, and existing amid a desolation that came from myriads of Bush administration broken promises. Quite literally every liberated Iraqi I`ve gotten to know from my earliest days in the country has either had a family member or a friend killed by U.S. soldiers or from the effects of the war/occupation. These include such everyday facts of life as not having enough money for food or fuel due to massive unemployment and soaring energy prices, or any of the countless other horrors caused by the aforementioned. The broken promises, broken infrastructure, and broken cities of Iraq were plainly visible in those early months of 2004 – and the sad thing is that the devastation I saw then has only grown worse since. The life Iraqis were living a year ago, horrendous as it was, was but a prelude to what was to come under the U.S. occupation. The warning signs were clear from a shattered infrastructure, to all the torturing, to a burgeoning, violent resistance.


Commentary

Opinion: In 2002, the U.N. development program sponsored a group of courageous Arab economists, social scientists and other scholars to do four reports on human development in the Arab world. The first one, in 2002, caused a real stir in this region - showing, among other things, that the Arabs were falling so far behind that Spain`s GDP was greater than that of the entire Arab League combined.

That first report, published in Arabic and English, was downloaded off the Internet 1 million times. It was a truly incisive diagnosis of the deficits in freedom, education and women`s empowerment retarding the Arab world.

In 2003, the same group produced a second Arab Human Development Report, about the Arab knowledge deficit - even tackling the supersensitive issue of how Islam and its current spiritual leaders may be holding back modern education. This was stuff no U.S. diplomat could ever raise, but the Arab authors of these reports could and did.

So, I eagerly awaited the third Arab Human Development Report, due in October. It was going to be pure TNT, because it was going to tackle the issue of governance and misgovernance in the Arab world, and the legal, institutional and religious impediments to political reform. These are the guts of the issue here. I waited. And I waited. But nothing.

Then I started to hear disturbing things - that the Bush team saw a draft of the Arab governance report and objected to the prologue because it was brutally critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation.


Opinion: Throughout my military experience in six campaigns covering nine different nations or territories, our troops were welcomed as liberators everywhere, including Italy and Germany. We never encountered guerrilla or insurgent threats. In fact, the partisans or guerillas always attacked our enemies. Partisans became famous in Russia, Italy and France and in Yugoslavia, where conditions bore an eerie similarity to Iraq now.

I hope our nation can soon end the bloodshed in Iraq. Above all, we must not lose our humanity, the main characteristic that distinguishes our forces from the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq. Yaron Brook, president of the far-right Ayn Rand Institute urged that we become more ruthless. According to William Raspberry`s column reprinted in The News-Journal, Brook suggested that we should wipe out all Iraqi civilians and communities that harbor terrorists.

Such ruthlessness was practiced more than 60 years ago by the German army in Yugoslavia. For every German soldier killed by Partisans or Chetniks, the Nazis executed 100 civilians -- for a wounded soldier, 50 civilians. The policy merely strengthened resistance and increased worldwide hatred of Nazis.

We should learn from that.


Casualty Reports

Local story: Southeast Louisianans mourn six local soldiers killed in attack on Bradley fighting vehicle near Baghdad last Thursday.

Local story: Bloomingburg, NY, soldier killed in same Bradley attack.

Local story: Spanaway, WA, soldier killed in Balad.

Local story: Mobile, AL, family hopes for return of kidnapped truck driver missing in Iraq since his convoy was ambushed in April.


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# posted by matt : 8:00 AM
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Saturday, January 08, 2005
Note to Readers, Saturday, January 8, 2005

No update again today. I`ve got the flu. I`m a complete asshole when I`m sick. My head hurts, my feet stink and I don`t love Jesus. Here`s an open thread.

YD



# posted by yankeedoodle : 1:56 PM
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Human Rights

Torture and International Human Rights
A roundtable discussion with Francis Boyle, Michael Mandel, Liz Holtzman, H. Victor Conde, and Mark Levine
by Boyle et al and Mark Levine; January 09, 2005

WAR CRIMES ROUNDTABLE

As the Abu-Ghraib prison scandal began to pierce through the public consciousness, Contributing Editor Mark LeVine brought together four leading experts on international and American constitutional law to explore the implications of the scandal and the larger issue of the violations of international and American law that have become part of the fabric of the US-led occupation of Iraq.

The extent of the daily violations of international law, including systematic war crimes by the US (and of course, other coalition forces and the insurgents as well), become impossible to ignore when you are on the ground in Iraq, which Levine visited in the early spring. What he saw first hand, and learned from speaking to people around the country - especially health professionals, NGO workers, lawyers, engineers, and academics - was how much the systematic commission of war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law were part of the routine of the occupation. As important, it was clearly the result of official US policies that would seem to extend directly to the White House and senior US political and military officials, including the President, Vice President and Secretary of Defense.

This was the context for contacting the four participants in this roundtable, all of whom have a wealth of expertise on the issue of the culpability of members of the US military and senior politicians for violations of civil and human rights, and the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Elizabeth Holtzman was a Congresswoman who drafted the impeachment papers for President Nixon during the Watergate hearings and has been researching the legal culpability of President Bush and his subordinates for the torture at Abu Ghraib and other crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Francis Boyle is a leading expert on the laws of war and the relationship between civilian and military personnel in investigating war crimes and other violations of humanitarian war, with particular experience in Israel/Palestine.

Viewing the situation from Canada, Michael Mandel has been among the leading voices bringing together lawyers across North America and Europe to deepen our understanding of the implications of the events and policies discussed in this roundtable, while Victor Conde has been among the foremost experts in defining the terminology and scope of international humanitarian war. While this roundtable was originally conducted in the summer of 2004, the ongoing revelations related to this story--that President Bush and other top officials were directly informed of abuses at Abu Ghraib and did nothing to stop them, or the declaration by Kofi Anan that the invasion of Iraq was "illegal" and violated the UN Charter (and thus was also a crime under the US Constitution)--only serve to confirm the arguments made by the roundtable participants.

- Mark Levine

Mark LeVine: Let`s start with an overview of the relevant international law: what a war crime is, why the issue of war crimes is so important, what the US is likely guilty of, and what the implications of its guilt are, legally and politically.

Condé: The specific legal definition of a war crime is most simply a criminal act in violation of the international Law of War. Conceptually, a war crime is derived from the limitation on the use of force by states and other parties to preserve a certain amount of humanity in armed conflict. For example, the Law of Armed Conflict is an attempt to preserve balance between the needs of military leaders to effectively carry out their military operations, what is called "military necessity" on the one hand, and the horrors of war and protection of humanity. War crimes are thus violations of the principle of humanity, including inflicting unnecessary suffering and harm, and interfering with normal functioning of a society during a military occupation, all of which are not accepted as legitimate actions by a combatant or a belligerent occupier. What we`re talking about here also involves the principle of reciprocity: We want our civilians and soldiers who are captured to be treated in a humane manner. Thus, it`s in our interest to do the same to captured enemy combatants and civilians, as we have increasingly seen more civilians than soldiers taken. Moreover, history has proven that when a state`s military acts within the confines of international law, it makes for a more efficient military force-you waste fewer bullets and resources than when it gets chaotic, excessively harmful savage and brutal. Subsequently, you leave less of a destructive aftermath, making it easier for the countries or groups involved to return more quickly to normal lives. Commission of war crimes is important because such acts cause more death, more destruction, more suffering, and more waste of resources, seldom with any significant military benefit.

LeVine: In my own research on war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq. I counted at least two-dozen classes of offenses systematically committed by the Occupation administration and US or US-allied military forces in the invasion and subsequent period of CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) rule. This includes violations of articles and 17, 18, 33, and 147 of the Geneva Convention covering the killing, hostage-taking and torturing of civilians

Boyle: As I just argued at Fort Stewart Georgia in the court martial proceedings for Sgt. Camilo Mejia for desertion, the accountability here goes directly up the chain of command under the terms of the US Army Field Manual 27-10. Specifically, paragraph 501 makes clear that commanders who have ordered or knew or should have known about war crimes and failed to stop it are themselves guilty of war crimes. If you look then at the public record, it is clear that Gens. Sanchez and Miller ordered war crimes and both should be relieved of command immediately: abuse of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions. As for General Abizaid, the overall commander of US forces in Southwest Asia, he admitted in his Senate hearings that he should have known about the war crimes at Abu Ghraib, so basically he`s already incriminated himself under the rules of the US Army Field Manual 27-10 In addition, above Abizaid you have Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Again my reading of the public record including the Taguba and Red Cross reports is that they either knew or should have known about all these war crimes. Indeed, if you read the ICRC report, - and as I testified under oath and under cross-examination (and was not contradicted) at the Mejia court-martial proceedings, - the widespread and systematic nature of these abuses rise to the level of crimes against humanity, going all the way up through the chain of command. Culpability also extends to Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence General William G. Boykin and Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone, who reports directly to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. And through this line it appears to me that Rumsfeld is culpable, because he was at Abu Ghraib last fall. Indeed, Sy Hersch`s New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib claims with good substantiation that he was totally aware and even signed off on the use of techniques which are clearly torture. Rumsfeld was given a tour by Brig. General Janet Karpinski, who was supposed to be in charge of the prison-although she said nothing when she was prohibited from accessing certain areas of it-and so she`s also accountable. It`s important to understand that the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Regulations of 1907, the U.S. Army Field Manual, all mandate that a criminal investigation be opened. And how President Bush, as Commander in Chief would be accountable under Field Manual 27-10 precisely because he is Commander in Chief of the US armed forces under the US Constitution. We know the White House knows this because if you read White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales`s memo, he specifically tries to exempt the US from the Geneva Conventions for Guantanamo and Afghanistan. You can see that Gonzalez was afraid of Bush and others being held directly accountable. Moreover, because Powell dissented, we know there was a debate about this, so Bush had to have been aware of the implications of what was being done, which is also backed up by the memos from Ashcroft. These memos have been unearthed by Newsweek. So ultimately what we have here are people at the highest levels of the chain of command guilty of ordering or not preventing torture, which is both an international crime against the Geneva Conventions and the Torture Convention and a domestic crime as well. What we have then is a conspiracy among the aforementioned individuals to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Let me add one more thing that`s very important to remember: The principles set forth in 27-10 of personal criminal accountability for war crimes goes back to the Nuremburg Charter, Judgments and Principles derived from the post-World War II trials of Nazi war criminals. Similar principles of criminal accountability were applied by the United States to the Japanese Imperial War criminals.

LeVine: In fact, President Bush has compared the war on terror to the war against the Nazis.

Boyle: Then we have even more reason to bring this to people`s attention: The Nuremburg Principles were in fact originally the idea of the US Government which then orchestrated the prosecutions in Nuremburg. People need to understand the pedigree and heritage here. These are very grave offenses which the US government a generation ago prosecuted and executed Nazis for committing. And Japanese war criminals too.

LeVine: How can any of the people you mentioned be prosecuted?

Boyle: The military could do it, or the Dept. of Justice, which would have default power to do so if the military didn`t. But for this of course we`d need a special prosecutor and that law has been allowed to lapse. Attorney General Ashcroft, who is clearly part of the criminal conspiracy, would never push a war crimes investigations against his colleagues or President Bush.

LeVine: What about the attempts to use UN resolutions to exempt the US from criminal prosecution for war crimes committed in Iraq?

Conde: To my knowledge it hasn`t gone through yet. If it did, I believe it wouldn`t have legal validity in the sense that no UN Security Council Resolution can be in violation of the grave breach provisions of the Geneva Convention or international customary law, which is what Geneva Law has become.

Holtzman: I think that right now this is a hypothetical issue because the US hasn`t objected to the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to its activities in Iraq. White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales recommended that the US exempt itself from the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan to reduce the threat of war crimes prosecution for abusive interrogations of Al Qaeda and Taliban members. But, the US did not exempt itself from the Geneva Conventions respecting Iraq and there is therefore no question that US activities in Iraq are governed by the Geneva Conventions. Once the Geneva Conventions apply, so does the War Crimes Act of 1996, which is not an international statute but rather a US criminal statute. Like bank robbery, murder on federal property and a whole host of other federal crimes listed in Title 18 of the federal statutes, committing a war crime is a federal crime prosecutable in US federal courts. This point is clear not just from the language of the War Crimes Act itself, but from White House Counsel Gonzales` January 2002 memo to President Bush. That memo was premised on the idea that so long as the Geneva Conventions applied to conduct in a country, then the War Crimes Act applied. Opting out of the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales thought, might allow top US officials to argue that the War Crimes Act didn`t apply, and allow them to escape prosecution. (The validity of the "opt out" gimmick has yet to be tested.) Under the terms of the War Crimes Act of 1966, any US national who engages in war crimes is subject to imprisonment, and if death results, the death penalty. A war crime is defined in the statute as a "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions, which in turn means "murder, torture or inhuman treatment" of prisoners or detainees. Thus, theoretically at least, everyone up the chain of command, including the President, could be liable under the War Crimes Act for ordering or engaging in murder, torture or the inhuman treatment of prisoners in Iraq. Because there is no statute of limitations in death penalty cases, prosecutions of those who authorized or engaged in murder or authorized or engaged in torture or inhuman treatment of Iraqi prisoners that resulted in death could be commenced at any time in the future. (That was one reason White House Counsel Gonzales was so eager to avoid possible war crimes liability for Afghan war interrogations: control by President Bush of Justice Department prosecutions could not last forever.)

LeVine: Are you saying that the President and senior administration and/or government officials could be subject to the death penalty for war crimes committed by US personnel in Iraq?

Holtzman: Yes, assuming that they directed or authorized murder, torture or inhuman treatment of prisoners or, possibly, if they permitted such conduct to continue after they knew about it. The statute applies to "any national" of the US. That is the only limitation on who can be prosecuted. Of course, we are talking theoretically. Even if high officials` conduct fell within the ambit of the statute, getting them prosecuted would be no easy matter.

LeVine: How would this happen?

Holtzman: I was one of the authors of the Watergate Special Prosecutor (later the Independent Counsel) law. We wrote the law because we knew that the Attorney General, when investigating the President or other top government officials, was not likely to do an aggressive, thorough or fully professional job--and would certainly not be perceived as doing so. Consequently, the law created a mechanism for a court-appointed special prosecutor when there were allegations of criminal wrong doing against certain high-level government officials. But this law, after the abuses of Kenneth Starr, was allowed to lapse. Now, investigations are up to the Justice Department alone. The decision to appoint any special prosecutor is solely in the hands of Attorney General Ashcroft. Under the War Crimes Act of 1996, there are two sets of questions to determine potential criminal liability of high government officials, including the President: 1. What did they specifically order or authorize regarding interrogations of Iraqi prisoners and 2. Assuming they did not order or authorize murder, torture or inhuman treatment, what did they do once they knew of murder, torture or inhuman treatment? Under international law, once you are aware of violations, you have a duty to act to stop them. Not surprisingly, the Administration has thus far failed to release information about what orders the President (and other high officials) gave with respect to the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners, as well as what the President and others actually knew about the abuse of prisoners, when they knew it and what they did to stop it. We know for example that Colin Powell claimed he advised the President about the complaints of the International Red Cross. When did that briefing occur, what was the President told about those complaints and what did he do in response to that and other information he may have received about prisoner abuse in Iraq. This information--as well as information on what he authorized or ordered-- must be disclosed. Mandel: Forgive me, but so far in this discussion I think we`ve left out the most important issue, legally and morally, which is who started this war in the first place. The invasion of Iraq was a "crime against peace," the number 1 count in the Nuremberg Charter`s indictment of the Nazi war criminals: `planning, preparation, initiation [and] waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties` - international treaties just like the Charter of the United Nations. It`s what the Nuremberg Tribunal called "the supreme international crime." The President was made aware of this by a great number of international lawyers around the world before the invasion, and even if he claimed ignorance, I`m sure he`s heard that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Bush and his administration and the US commanders involved are all guilty of this supreme crime. Since the war was unlawful, the many thousands of deaths predictably resulting from it are also crimes, murder in fact, for which Bush and his officials and commanders are guilty in flagrante.

Conde: This is absolutely correct. I wrote a letter to Bush laying out these facts in the months before the war, specifically, so he couldn`t say he wasn`t aware that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, or that the war would not likely lead to grave breaches of international law. And he even wrote me back, which explicitly acknowledges his awareness of this fact, and thus his openness to prosecution for these crimes after the fact.

LeVine: What can be done to enforce these laws?

Mandel: This is the problem. As far as I understand it, because the war was authorized by the US Congress, it was legal under US law, but it`s still illegal under international law. But what does this really mean? There`s no institution capable of punishing this supreme crime. Even the International Criminal Court, which the US opted out of, left out the supreme crime against peace of waging an aggressive war. So how do enforce the law against perpetrators of war crimes? When Belgium tried to do this with Ariel Sharon, and then Tommy Franks and Rumsfeld and Bush himself, the US forced Belgium to repeal its `universal jurisdiction` law (and in fact it was repealed and replaced by a watered-down version). When Spain tried to apply its law of universal jurisdiction against Pinochet, the UK ignored its extradition treaties and sent him home to a safe retirement. If you look at the recent prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, you see that the prosecutor is an American Defense Department lawyer! Basically, when the US and UK decided they wanted Taylor out, they deployed the war crimes issue. And this is a big problem for the peace movement: to rely on these international judicial institutions to obtain justice is a bad bet because they`re corrupt and inefficient and largely controlled by the US. This is why I believe that the global peace and justice movement should be fighting, as it has largely been doing, against war itself rather than against specific war crimes, which, however serious, are still minor in comparison to the major crime of war itself. There is no humanity in war. We can`t rely on international treaties, however well or poorly written, to make war human.

Holtzman: I`m not sure I can sit silently and appear therefore to assent to the idea that all war is bad or that war crimes jurisprudence is useless. The fact is that in the US we have a statute that makes it a crime to violate the Geneva Conventions. The question is how to make the statute work, particularly in light of what appears to be the inhuman treatment of so many Iraqi prisoners in US custody, in some cases resulting in death. Of course, many of us are pessimistic given the present Administration that the law will be vigorously enforced, but it is clearly better to have the law in place than no law at all.

LeVine: What could we do to force this issue?

Conde: It would be nice to be able to prosecute the aggressor. This is desirable but not likely. In another area of international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention points to the answer of public education. Geneva IV has a provision on dissemination, meaning that all the parties to the convention are legally bound in time of peace as well as in time of war, to teach the civilian population, as well as the military about the basic principles of the Conventions and to help them learn to know what the obligations to the treaty are. I had four military people in my class on international law. They were so changed by the end of the course because of what they now knew. We must make sure Americans know that the law is protecting civilians-including Americans-from being mistreated. It does something to the mind when you give people this information. Teaching them about the laws of armed conflict, the Geneva Conventions, Hague Law, even the UN Charter and International Declaration of Human Rights, has an enlightening and empowering effect that helps individuals learn and be equipped to speak truth to power. I hear the proof of that proposition loud and clear in you, Mark.

LeVine: Are you saying that we should be sending out mass emails or regular mail to every American family giving them this information?

Conde: Yes. We must do it because the US government will not do it, even though it is legally obligated to do so. This is because the government does not want an aware, knowledgeable American population. Bush himself in fact justified the war by saying that the US was invading to "restore the rule of law in Iraq," so he must be held accountable for this. Americans need to become educated about why and how he and others are responsible and accountable for their actions.

Mandel: I agree, but the highest law in international law is the UN Charter, and it bans aggressive war. If this is not obeyed, the rest of the laws are pretty useless. How does one engage in a clean war? It`s impossible. So war crimes prosecution for lesser crimes (compared to the crime against the peace itself) in a way distract us from the issue that war itself is the major crime and must be stopped.

Holtzman: Too much of the discussion has focused on violations of international law as opposed to US law. So, what has to happen? First, the American people must be informed that there is a War Crimes Act that could apply to the President and his top officials with respect to prisoner abuse in Iraq. Second, the American people must determine that everyone who violated the War Crimes Act and other laws with respect to Iraqi abuses must be held accountable. We established the principle in Watergate that no one is above the law, including the president of the United States. That principle needs to be reaffirmed today. Of course, if there is a serious investigation of wrongdoing with respect to Iraqi abuses, perhaps it will have a limiting effect on the willingness of future administrations to engage in the kinds of abuses that the Bush administration has engaged in here.

Conde: You`re absolutely right. Educating people that this war was illegal, that the Congress didn`t have the right under international law to authorize a preemptive, aggressive war is crucial. We need to get people to read, inter alia, the preamble and Articles 2.4, and 51 of the UN Charter. The preamble states that "We the Peoples of the United Nations, Determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person,..., and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, ..., and for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest...Have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims,...." Article 2.4 of the Charter states that "All [UN] members shall refrain in their international relations from the treat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." Article 51 of the Charter says that "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security." But at the same time you can`t just hit them over the head; it`s better to provide them with the laws, statutes or treaties and let them make up their own mind. Most will understand that Congress can`t just violate international treaties and laws by approving a war like Iraq.

Mandel: That`s all well and good, but we outside the US watched the UN and especially the Security Council demonized so successfully by the American mass media I`m not sure how easy it will be to educate people just by showing them the relevant legal doctrines or laws...

Conde: Yes, that`s true. But the brainwashing against the UN Security Council can be overcome by showing what the standards are that the US has publicly set for itself and/or said it would comply with, and then show them what is clear that this country has done, and let them decide for themselves.

LeVine: So what do we do, then?

Holtzman: We need to create a document, a brief, that sets forth the potential for criminal or other legal liability on the part of the top Bush Administration officials and the need for an independent, non Justice Department led investigation and educate the press, the public and Congress to the point where enough pressure is created for a serious investigation to begin. Members of Congress, for example, could call for the disclosure of information about what the president ordered regarding Iraqi interrogations and when he was informed of abuses and what he did about them. They could also call for the appointment of a special prosecutor. The press and editorial boards need to be educated, so that the administration will be questioned as to why it is not disclosing information on what President Bush authorized regarding Iraqi interrogations and so that Ashcroft will be questioned about why he is not appointing a special prosecutor.

Conde: I think that such a document, signed by a large group of leading American and international lawyers, professors and jurists would have great impact.

Mandel: In Canada we can prosecute war crimes committed by anyone anywhere, so perhaps American lawyers should come up to Canada and ask the Canadian Attorney General to open an investigation, once Bush and his senior Cabinet level officials are out of office (now they have diplomatic immunity). But, theoretically, the military commanders could be tried now if they ever show their face in Canada.

Holtzman: At the very least, other countries could call on the US to enforce its own War Crimes Act.

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law and recent author of Destroying World Order: U.S. Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11th (Clarity Press: 2004).

H. Victor Condé LLM, former adj. Professor of International Law and Human Rights, Trinity Law School, California; lecturer at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, , France, lecturer: UC Irvine recent author of A Handbook of International Human Rights Termin- ology (U of Nebraska Press: 2004) and Human Rights in the United States: a Dictionary and Documents, (ABC-Clio: 2000).

Michael Mandel, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, co-Chair of the Canadian-based Lawyers Against the War (www.lawyersagainstthewar.org) and author of How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity (Pluto Press, 2004)

Francis Boyle is a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is the author of eight books, including Destroying World Order and Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law, and has served as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid peace negotiations.

Liz Holtzman is a former NY Comptroller and Congresswoman who served as a member of the House Judiciary Committee that drafter the letters of Impeachment for President Nixon during Watergate. She is currently a partner at Herrick, Feinstein in NYC and is researching the potential criminal culpability for President Bush and other Administration officials for war crimes for various actions in Iraq.

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January 10, 2005
WASHINGTON MEMO
Hot Topic: How U.S. Might Disengage in Iraq
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - Three weeks before the election in Iraq, conversation has started bubbling up in Congress, in the Pentagon and some days even in the White House about when and how American forces might begin to disengage in Iraq.

So far it is mostly talk, not planning. The only thing resembling a formal map to the exit door is a series of Pentagon contingency plans for events after the Jan. 30 elections. But a senior administration official warned over the weekend against reading too much into that, saying "the Pentagon has plans for everything," from the outbreak of war in Korea to relief missions in Africa.

The rumblings about disengagement have grown distinctly louder as members of Congress return from their districts after the winter recess, and as military officers try to game out how Sunni Arabs and Shiites might react to the election results. The annual drafting of the budget is a reminder that the American presence in Iraq is costing nearly $4.5 billion a month and putting huge strains on the military. And White House officials contemplate the political costs of a second term possibly dominated by a nightly accounting of continuing casualties.

By all accounts, President Bush has not joined the conversation about disengagement so far, though a few senior members of his national security team have.

A senior administration official said in an interview this weekend that Mr. Bush still intended to stick to his plan, refining his strategy of training Iraqis to take over security duties from Americans, but not wavering from his promise to stay until the job is done. "We are not in the business of trying to float timetables," the official insisted. "The only metric we have is when we can turn more and more over to local forces."

But all over Washington, there is talk about new ways to define when the mission is accomplished - not to cut and run, but not to linger, either. Several administration officials acknowledge that Mr. Bush will face crucial decisions soon after Jan. 30, when it should become clearer whether the election has resulted in more stability or more insurgency.

Already, the president found himself in a rare public argument last week with one of his father`s closest friends and advisers, Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser. The election "won`t be a promising transformation, and it has great potential for deepening the conflict," Mr. Scowcroft declared Thursday, adding, "We may be seeing incipient civil war at this time."

Mr. Scowcroft said the situation in Iraq raised the fundamental question of "whether we get out now." He urged Mr. Bush to tell the Europeans on a trip to Europe next month: "I can`t keep the American people doing this alone. And what do you think would happen if we pulled American troops out right now?"

In short, he was suggesting that Mr. Bush raise the specter that Iraq could collapse without a major foreign presence - exactly the rationale the administration has used for its current policy.

Mr. Bush, asked Friday whether he shared Mr. Scowcroft`s concerns about "an incipient civil war," shot back, "Quite the opposite."

"I think elections will be such an incredibly hopeful experience for the Iraqi people," he said.

But the president`s optimism is in sharp contrast, some administration insiders say, to some conversations in the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon and Congress. For the first time, there are questions about whether it is politically possible to wait until the Iraqi forces are adequately trained before pressure to start bringing back American troops becomes overwhelming.

Some senators are now openly declaring that Iraqi military and police units are not up to the job.

Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said last week after meeting with top Pentagon officials, "In my judgment, a great deal of work needs to be done to achieve the level of forces that will allow our country and other members of the coalition to reduce force levels."

Before the recess, other Republican senators, including Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John McCain of Arizona, voiced skepticism about the Iraq policy. And on "Fox News Sunday," Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, said "we are now digging ourselves out of a hole" in Iraq.

Few in Washington missed the significance of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld`s decision last week to send a retired four-star general, Gary E. Luck, to Iraq to assess military operations and Iraqi security forces. It was driven, administration officials say, by an urgent need to determine what has gone wrong with the training of Iraqi troops.

In an interview with a Dallas radio station last week, Mr. Rumsfeld said he did not want to send more American troops to Iraq "because then we`d look more and more like an occupying force."

In classified strategy sessions, other administration officials say they are asking whether the sheer size of the American force, now 150,000 troops, is fueling the insurgency.

One possibility quietly discussed inside the administration is whether the new Iraqi government might ask the United States forces to begin to leave - what one senior State Department official calls "the Philippine option," a reference to when the Philippines asked American forces to pull out a decade ago.

Few officials will talk publicly about that possibility. But in a speech on Oct. 8, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, who had just completed a tour as commander of all marines in Iraq, said, "I believe there will be elections in Iraq in January, and I suspect very shortly afterward you will start to see a reduction in U.S. forces - not because U.S. planners will seek it, rather because the Iraqis will demand it."

General Conway, who is now the director of operations for the military`s Joint Staff, was traveling this weekend, and it could not be determined if he still stood by his comments.

Even if the new government wants the American forces to remain, some officials say there is a growing undercurrent of talk about whether to press the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own defense by giving them a rough timetable for gradual American withdrawal.

"It`s clear to everyone that this has to become an Iraqi show, and it has to happen this year," a senior administration official said.

Military officers say actual security conditions, not schedules, will dictate any American troop reductions.

"It`s truly hard to say what anyone might regard as a realistic date," one general in Iraq said in an e-mail interview on Saturday.

Even as military planners at the Pentagon and in the Middle East draft possible withdrawal schedules, other Pentagon officials and retired officers are projecting long American troop commitments in Iraq.

Army officials here are still drawing up plans to sustain future rotations of troops at today`s levels, plans that can be adapted, they said.

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who commanded the invasion of Iraq, said on the NBC News program "Today" on Dec. 9: "One has to think about the numbers. I think we will be engaged with our military in Iraq for, perhaps, 3, 5, perhaps 10 years."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Vor Sumatra und unter der Provinz Aceh liegt eins der größten Gasfelder der Welt. Dort soll Exxon schon einige Mrd.$ an Gewinn rausgezogen haben. Man spricht von 40 Mrd.$ bisheriges Förderungsvolumen.
Deshalb hat es auch so lang gedauert bis die Hilfsorganisationen Zugang zu dem Gebiet erhielten. Das indonesische Militär, das in großem Umfang von den Gasförderfirmen unterhalten wird, mußte erst einmal die Förderanlagen gegen mögliche Angriffe der Separisten absichern.
Ein Schelm, der Böses dabei denkt, weshalb die USA so schnell mit einem Flugzeugträger vor Ort waren.

Der andere Tsunami - der menschgemachte
von John Pilger
ZNet Kommentar 07.01.2005
Die Kreuzzügler des Westens - USA und Großbritannien - helfen den Tsunami-Opfern mit einer Summe, mit der man keinen Stealth-Bomber bzw. keine einzige Woche blutiger Besatzung im Irak finanzieren könnte. Die Summe, die George Bushs Amtseinführungsparty kosten wird, würde weitgehend ausreichen, die Küste Sri Lankas instandzusetzen. Erst als offensichtlich war, daß Menschen weltweit spontan Millionen spenden würden, stockten Bush und Blair ihre anfangs tröpfelnde “Hilfe” auf - ein Public-Relations-Problem dräute. Der “großzügige” Beitrag der Regierung Blair ist nur ein Sechzehntel jener 800 Millionen Pfund, die die Bombardierung des Irak (vor Beginn der Invasion) kostete und kaum ein Zwanzigstel jenes Milliardengeschenks an das indonesische Militär (bekannt als “sanfter Kredit”) zum Erwerb von ‘Hawk’-Kampfbombern. Am 24. November - nur einen Monat vor dem Tsunami - hatte die Blair-Regierung eine Rüstungsmesse in Jakarta unterstützt, “um den (indonesischen) Streitkräften die dringend benötigte Möglichkeit zur Eruierung ihrer Verteidigungskapazitäten zu geben”, so die Jakarta Post. Das indonesische Militär war für den Genozid in Osttimor verantwortlich. Das indonesische Militär tötete in Aceh mehr als 20 000 Zivilisten und “Aufständische”. Einer der Ausstellungsteilnehmer war Rolls Royce - jene Firma, die die Hawk-Motoren herstellt. Die Hawk-Kampfflugzeuge - im Verein mit ‘Scorpion’-Panzerfahrzeugen, Maschinengewehren und Munition aus Großbritannien - terrorisierten und töteten Menschen in Aceh noch bis zu dem Tag, an dem der Tsunami die Provinz in Trümmer legte.

Die australische Regierung, die sich jetzt ihres bescheidenen Hilfebeitrags angesichts der historischen Katastrophe, die die asiatischen Nachbarn heimsucht, rühmt, hat im geheimen die indonesischen Kopassus-Spezialkräfte trainiert. Die Greuel dieser Einheit in Aceh sind bestens dokumentiert. Seit 40 Jahren unterstützt Australien die Unterdrückung in Indonesien und war insbesondere Diktator Suharto, dessen Truppen 1/3 der Bevölkerung Osttimors töteten, sehr zugetan. Die (heutige) australische Regierung unter John Howard - berüchtigt, weil sie asylsuchende Kinder einsperren läßt -, verstößt gegen internationales Seerecht, indem sie Osttimor Öl- und Gaslizensen im Wert von rund 8 Milliarden Dollar vorenthält. Ohne diese Einnahmequelle jedoch kann Osttimor, das ärmste Land der Welt, weder Schulen noch Krankenhäuser noch Straßen bauen und keine Arbeitsplätze für seine jungen Leute schaffen, von denen 90 Prozent ohne Arbeit sind.

Bei den Herrschern der Welt und ihren Handlangern steht Heuchelei, Narzißmus und Ablenkungspropaganda obenan. Beim Thema ‘humanitäre Ziele’ greift man zu Begriffen der Superlative. Gleichzeitig dominiert in den Nachrichten die Unterscheidung zwischen würdigen und unwürdigen Opfern. Wer Opfer einer gewaltigen Naturkatastrophe wird, gehört zu den würdigen Opfern (fraglich, für wie lange allerdings), die Opfer eines von Menschen gemachten Imperial-Desasters andererseits gelten als unwürdig; häufig dürfen sie nicht einmal erwähnt werden. Aus irgendeinem Grund können sich Journalisten nicht überwinden zu berichten, was in Aceh vor sich geht - mit Unterstützung “unserer” Regierung vor sich geht. Der einseitige moralische Spiegel erlaubt es uns, die Schneise der Verwüstung und des Schreckens, die der ‘andere Tsunami’ schlug, zu ignorieren. Man denke nur an das Elend in Afghanistan - wo sauberes Wasser unbekannt und der Tod im Kindbett normal ist. Beim Labour- Parteitag 2001 kündigte Blair seinen berühmten Kreuzzug zur “Neuordnung der Welt” mit der Beteuerung an: “An das afghanische Volk, wir verpflichten uns, wir werden nicht weggehen... wir werden mit Ihnen zusammenarbeiten, um sicherzustellen, daß (ein Weg) aus der Armut, Ihrer mißlichen Existenz, (gefunden wird).” Kurz davor hatte die Blair-Regierung an der Eroberung Afghanistans teilgenommen. Dabei starben sage und schreibe 20 000 Zivilisten. Noch nie seit Menschengedenken - bei all den großen humanitären Krisen - wurde ein Land derart geschunden bzw. wurde einem Land sowenig Hilfe gewährt wie Afghanistan. Lediglich 3 Prozent der internationalen Hilfen für das Land flossen in den Wiederaufbau. 84 Prozent gingen an die militärische “Koalition” unter Führung der USA. Die restlichen Krumen flossen in die Notfallhilfe. Häufig wird als Wiederaufbauhilfe deklariert, was eigentlich Privatinvestition ist - wie jene 35 Millionen zur Finanzierung eines geplanten Fünf-Sterne-Hotels, vorwiegend für Ausländer. Ein Berater des Ministers für ländliche Angelegenheiten in Kabul sagte mir, seine Regierung habe bislang weniger als 20 Prozent der dem Lande versprochenen Hilfsgelder erhalten. “Wir haben nicht einmal genug Geld, um die Löhne auszuzahlen, geschweige denn den Wiederaufbau zu planen”, so der Berater. Der Grund hierfür liegt in der - selbstverständlich verschwiegenen - Tatsache, daß die Afghanen die unwürdigsten aller Opfer sind. Als amerikanische Helikopter-Kampfflugzeuge ein abgelegenes afghanisches Bauerndorf wiederholt mit Maschinengewehrfeuer angriffen - 93 Zivilpersonen starben - fühlte sich ein Pentagon-Offizieller zu der Aussage bemüßigt: “Die Leute dort sind tot, weil wir wollten, daß sie tot sind”.

Der ‘andere Tsunami’ - daß er existiert, wurde mir 1979 bewußt. Damals berichtete ich aus Kambodscha. Nach 10 Jahren amerikanischen Bombardements und der Pol-Pot-Barbarei war Kambodscha in einem vergleichbar desolaten Zustand wie heute Aceh. Krankheiten führten zu Hungersnöten; die Menschen litten unter einem kollektiven Trauma, das nur wenige ausdrücken konnten. Nachdem das Regime der Roten Khmer kollabiert war, vergingen 9 Monate, ohne daß westliche Regierungen effektive Hilfe schickten. Stattdessen unterstützten der Westen und China ein UN-Embargo gegen Kambodscha. Dieses Embargo kam praktisch der Verweigerung der gesamten Hilfsmaschinerie / der Maschinerie des Wiederaufbaus gleich. Das Problem der Kambodschaner: Sie hatten sich von den falschen Leuten befreien lassen. Ihre Befreier, die Vietnamesen, standen im Kalten Krieg auf der falschen Seite. Kurz zuvor hatten sie die Amerikaner aus dem Land gejagt. Somit waren die Kambodschaner unwürdige und verzichtbare Opfer. Eine ähnliche Belagerung hat man in den 90gern dem Irak aufgezwungen - auch darüber wurde kaum berichtet. Während der “Befreiung” durch Briten und Amerikaner intensivierte sich die Belagerung noch. So berichtet Unicef im September 2004, daß sich die Zahl der unterernährten Kinder im Irak seit der Besatzung verdoppelt habe. Die Kleinkindersterblichkeit im Irak ist mittlerweile so hoch wie in Burundi - und höher als in Haiti oder Uganda. Im Irak herrscht lähmende Armut und chronischer Medikamentenmangel. Krebs ist massiv auf dem Vormarsch - vor allem Brustkrebs. Radioaktive Verseuchung ist ein weitverbreitetes Phänomen. Mehr als 700 Schulen haben Bombenschäden. Von den Milliarden Dollar, die angeblich für den Wiederaufbau des Irak bereitstehen, wurden bislang nur 29 Millionen tatsächlich ausgegeben - das meiste für Söldner, die Ausländer bewachen. Im Westen erfährt man davon kaum etwas in den Nachrichten.

Der ‘andere Tsunami’ - er schlägt weltweit zu. Tag für Tag sterben daran 24 000 Menschen - Menschen, die an Armut, Verschuldung und Teilung zugrundegehen. Das alles ist Produkt eines Hyperkults namens ‘Neoliberalismus’. Mit der Paris-Konferenz 1991, zu der sie die reichsten Staaten luden, gestanden die Vereinten Nationen dies auch ein. Ziel der Konferenz war die Implementierung “eines Aktionsprogramms” zur Rettung der ärmsten Länder der Welt. 10 Jahre später sind praktisch alle Versprechen, die die westlichen Regierungen damals gaben, gebrochen. Das Geschwätz des damaligen britischen Schatzkanzlers Gordon Brown, die G8 “teilen den Traum Großbritanniens” zur Beendigung der Armut, entpuppte sich als genau das, was es war: Geschwätz. Die “Basislinie” der Vereinten Nationen - 0,7 Prozent der Staatseinnahmen in Auslandshilfe zu investieren - selbst diese lausige Mindestforderung wurde von keiner einzigen Regierung eingehalten. Großbritannien gibt 0,34 Prozent und macht damit das ‘Department of International Development’ zum schlechten Witz. Am wenigsten unter den Industrienationen geben die USA: 0,15 Prozent.

Millionen Menschen wissen, ihr Leben wurde für entbehrlich erklärt - wenngleich viele im Westen das nicht sehen bzw. es sich nicht vorstellen können. Wenn unter dem Diktat des Internationalen Währungsfonds (IWF) Zölle aufgehoben und Subventionen für Nahrungsmittel und Benzin gestrichen werden, wissen die Kleinbauern und Landlosen, die Katastrophe naht. Das ist auch der Grund, weshalb Bauernselbstmorde mittlerweile epidemische Ausmaße annehmen. Laut WTO haben nur die Reichen das Recht, ihre heimischen Industrien, die heimische Landwirtschaft zu schützen. Nur sie seien berechtigt, den Export von Fleisch, Getreide oder Zucker zu subventionieren und diese Produkte künstlich verbilligt in den armen Ländern abzuladen. Dadurch werden Existenzen, wird Leben, vernichtet. Ein gutes Beispiel ist Indonesien - das Land, das die Weltbank einst als “Musterschüler der globalen Wirtschaft” bezeichnete. Viele Menschen, die am zweiten Weihnachtsfeiertag auf Sumatra in den Tod geschwemmt wurden, waren Enteignete - enteignet durch die Politik des IWF. Die Schulden Indonesiens belaufen sich mittlerweile auf 110 Milliarden Dollar - ein Betrag, der nicht rückzahlbar ist. Laut ‘World Resources Institute’ kostet dieser ‘andere Tsunami’ jedes Jahr zwischen 13 und 18 Millionen Kindern das Leben. 12 Millionen dieser Kinder sind unter 5 Jahren, wie aus einem Entwicklungsreport der Vereinten Nationen hervorgeht. Der australische Sozialwissenschaftler Michael McKinley schreibt: “In den formalen (offiziellen) Kriegen des 20. Jahrhunderts starben 100 Millionen. Warum sollten sie privilegiert sein gegenüber der jährlichen (Todes-)Rate, die Strukturanpassungsprogramme seit 1982 unter Kindern fordern?”

Das System, das dies verursacht, tritt mit dem Kampfruf “Demokratie” an. Immer mehr Menschen auf der ganzen Welt begreifen, daß dies Hohn ist. Das zunehmende Bewußtsein - ja, klares Bewußtsein - ist mehr als ein Grund zu hoffen. Die Kreuzritter in Washington und London verspielten die Weltsympathie für die Opfer des 11. Septembers 2001, um ihre eigene Kampagne der Dominanz schnell voranzutreiben. Die kritische, intelligente Öffentlichkeit ist nun aufgerüttelt und sieht Leute wie Bush und Blair als Lügner, deren schuldhafte Aktionen als Verbrechen. Daß einfache Leute im Westen den Opfern des Tsunami massenhaft Hilfe leisten, ist die spektakuläre Wiederaneignung von etwas, was den Menschen von ihren Regierungen und der Konzern-Propaganda vorenthalten wird - Moral, Internationalismus und die ‘politics of community’. Die Berichte der Touristen, die aus den betroffenen Ländern heimkehren, quellen über vor Dankbarkeit, angesichts der Großzügigkeit und Offenherzigkeit, mit der sich die Allerärmsten ihrer annahmen und ihnen Schutz gewährten. Diese Aussagen sind die Antithese zu einer “Politik,” für die nur die Habgierigen zählen.

“Der spektakulärste Ausdruck öffentlicher Moral, den die Welt je sah” - so beschrieb die Schriftstellerin Arundhati Roy vor fast 2 Jahren die zornige Antikriegs-Welle, die um die Welt lief. Eine neue französische Studie geht davon aus, daß an jenem Februartag 2003 35 Millionen Menschen demonstrierten. So etwas habe es zuvor noch nie gegeben. Das war erst der Anfang - und ich meine das durchaus nicht rhetorisch. Der Neubeginn der Menschen - ist nicht einfach nur ein Phänomen, es ist die Fortsetzung eines Kampfes, der manchmal zwar zu Eis erstarrt scheint, aber als Same unter der Schneedecke lebt. Beispiel Lateinamerika: Lange Zeit war die Region vom Westen für entbehrlich, für unsichtbar, erklärt worden. “Den Lateinamerikanern wurde Impotenz gelehrt”, schrieb Eduardo Galeano einmal. “Die Pädagogik dazu stammt noch aus der Kolonialzeit, gelehrt durch gewaltätige Soldaten, ängstliche Lehrer und schwächliche Fatalisten, (sie) hat in unseren Seelen den Glauben an die Unantastbarkeit der Realität verankert, alles, was uns zu tun bliebe, sei, den Kummer, den jeder Tag mit sich bringt, still zu schlucken”. Heute feiert Galeano in seiner Heimat Uruguay die Wiedergeburt echter Demokratie. Die Menschen Uruguays haben “gegen die Angst” angewählt, gegen die Privatisierung und die damit verbundene Unmoral. In Venezuela fanden im Oktober Wahlen statt - auf kommunaler und bundesstaatlicher Ebene. Sie brachten der einzigen Regierung der Welt, die den Ölreichtum des Landes mit ihren ärmsten Bürgern teilt, den neunten demokratischen Sieg. Und in Chile wird endlich auch der Letzte jener Militärfaschisten, die damals von westlichen Regierungen, vor allem Frau Thatcher, unterstützt wurden, durch die wiedererstarkten Kräfte der Demokratie strafrechtlich verfolgt.

Diese Kräfte sind Teil einer Bewegung gegen Ungleichheit, Armut und Krieg - einer Bewegung, die sich in den vergangenen sechs Jahren herausbildete. Sie ist vielschichtiger, aktiver, internationaler und toleranter (was Unterschiede betrifft) als alles, was ich in meinem Leben sah. Es ist eine Bewegung unbelastet vom westlichen Liberalismus - der glaubt, der Vertreter einer überlegenen Lebensform zu sein. Die Allerweisesten wissen, in Wirklichkeit handelt es sich um Kolonialismus - unter anderem Namen. Und diese Weisen wissen auch: So wie die Eroberung des Irak allmählich offenbar wird, könnte sich auch das ganze Herrschafts-Verarmungs-System offenbaren.

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Guantanamo: Three years on
Today is the anniversary of the founding of America`s prison camp for `enemy combatants`, And despite evidence of systematic abuse and widespread international condemnation it looks set to stay open
By Rupert Cornwell

10 January 2005

Three years ago, the world caught its first glimpse of a new breed of prisoners, captured in a new sort of war. They were shackled, orange-suited figures, seen through telephoto lenses, arriving in a makeshift jail on an American base on a tropical island, 8,000 miles from where they had been captured on the battlefield of Afghanistan.

According to US officials at the time, they were "the worst of the worst." They had been chained to the seats of their transport plane for the journey half way round the world because "these are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines on a C-17 to bring it down," General Richard Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, explained in an interview on 10 January 2002, as the first 20 prisoners arrived at Guantanamo Bay in south-eastern Cuba.

Today the "the worst of the worst" better describes the prison than those who are confined there. At its height, Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo housed about 660 detainees. The number has fallen to around 550 today, from 42 countries. The place and manner of their detention, however, has become the embodiment of much that the world detests in President George Bush`s global "war on terror". "Guantanamo has become an icon of lawlessness," the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement marking Camp X-Ray`s third anniversary, "a symbol of the US government`s attempts to put itself above the law."

Naturally, that is not how the Bush administration sees it. No official spokesman will admit that Guantanamo was a mistake that has besmirched the US image around the world. The Pentagon claims that detainees have provided valuable information, which has helped thwart several planned terrorist strikes. If they were not under lock and key at Guantanamo, says Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, many inmates might be plotting such attacks, or back fighting US troops in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.

But many of these claims do not survive scrutiny. Privately, Pentagon officials admit that most detainees are low-level figures. Outside experts query the intelligence value of many prisoners, insignificant figures now behind bars for two years or more.

In the meantime, the charges of prisoner abuse and torture multiply. With each one, it becomes more apparent that wittingly or unwittingly, Guantanamo was a test bed for the techniques - and incubator of the mentality - that the world discovered in the horrific prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib.

From the outset the US authorities insisted that the detainees were not conventional soldiers, but "enemy combatants" who did not qualify as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Nonetheless, the Pentagon said, they would be treated as if they were. Accounts by those who have been released from Guantanamo, as well as leaked reports by an alarmed FBI, suggest otherwise.

Prisoners have not just been denied effective legal representation. According to Amnesty, interrogation techniques used include stress positions, isolation, hooding, sensory deprivation and terrifying dogs. Alarmed FBI agents who visited Guantanamo have reported prolonged use of shackling, loud music and strobe lights, and dogs.

In the latest allegation, reported in Newsweek today, one FBI agent said he saw a detainee sitting on the floor of an interrogation cell with an Israeli flag draped around him while he was bombarded by loud music and a strobe light.

Former prisoners have told even more shocking tales, of being tightly chained to the concrete floor of their cells for 15 hours, and of savage beatings handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force.

In shades of Abu Ghraib, devout Muslim prisoners were humiliated by naked prostitutes parading themselves in front of them.

Various investigations are in progress. But the fate of the detainees remains murky. The US Supreme Court last year rejected the absurd claim by the Pentagon that Guantanamo Bay (though leased in perpetuity by Cuba to the US) was not technically on American soil, and therefore foreigners held there had no right to bring cases before a US civil court of law.

The authorities countered by promising to speed up so-called "Combatant Status Review Tribunals," consisting of panels of military officers, to examine each detainee`s case. As of now, four low-level prisoners have been sent for trial by military commissions. But these proceedings are stalled, after a federal judge ruled against the commissions. The US government is now appealing.

The tangle exasperates even some Republican supporters of the war against terror. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina`s junior senator, spoke last week of the damaging "legal chaos" surrounding Guantanamo Bay. The US, said Mr Graham, had "lost its way" by playing fast and loose with the law.

Few observers would disagree. But Guantanamo will not soon disappear. Plans have been announced for a $25m (£13m) jail to hold 200 prisoners, and for a permanent guard force to replace the 330 infantry troops there now. Like the "war on terror" itself, America`s most notorious jail for terrorists is here to stay.

Shameful regime of detention without trial

2001 7 OCTOBER: American and British forces invade Afghanistan.

2002 10 JANUARY: The first al-Qa`ida prisoners are moved from Afghan detention centres to the Guantanamo Bay US naval base in Cuba. Britons are found to be among the captives.

25 JANUARY: White House counsel Alberto Gonzales writes, in a memo to President Bush, that the fight against terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva`s (Convention`s) strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners, and renders quaint some of its provisions".

27 JANUARY: The family of a Camp X-Ray detainee, Shafiq Rasul, 24, from Tipton, West Midlands, lobby for him to be returned to Britain. He is there with Asif Iqbal, 20, also from Tipton, and Feroz Abbasi, 22, from Croydon, Surrey.

7 FEBRUARY: President Bush signs an order declaring that he has the authority to suspend compliance with the Geneva Conventions and reserves the right to do so "in this and future conflicts".

19 FEBRUARY: A legal team for Mr Iqbal, 20, and Mr Rasul, 24, file papers at a court in Washington DC calling on the US government either to justify their detention by bringing charges, or to free them.

6 MARCH: Lawyers for Mr Abbasi begin proceedings at the High Court seeking a judicial review of the Government`s co-operation with the United States.

15 MARCH: Mr Abbasi loses his High Court battle against the Government over the conditions of his detention at Camp X-Ray.

1 JULY: Three senior judges give permission for a full hearing of Mr Abbasi`s claims that the Government is not protecting his rights while he is held by the US at Camp X-Ray.

10 OCTOBER: The US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, left, says that "a relatively small number" of men will be freed from Camp X-Ray.

6 NOVEMBER: The Court of Appeal rules that the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, cannot be compelled to intervene over Mr Abbasi.

2003 26 FEBRUARY: Moazzam Begg, 35, from Birmingham, is made a detainee at Guantanamo Bay after being arrested in Pakistan.

17 JUNE: Freed Guantanamo Bay prisoners say they had tried to commit suicide due to the draconian conditions. Several of the 35 Afghans and Pakistanis released say that while they were physically unharmed they were subjected to psychological abuse by being confined to tiny cells and being kept uncertain about the future.

4 JULY: It is revealed that two Britons could be among the first detainees to face trial by secretive military tribunals. Mr Begg and Mr Abbasi are on an initial list of six who could face military commissions.

18 JULY: The US agrees to suspend the threat of secret military hearings against the nine Britons being held at Guantanamo Bay.

20 NOVEMBER: Following talks at Downing Street with President Bush, right, Tony Blair says the fate of the British detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be resolved "soon".

25 NOVEMBER: One of Britain`s most senior judges condemns the US for a "monstrous failure of justice" over how it holds detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Lord Steyn says prisoners are being held in a state of "utter lawlessness".

2004 19 FEBRUARY: The Foreign Office says five of the nine British prisoners are to be released. They are named as Ruhal Ahmed, Tarek Dergoul, Jamal Udeen, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul.

7 MARCH: The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, criticises the treatment of the remaining detainees by the US authorities.

9 MARCH: Mr Blunkett confirms the five Britons have been released. They arrive in London later the same day to be questioned. Jamal Udeen is soon released without charge.

10 MARCH: Tarek Dergoul, Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal are released without charge.

10 MAY: The International Committee of the Red Cross accuses the US government of using methods "tantamount to torture" on detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

22 JUNE: The US Justice Dept announces that it is withdrawing legal memos of 2002. These gave a narrow definition of torture which provided legal arguments for US personnel to escape prosecution under anti-torture laws, and also argued that the President`s wartime authority superseded international laws and treaties.

26 AUGUST: The first US military tribunal since the Second World War opens in Guantanamo Bay. Salim Ahmed Hamdan is charged with conspiring to commit terrorist acts with Osama bin Laden.

14 OCTOBER: Three months after the US Supreme Court rules that the hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their imprisonment in US courts, none has appeared so far. Most have not been allowed to speak to their lawyers.

9 NOVEMBER: A US district judge, James Robertson, rules that the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals are illegal.

12 DECEMBER: Lawyers acting for four British prisoners in Cuba say they are "losing their sanity" after being held for more than two years in solitary confinement. They urge Mr Blair to intervene.

16 DECEMBER: Law lords rule that foreign prisoners being held at Belmarsh and Woodhall prisons, described as "Britain`s Guantanamo Bay", are being detained illegally.

21 DECEMBER: Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show that FBI agents repeatedly complained about torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to their superiors.

2005 2 JANUARY: The Bush administration is preparing to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial, replacing Guantanamo Bay with permanent prisons. Congress will be asked for $25m (£13m) to build a new facility.


10 January 2005 11:02


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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In Iraq, gunfire is the only common language
By Borzou Daragahi in Baghdad

10 January 2005

United States soldiers may have killed as many as 19 Iraqi civilians in two incidents over the weekend, heightening tensions between local people and the American forces responsible for protecting them during the country`s parliamentary elections this month. The police chief of the Sunni Arab town of Samarra was also shot dead yesterday.

In the violent region just south of the capital known as the "triangle of death", US soldiers who were struck by a roadside bomb allegedly opened fire on Iraqi bystanders on Saturday evening, killing at least three civilians and two policemen.

American officials said they had no information on the latest civilian casualties, which took place hours after the military admitted dropping a 500lb bomb on a house in northern Iraq, killing as many as 14 Iraqi civilians. The civilian deaths come just three weeks before parliamentary elections in which Americans are to assist local security forces in protecting Iraqi voters, poll workers and voting venues from Sunni Arab insurgents who say they will disrupt an election that will probably confer power on the long-oppressed Shia majority.

The shadowy nature of the insurgency has made Americans wary of Iraqi civilians. On roads, soldiers smash into civilian vehicles that do not move out of the way of their Humvees and armoured vehicles quickly enough. They aim their weapons menacingly at drivers who get too close and scream profanities at locals who do not understand their commands.

"If a car comes within 10 metres of them here on this street," Mohammad Salah Abdul-Rahman, 28, an unemployed management studies graduate, says as he gestures down an avenue near one of the entrances to the fortified Green Zone, "they`re going to shoot at him. It happens a lot because there are a lot of attempts to attack Americans here."

The capital appeared to be mostly quiet yesterday, although at least one US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb. And about seven Ukrainian soldiers serving in Iraq under the US military umbrella were killed in an explosion, apparently the result of an accident. The Ukrainians` deaths are another setback for the US. Ukraine`s decision to send 1,600 soldiers to Iraq, where they serve under Polish command in the Shia south, has been deeply unpopular among Ukrainians, whose parliament has voted unanimously to withdraw the contingent. It is the fourth largest foreign contingent after the US, Britain and Poland.

The drive-by shooting of Colonel Mohamed Mudhafir al-Badri, acting police chief for the shrine city of Samarra, also sets back US aims in the city, which last summer was subject to a massive American-led "clearing" operation.

Relations between US authorities and Iraqis have grown increasingly troubled. On the one hand, American officials insist they are winning Iraqi "hearts and minds" by building infrastructure and venturing off their bases to hand out footballs, teddy bears and toothpaste. But as attacks on US forces have escalated, American commanders have loosened the rules of engagement binding their troops, encouraging them to stand and fight.

Many Iraqis, in turn, are terrified by the sight of a US patrol in their neighbourhood: their fear is that soldiers will be hit by a roadside bomb or bulletsand respond by opening fire at anything nearby. After one particularly harrowing day of explosions, soldiers killed a mentally disabled man who failed to heed their commands, said Ali Salman Ali, 37, a shop owner. "The soldiers knew this guy and joked with him all the time. But on this day, they ordered him to stop, and he didn`t. So they shot him dead."

* Internal audits conducted by the UN of its oil-for-food programme revealed lapses in its supervision that allowed contractors to overcharge by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Paul Volker, the former US Federal Reserve chairman who led the panel, is to release 400 pages of the audits today.


10 January 2005 11:08


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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[urlAbusive calls give BBC chiefs a Jerry Springer moment]http://www.guardian.co.uk/Media/site/story/0,14173,1386564,00.html[/url]
January 10 2005: Guards were last night protecting the homes of two senior BBC executives as complaints from Christian groups at momentSaturday`s showing of Jerry Springer - The Opera escalated into threats of violence.

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Informed Comment
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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Monday, January 10, 2005

US Kills 14 Innocents; 7 Ukrainians die in Blast

US troops south of Baghdad near Yusufiyah ran into a roadside bomb near a checkpoint the night of Saturday into Sunday, and immediately opened fire. Apparently they did so indiscriminately, however, killing at least 3 Iraqi policemen and two civilians, though some reports suggest 12 dead and 14 wounded. Shooting back at roadside bombs is a problematic tactic, since so often they are detonated by remote control or when a vehicle strikes them, and the bombers are nowhere nearby. And, at a checkpoint, there would be innocent Iraqis to be caught in the crossfire.

Another bomb killed a US serviceman in Baghdad, and a Marine was killed in Anbar province.

Seven Ukrainian soldiers and one from Kazakhstan were killed in the course of attempting to disarm munitions at an arms depot.

AP also reports that ` The entire 13-member electoral commission in Anbar province resigned after being threatened by insurgents, a regional newspaper reported. Saad Abdul-Aziz Rawi, the head of the commission, told the newspaper that it was "impossible to hold elections" in the Sunni-dominated province, where insurgent attacks have prevented voter registration. `

Guerrillas assassinated General Jassim al-Obaidi on Sunday near his home in Baghdad, and wounded his daughter. Al-Obaidi was the head of the Iraqi National Accord, the small political party made up largely of ex-Baathist officers and officials, to which interim PM Iyad Allawi also belongs.

Steven Weisman of the New York Times did an excellent piece on Sunday concerning the train of decision-making that led to the current Iraqi electoral system. Since the system involves a national election in which all party lists compete on a proportional basis, it has raised the specter of a poor Sunni Arab showing. Weisman concludes that Paul Bremer adopted the system late in his tenure as civil administrator of Iraq because his aides, and UN election official Carina Perelli, felt that it solved a number of problems raised by district-based voting, including the difficulties of conducting a voter census in each district. It is about the least democratic system one could imagine. It allows party leaders to make deals in smoke-filled rooms and present voters with a fait accompli. It is mostly even difficult to vote for local politicians people know and respect. If the United Iraqi Alliance, the mainly Shiite coalition, does very well, the system will have functioned rather as Egypt`s does, which regularly ensconces the National Democratic Party in power.

A recent poll conducted by the US suggests that most Sunni Arab Iraqis probably will not vote, anyway. Indeed, 88% of Iraqis say that they will stay home on Election Day if there is stubstantial violence. (There is likely to be substantial violence).

The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) met on Saturday with 8 officials of the US embassy. Its leader, Harith al-Dhari, offered to end the Sunni Arab organization`s call for a boycott of the elections if the US would set a definite timetable for withdrawal of its troops from Iraq.

Al-Hayat says that the AMS now says it will accept a Shiite government if it results from the elections, as long as the latter negotiates a firm deadline for the withdrawal of US troops. AMS said that its disagreements with Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani were "merely differences of opinion."

Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, the number two man in the Association of Muslim Scholars, said that it would be desirable for his organization`s leadership to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani so as to reduce the degree of sectarian tension.

Al-Kubaisi also said that AMS would seek a follow-up meeting with the US officials.

I take all this to suggest that the Sunni Arab Iraqis see the withdrawal of US troops as their first and most important priority, coming even before the reestablishment of Sunni Arab political primacy. I also suspect that a withdrawal timetable is something that all Iraqis would like to see (though it is problematic; such timetables in Palestine and India in the late 1940s arguably contributed to the massive violence and Partition in the two British imperial possessions. When the local people sense that the imperial power is a lame duck, they lose all fear of it; and its very withdrawal creates new political opportunities that some will want to seize violently).

Newsweek reports that the US Pentagon is considering an El Salvador strategy in Iraq, of forming Iraqi Special Forces units to engage the Iraqi guerrillas. In Central America, this sort of policy produced death squads that killed leftists (and sometimes nuns) indiscriminately. If the US is seriously thinking of reintroducing death squads into Iraq (they used to be called Saddam Fedayeen; are they now to be Wolfowitz Fedayeen?), then it really is time to try to get the US Department of Defense back out of Iraq before it completely ruins the country. The Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith notion of dealing with some terrorists in Fallujah was to displace and damage the entire city (notably not a tactic the British used against the IRA in Belfast, but then the Irish are at least Europeans). If the DoD now introduces death squads, it is likely the prelude to a military coup (Iraqi Special Operations troops who have a license to kill would have an advantage in plotting a take-over of the country.)

The NYT reports that how to get out of Iraq has become a central topic in Washington.

Christopher Allbritton, who blogs and reports from Iraq, challenges the translation done by Western wire services of an interview in al-Sharq with General Shahwani, in which he is said to have estimated the number of insurgents at 200,000. Allbritton quotes the original Arabic article, showing that Shahwani actually estimated 20,000 to 30,000 fighters and 200,000 or so local supporters. In my own report of the estimate, I was just depending on the Western wire services. I don`t think al-Sharq is online so i couldn`t look at the Arabic text, and last week was abroad at an Iraq conference and so wouldn`t have had the time in any case.

As for the substance of the issue, I personally think that if you totalled up everyone who ever fired a weapon in the direction of Coalition troops, or ever set a bomb etc., it would reach 100,000 persons. It would be no less than 60,000. The US military hasn`t traditionally been good at realistically estimating the numbers of its opponents in guerrilla wars.

posted by Juan @ [url1/10/2005 06:46:18 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/us-kills-14-innocents-7-ukrainians-die.html[/url]

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Die größten Antiamerikaner sitzen in der Bush-Regierung.

‘The Salvador Option’
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 10:22 a.m. ET Jan. 9, 2005

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Nuns pray over the bodies of four American sisters killed by the military
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Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.
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Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte,
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Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government—the Defense department or CIA—would take responsibility for such an operation. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib interrogations scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such covert operations have always been run by the CIA and authorized by a special presidential finding. (In "covert" activity, U.S. personnel operate under cover and the U.S. government will not confirm that it instigated or ordered them into action if they are captured or killed.)

Meanwhile, intensive discussions are taking place inside the Senate Intelligence Committee over the Defense department’s efforts to expand the involvement of U.S. Special Forces personnel in intelligence-gathering missions. Historically, Special Forces’ intelligence gathering has been limited to objectives directly related to upcoming military operations—"preparation of the battlefield," in military lingo. But, according to intelligence and defense officials, some Pentagon civilians for years have sought to expand the use of Special Forces for other intelligence missions.

Pentagon civilians and some Special Forces personnel believe CIA civilian managers have traditionally been too conservative in planning and executing the kind of undercover missions that Special Forces soldiers believe they can effectively conduct. CIA traditionalists are believed to be adamantly opposed to ceding any authority to the Pentagon. Until now, Pentagon proposals for a capability to send soldiers out on intelligence missions without direct CIA approval or participation have been shot down. But counter-terrorist strike squads, even operating covertly, could be deemed to fall within the Defense department’s orbit.

The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to be among the most forthright proponents of the Salvador option. Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, may have been laying the groundwork for the idea with a series of interviews during the past ten days. Shahwani told the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the insurgent leadership—he named three former senior figures in the Saddam regime, including Saddam Hussein’s half-brother—were essentially safe across the border in a Syrian sanctuary. "We are certain that they are in Syria and move easily between Syrian and Iraqi territories," he said, adding that efforts to extradite them "have not borne fruit so far."

Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, "are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them." He said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in. One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

Pentagon sources emphasize there has been no decision yet to launch the Salvador option. Last week, Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire military strategy there. But with the U.S. Army strained to the breaking point, military strategists note that a dramatic new approach might be needed—perhaps one as potentially explosive as the Salvador option.

With Mark Hosenball
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

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Rich Man Talking
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
- Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, January 10, 2005

Those of you who follow politics will remember a two-time Republican presidential hopeful by the name of Steve Forbes, a man with a syrupy half-smile rarely found outside a lunatic asylum.

To avoid confusion here, let it be known that I refer to the man known at birth as Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Jr., not his profligate late father, Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Sr., publisher of a magazine bearing the family name. Forbes the Younger tightened up his moniker to just plain Steve Forbes in 1996, apparently to distance himself from his famously extravagant father while simultaneously gaining more of the "regular guy" persona favored by aspiring politicians.

Forbes was and is a true Republican, unlike his more famous cousin, John Forbes Kerry, who is believed by many to be a liberal Democrat. When Forbes sought his party`s nomination in 1996 and again in 2000, his campaign mantra was "flat tax." His flat tax proposal amounted to a kind of Robin Hood in reverse concept: Lower the taxes for the rich and increase them for the poor. To their everlasting credit, America`s Republicans sent Forbes back to playing editor at the family magazine empire.

The reason we focus on Steve Forbes this week is because of the recent election and Forbes` reaction to it. Forbes, who has his fingers in many pies, is also a trustee of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative stink tank and prime mover of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Shortly after the Nov. 2 election, our hero sent out a fund-raising letter under the Heritage Foundation letterhead. In it, Forbes indicated that the national battle for right and might could be lost if the Right`s control is limited to merely the two houses of Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court and most of the nation`s disposable dollars. In true conservative fashion, the multimillionaire who has everything wants more.

When Bill Clinton was president and conservatives like Forbes were attacking him in every way possible, it appeared the conservatives were just sore losers. Now that they own everything and remain unhappy, one might conclude they`re simply soreheads.

You can`t make them happy. Give them all they ask for and they want more.

Their gloom has a point, though. They want to return to a world that never existed. And they want to turn back the clock in a way it`ll never be turned back. They want a return to slavery, a return to indentured servitude, an end to labor unions, a complete cessation of the welfare state (including Social Security, which even now is under attack by George W. Bush under the phony banner of "reform").

They want poor Mexicans to pick our crops but not to eat them, to wash our dishes but not to eat from them. They want abortions performed by quacks with coat hangers in back alleys rather than by trained medical personnel in hospital settings. They want gays and lesbians to return to the closet and systemic persecution.

And so on. In other words, they are doomed to the kind of anger and frustration felt by their suicidal comrades in foreign lands who hate democracy and social equality.

Forbes is in the forefront of the turn-back-the-clock movement. In his letter he whines that the Left has taken "over the schools and colleges, and taught young people that America is too flawed to be worthy of our loyalty."

That`s an example of the flat-out lies that permeate his screed. Here`s another: "They took over the media and put a liberal slant on every social and political issue."

Dead wrong. Speaking in generalities, the media has always -- not just recently -- been owned by the Right and operated by the Left. "Liberal" and "open-minded" are synonymous. That being the case, it`s virtually a job requirement that reporters and editors who strive for impartiality be liberal. Liberals are searchers after truth. Conservatives are convinced they already know ultimate truth.

In any event, there has been no liberal takeover of the media. The two most powerful voices in the media today are those of a conservative serial doper and a conservative news spinner who in his spare time appears bent on matching Bill Clinton`s sexual peccadilloes.

Forbes goes on: "They took over the labor union, ending decades of anti-communist leadership."

Dead wrong again. The Right has always hated unions, which were created and encouraged by the Left. There`s been no takeover. As for "anti-communist" leadership, it`s hard to understand Forbes`s point. Does he still fear Mother Russia? Does he still look under the bed at night to see if there`s a commie hiding there? (Or have a servant look?)

Further into his six-page diatribe, Forbes attacks Hollywood entertainers, conveniently omitting such names as Reagan, Heston and Schwarzenegger.

Railing on, Forbes writes: "Dangerously, they [the Left] have convinced many Americans that right and wrong are relative." Apparently he has never heard of justifiable homicide, involuntary manslaughter, manslaughter, and murder in three or four degrees, including "capital murder." A lot of relativity there, and none of it new or part of a liberal plot.

In the end, of course, Forbes asks for money. The old reverse Robin Hood approach: "I have lots of money, so please send more."

President George W. Bush has asked that people on both sides of the political fence try to get along. If he`s sincere about that, he might just ask his buddy, Forbes, to cool it a bit.

The primary responsibility for compromise lies with the party in power. The victors have more to give than do the defeated.

So far the Republicans in control haven`t looked very magnanimous. Where is a compassionate conservative when you need one?

Note: Steve Forbes`s fund-raising letter apparently is not on the Web, but a pre-election fund-raising letter is. It`s remarkably similar. You can find it on this [urlspinsanity.org]http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2004_09_12_archive.html[/url] site (404K PDF -- scroll down to "a fundraising letter").

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…
©2005 SF Gate

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"The Jews in Central Europe welcomed the Russian Revolution," he said, "but it ended badly for them. The tacit alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian right is less easily understood. I can imagine a similarly disillusioning outcome."
Ich glaube diese Problem verstehen die US-Juden, denn nur wenige haben Bush gewählt. Im Gegensatz zu den europäischen Juden und Israel, die in diese Verbindung ihre Hoffnung setzen.

January 6, 2005
PUBLIC LIVES
Warning From a Student of Democracy`s Collapse
By CHRIS HEDGES

Correction Appended

PRINCETON, N.J.

FRITZ STERN, a refugee from Hitler`s Germany and a leading scholar of European history, startled several of his listeners when he warned in a speech about the danger posed in this country by the rise of the Christian right. In his address in November, just after he received a prize presented by the German foreign minister, he told his audience that Hitler saw himself as "the instrument of providence" and fused his "racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity."

"Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics," he said of prewar Germany, "but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas."

Dr. Stern`s speech, given during a ceremony at which he got the prize from the Leo Baeck Institute, a center focused on German Jewish history, was certainly provocative. The fascism of Nazi Germany belongs to a world so horrendous it often seems to defy the possibility of repetition or analogy. But Dr. Stern, 78, the author of books like "The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology" and university professor emeritus at Columbia University, has devoted a lifetime to analyzing how the Nazi barbarity became possible. He stops short of calling the Christian right fascist but his decision to draw parallels, especially in the uses of propaganda, was controversial.

"When I saw the speech my eyes lit up," said John R. MacArthur, whose book "Second Front" examines wartime propaganda. "The comparison between the propagandistic manipulation and uses of Christianity, then and now, is hidden in plain sight. No one will talk about it. No one wants to look at it."

Dr. Stern was a schoolboy in 1933 when Hitler was appointed the German chancellor. He ran home from school that January afternoon clutching a special edition of the newspaper to deliver to his father, a prominent physician.

"I was young," he said, "but I knew it was very bad news."

The street fighting in his native Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) between Communists and Nazis, the collapse of German democracy and the ruthless suppression of all opposition marked his childhood, and were images and experiences that would propel him forward as a scholar.

"I saw one of the last public demonstrations against Hitler," he said. "Men, women and children walked through the street and chanted `Hunger! Hunger! Hunger!` "

His paternal grandparents had converted to Christianity. His parents were baptized at birth, as were Mr. Stern and his older sister. But this did not save the Sterns from persecution. Nazi racial laws still classified them as Jews.

"It was only Nazi anti-Semitism that made me conscious of my Jewish heritage," he said. "I had been brought up in a secular Christian fashion, celebrating Christmas and Easter. My father had to explain it to me."

His schoolmates were swiftly recruited into Hitler youth groups and he and other Jews were taunted and excluded from some activities.

"Many of my classmates found the organized party experience, which included a heavy dose of flag waving and talk of national strength, very exhilarating," said Dr. Stern, who lost an aunt and an uncle in the Holocaust. "It was something I never forgot."

His family fled to New York in 1938 when he was 12. He eventually went to Columbia University intending to study medicine. But his passion for the past, along with questions about what happened to his homeland, caused him to switch his focus to history. He wanted to grasp how democracies disintegrate. He wanted to uncover the warning signs other democracies should heed. He wanted to write about the seductiveness of authoritarian movements, which he once described in an essay, "National Socialism as Temptation."

"There was a longing in Europe for fascism before the name was ever invented," he said. "There was a longing for a new authoritarianism with some kind of religious orientation and above all a greater communal belongingness. There are some similarities in the mood then and the mood now, although also significant differences."

HE warns of the danger in an open society of "mass manipulation of public opinion, often mixed with mendacity and forms of intimidation." He is a passionate defender of liberalism as "manifested in the spirit of the Enlightenment and the early years of the American republic."

"The radical right and the radical left see liberalism`s appeal to reason and tolerance as the denial of their uniform ideology," he said. "Every democracy needs a liberal fundament, a Bill of Rights enshrined in law and spirit, for this alone gives democracy the chance for self-correction and reform. Without it, the survival of democracy is at risk. Every genuine conservative knows this."

Dr. Stern, who has two children from a previous marriage, is married to Elizabeth Sifton, a book publisher. They live in New York. He is writing a book called "Five Germanys I Have Known," a combination of memoirs and reflections that looks at Weimar, Nazi Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, East Germany and unified Germany. He is widely read in Germany and has won its highest literary prize.

"The Jews in Central Europe welcomed the Russian Revolution," he said, "but it ended badly for them. The tacit alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian right is less easily understood. I can imagine a similarly disillusioning outcome."

Correction: January 7, 2005, Friday:

The Public Lives profile yesterday, about Fritz Stern, the scholar of European history who has recently warned of the danger of the rise of the Christian right in the United States, misspelled his wife`s given name. She is Elisabeth Sifton, not Elizabeth.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Hier noch mal ein Body Count als Blasphemie für alle, die die Amerika-Ideologie als Ersatzreligion benutzen.

Latest Fatality: Jan 09, 2005

Immer die aktuellsten Meldungen aus dem Irak.
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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War News for Monday, January 10, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

"There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." - George W. Bush, July 2, 2003.

Bring ‘em on: Baghdad’s deputy police chief and his son assassinated. Two Iraqi soldiers killed, one Iraqi soldier and two US soldiers wounded by roadside bomb in Samarra. At least four policemen killed and ten wounded in car bomb attack on a police station in southern Baghdad using a fake police car. Thirteen year old Iraqi girl killed and a fourteen year old boy wounded in Baquaba when a US observation post engaged some unidentified smoke. The US military notes this incident was a tragedy. Two “anti-Iraqi force insurgents” killed in southern Baghdad when the roadside bomb they were planting detonated prematurely. A militant group stated it would deploy 32 snipers to shoot voters in Wasit province.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed and four wounded in Baghdad roadside bombing that destroyed a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Bubble boy speaks: President Bush today rejected growing pessimism in the U.S. foreign policy establishment about stability in Iraq, asserting that "we`re making great progress" there and that elections at the end of the month will be "an incredibly hopeful experience" for Iraqis.

He said that 14 of Iraq`s 18 provinces "appear to be relatively calm." The four remaining provinces "are places where the terrorists are trying to stop people from voting," he said. "So I know it`s hard. But it`s hard for a reason. And the reason it`s hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom."

Bush said in response to a question, "I think we`re making great progress" in Iraq. He added, "And it`s exciting times for the Iraqi people. And it`s so exciting there are some who are trying to intimidate people from going to the polls."

The bubble gets lonely: Mr. Bush, asked Friday whether he shared Mr. Scowcroft`s concerns about "an incipient civil war," shot back, "Quite the opposite."

But the president`s optimism is in sharp contrast, some administration insiders say, to some conversations in the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon and Congress. For the first time, there are questions about whether it is politically possible to wait until the Iraqi forces are adequately trained before pressure to start bringing back American troops becomes overwhelming.

Colin’s not in the bubble, this time: US Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted yesterday the Bush administration was "worried" about the future of Iraq beyond the elections due on January 30.

Mr Powell acknowledged the elections would not put an end to the insurgency or heal rifts between Shi`ite and Sunni Iraqis, but insisted the landmark poll had to proceed.

Exciting times indeed: Attacks on election workers have become increasingly targeted and extraordinarily cold-blooded. Without even bothering to conceal their faces, terrorists allowed themselves to be filmed in broad daylight during an execution in Baghdad`s Haifa district in late December. Since then, hundreds of election workers in Mosul and in Anbar province have simply abandoned their positions. Allawi, who had declared 15 of Iraq`s 18 provinces to be "stable and peaceful" during his last visit to Washington in September, appears to have abandoned his illusions, now referring to the security situation in Iraq as "our catastrophe." Last Thursday, he extended the state of emergency in Iraq until early February.

Can’t handle the excitement: In another significant blow to Iraq`s upcoming elections, the entire 13-member electoral commission in the volatile province of Anbar, west of the capital, resigned after being threatened by insurgents, a regional newspaper reported Sunday.

Had enough excitement: Thameer Jabar doesn`t know if he`s grateful or angry for the US invasion of Iraq. He was elated when Saddam Hussein`s regime fell, and imagined a better future. But now all he`s certain of is that this is the hardest winter in memory. Prices have never been so high, life so hand-to-mouth, or fears for his three children so great.

"We don`t know who to blame,`` says Jabar, who at 34 looks a good decade older and whose father was executed by Mr. Hussein`s regime in 1989 for membership in a Shiite political party. "The problem started with Saddam - he kept the country at war for my whole life. But now we`re in the American era, and life has never been so dangerous. I don`t want him back, but sometimes I think it was a better time."


A little too exciting for the Ukraine, too: Ukraine`s outgoing President Leonid Kuchma has ordered a withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Iraq. He said his government should draw up plans to withdraw the 1,600-strong contingent in the first half of 2005.

Election News

Results of a PR decision: In its struggle to transfer sovereignty back to Iraq last spring, the Bush administration made some tough decisions about the makeup of the political system and how Iraqi elections could occur quickly and fairly. But now a little-noticed decision on election procedures has come back to haunt administration officials, just weeks before the vote is to take place, administration and United Nations officials say.

The fundamental decision set up one nationwide vote for a new national assembly, rather than elections by districts and provinces. With a violent insurgency spreading through the Sunni Arab areas of the country, it now looks as if fewer Sunnis will vote, distorting the balance of the legislature and casting doubt on whether the election will be seen as legitimate.

Iran: As Iraq lurches toward elections this month, its neighbor Iran is emerging as one of the hottest campaign issues.

Iraq`s outspoken defense minister fired one of the first salvos last month, charging that the front-running slate, the Shiite Muslim-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, was controlled by Tehran and was determined to "build an Islamic dictatorship and have turbaned clerics rule in Iraq."

Postponement: The Iraqi elections scheduled for January 30 could be postponed for a few weeks to ensure they are held in a more secure environment, it was revealed last night. Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is reportedly conducting secret talks with the US administration in a bid to agree a joint decision, Iraqi politicians close to Mr Allawi revealed to Akhbar Al Khaleej correspondent in Baghdad Dr Hameed Abdulla.

Unlikely: Iraq`s most influential Sunni group will abandon its call for a boycott of Jan. 30 elections if the United States gives a timetable for withdrawing multinational forces, a spokesman for the group said Sunday.

It is extremely unlikely the United States would consider giving a timetable for a withdrawal.

American Moral Leadership

Life without trial: After raids in recent months that captured hundreds of insurgents in Iraq, the United States has significantly increased the number of prisoners it says are foreign fighters, a group the Bush administration contends are not protected by the Geneva Conventions, American officials said.

The administration has asserted an authority to detain such prisoners indefinitely, as unlawful combatants, but officials have acknowledged that they cannot say how or when the war on terrorism might be deemed to have reached an end.

A senior American official said in an interview this week that the vast majority of the 550 prisoners now held at the American detention center at Guantánamo no longer had any intelligence value and were no longer being regularly interrogated. Still, the official said the Defense Department planned to hold hundreds of them indefinitely, without trial, out of concern that they continue to pose a threat to the United States and cannot safely be sent to their home countries.

The Limbaugh defense: Mr Gonzales, who was the president`s chief lawyer for the past four years, sought to distance the White House from the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and from similar allegations regarding treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

While he acknowledged that some US soldiers might have been confused about the US policy on permissible interrogation tactics, he said that the abuses in Iraq "were simply people who were morally bankrupt trying to have fun".

But at the hearing yesterday, he was repeatedly challenged by both Democrats and Republicans on whether he had damaged American moral authority and put US troops in danger by weakening domestic and international prohibitions against torture.


The Human Cost

Falling to pieces: A picturesque Scottish hospital is being used by the US military as a base to treat drug and alcohol addicted troops who have fought in Iraq, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

Peter McCann, chairman of Castle Craig, said: “We have been getting [US troops] in dribs and drabs, but there have been more coming over recently. I think they are being sent to all the corners of Iraq and are falling to pieces when they get back to base. ”

McCann’s comments give an insight into the terrible toll the Iraq war is taking on soldiers. There have been more than 30 recorded suicides among US troops in Iraq, a rate nearly one-third higher than the army’s historical average.

A major study published last year also found that up to 17% of surveyed Iraq veterans suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety or major depression.

Commentary

Opinion: The president prides himself on being a pig-headed guy. He is determined to win in Iraq even if he is not winning in Iraq.

So get ready for a Mohammedan mountain of spin defining victory down. Come what may - civil war over oil, Iranian-style fatwas du jour or men on prayer rugs reciting the Koran all day on the Iraqi TV network our own geniuses created - this administration will call it a triumph.

Opinion: One of the eerie things about Bush`s press conference performance was just how divorced from reality he is. Not only is he still claiming we`re going to find the WMD and that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9-11, but he actually claimed we went to war to save the credibility of the United Nations. The man is living in Fantasyland.

Denying that Iraq is a rapidly escalating tragedy will do nothing to help us or the Iraqis get out of it. Pointing out that it`s a mess does not make one a fan of Osama bin Laden. Let`s get a grip here, team.

Analysis: Keeping U.S. troops in Iraq will only provoke fiercer and more widespread resistance, but withdrawing them too soon could spark a civil war. The second administration of George W. Bush seems to be left with the choice between making things worse slowly or quickly.

The beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win. As a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning, and inadequate preparation, Washington has lost the Iraqi people`s confidence and consent, and it is unlikely to win them back. Every day that Americans shell Iraqi cities they lose further ground on the central front of Iraqi opinion.

Analysis: The starting point for the American troubles was that in the process of liberating the Iraqi people, U.S. forces killed far too many of them. When combined with Abu Ghraib and Rumsfeld`s tendency to dismiss in an off-hand, "stuff happens" way any criticisms of the developing mayhem in Iraq, it is not surprising that Arab skepticism about U.S. intentions has grown.

Iraq is not an experiment that future U.S. governments will care to repeat. For the moment, even this administration is unable to repeat it, because there are no ground forces to spare for major campaigns elsewhere. Unless it proves possible to gain the upper hand against the insurgents, a bungled war will leave the United States weaker and not stronger. The confidence in American power that led to war being initiated without direct provocation has been shaken. Whenever the possible use of force is raised again, assurances will be sought that this will not be "another Iraq." And future interventionists will worry about how to shake off the Iraq syndrome.

Blog: It figured.

Eventually, an administration willing to embrace torture to fight terror was going to embrace terror as well: especially an administration populated by moral monsters like John Negroponte, who had embraced terror before, and gotten away with it.

Death squad activity is terrorism. Its purpose is never merely the assassination or kidnapping of a small number of leaders, but always the cowing of entire populations.

This case is no different. Note the language carefully:

"One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.""

The target isn`t a few dead-enders or foreign terrorist; the target is "the Sunni population," which needs to be taught a lesson.

Opinion: Let us do what we can for the victims of the tsunami. But no matter how much we weep for them, no matter what donations we spare, the offerings will not spare us from history`s judgment, if not God`s. Lugar said his heart goes out to the victims of the tsunami. No hearts have gone out to Iraqi civilians in this heartless coverup.

Powell said of the tsunami, "The power of the wave to destroy bridges, to destroy factories, to destroy homes, to destroy crops, to destroy everything in its path is amazing." He said, "I have never seen anything like it in my experience."

Yes, he has. It was in Iraq. The tsunami was us.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Las Vegas, NV, soldier killed in Ramadi.

Local story: Tucson, AZ, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Williamstown, OH, soldier killed in Iraq.

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Published on Monday, January 10, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
First They Came For The Terrorists...
by Thom Hartmann


The Gonzales confirmation is not just about the torture memos. It`s much bigger than that.

If Bush continues to roll back human and civil rights - and the installation of Alberto Gonzalez as America`s chief law enforcement officer is very much a part of his campaign to do so - we may be facing a "Pastor Niemöller moment" sooner than most of us could have imagined.

Tuesday, January 10, 2005, is the third anniversary of the opening of America`s first concentration camp since Japanese Americans were shamefully interred during WWII. Since the first Guantanamo camp was opened, the Bush administration has built additional concentration camps - the latest known as Camp Five - in Cuba, and is asking Congress for $29 million to build concentration Camp Six.

These concentration camps detain uncharged, untried, unconvicted individuals, who may be held for the rest of their lives because, as the UK`s Guardian newspaper noted on January 5th of this year, the Bush administration "lacks proof" that they are either criminals or POWs.

This is one of the more visible parts of a much larger campaign the Bush administration has embarked on to reverse not only 229 years of the American rule of law regarding the rights of average citizens, but nearly eight centuries of human rights that go back to an epic moment in 1215 on a meadow by the River Thames.

The modern institution of civil and human rights, and particularly the writ of habeas corpus, began in June of 1215 when King John was forced by the feudal lords to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede. Although that document mostly protected "freemen" - what were then known as feudal lords or barons, and today known as CEOs and millionaires - rather than the average person, it initiated a series of events that echo to this day.

Two of the most critical parts of the Magna Carta were articles 38 and 39, which established the foundation for what is now known as "habeas corpus" laws (literally, "produce the body" from the Latin - meaning, broadly, "let this person go free"), as well as the Fourth through Eighth Amendments of our Constitution and hundreds of other federal and state due process provisions.

Articles 38 and 39 of the Magna Carta said:

"38 In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.

"39 No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

This was radical stuff, and over the next four hundred years average people increasingly wanted for themselves these same protections from the abuse of the power of government or great wealth. But from 1215 to 1628, outside of the privileges enjoyed by the feudal lords, the average person could be arrested and imprisoned at the whim of the king with no recourse to the courts.

Then, in 1627, King Charles I overstepped, and the people snapped. Charles I threw into jail five knights in a tax disagreement, and the knights sued the King, asserting their habeas corpus right to be free or on bail unless convicted of a crime.

King Charles I, in response, invoked his right to simply imprison anybody he wanted (other than the rich), anytime he wanted, as he said, "per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis."

This is essentially the same argument that George W. Bush makes today for why he has the right to detain both citizens and non-citizens solely on his own say-so: because he`s in charge. And it`s an argument supported by Alberto Gonzales.

But just as George`s decree is meeting resistance, Charles` decree wasn`t well received. The result of his overt assault on the rights of citizens led to a sort of revolt in the British Parliament, producing the 1628 "Petition of Right" law, an early version of our Fourth through Eighth Amendments, which restated Articles 38 and 39 of the Magna Carta and added that "writs of habeas corpus, [are] there to undergo and receive [only] as the court should order." It was later strengthened with the "Habeas Corpus Act of 1640" and a second "Habeas Corpus Act of 1679."

Thus, the right to suspend habeas corpus no longer was held by the King. It was exercised solely by the people`s (elected and hereditary) representatives in the Parliament.

The third George to govern the United Kingdom confronted this in 1815 when he came into possession of Napoleon Bonaparte. But the British laws were so explicit that everybody was entitled to habeas corpus - even people who were not British citizens - that when Napoleon surrendered on the deck of the British flagship Bellerophon after the battle of Waterloo in 1815, the British Parliament had to pass a law ("An Act For The More Effectually Detaining In Custody Napoleon Bonaparte") to suspend habeas corpus so King George III could legally continue to hold him prisoner (and then legally exile him to a British fortification on a distant island).

Ironically, the third George to govern the United States now says, 190 years later, that unlike England`s George III, he does not need an act of Congress to detain people or exile them to camps on a distant island.

To facilitate this, our Third George, and his able counselor Judge Gonzales, have brought forth new "legal" terms - "enemy combatant" and "terrorist" - and invented a new set of law and rights (or non-laws and non-rights) for people they label as such.

It`s a virtual repeat of Charles I`s doctrine that a nation`s ruler may do whatever he wants because he`s the one in charge - "per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis."

Interestingly, the United States Constitution does provide for special exceptions to the involuntary detention of persons - it is legal to suspend habeas corpus. But the Constitution says it can only be done by Congress, not by the President.

Article I of the Constitution outlines the powers and limits of the Legislative Branch of government (Article 2 lays out the Executive Branch, and Article 3 defines the Judicial Branch). In Section 9, Clause 2 of Article I, the Constitution says of the Legislative branch`s authority: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Abraham Lincoln was well aware of this during the Civil War, and was the first president to successfully ask Congress (on March 3, 1863) to suspend habeas corpus so he could imprison those he considered a threat until the war was over. Congress invoked this power again during Reconstruction when President Grant requested The Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871 to put down a rebellion in South Carolina.

But President George W. Bush has not asked Congress for, and has not been granted, a suspension of habeas corpus for his so-called "war on terrorism," a "war" which he and his advisors have implied may last well beyond our lifetimes.

Nonetheless, our President, with consent of his Counsel Mr. Gonzales, has locked people up, "per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis." Some of their names are familiar to us - US citizens Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, for example - but there are hundreds whose names we are not even allowed to know. Perhaps thousands. It`s a state secret, after all. Per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis.

But how do we deal with people who want to kill us, to destroy our nation, to terrorize us?

Every president from George Washington to Bill Clinton has understood that there are two categories of people who can be incarcerated legally - Prisoners of War and criminals. The former have rights under both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions, and the latter under the U.S. Constitution.

These two categories encompass every possible actual threat to a nation and its people, and have withstood the test of time from the days of King John to today.

For example, when Bill Clinton was confronted with a heinous act of terrorism within the United States - the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City - he didn`t declare a "war" on whoever the terrorist may be, or suspend habeas corpus. Instead, he immediately defined the perpetrators as thugs and criminals, and brought the full weight of the American and international criminal justice system to bear, capturing Timothy McVeigh and using Interpol to search the world for possible McVeigh allies. Justice was served, the victims achieved closure, and our rights were left largely intact.

But, just as Hitler and his close advisors used the burning of the Reichstag building to declare a perpetual "war on terrorism," and then moved to suspend habeas corpus and other rights, so too have George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales.

The Founders must be turning in their graves. Clearly they never imagined such a thing in their wildest dreams. As Alexander Hamilton - arguably the most conservative of the Founders - wrote in Federalist 84:

"The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus ... are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. ...[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious [British 18th century legal scholar] Blackstone, in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital:

"`To bereave a man of life,` says he, `or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore A MORE DANGEROUS ENGINE of arbitrary government.``` [Capitals all Hamilton`s from the original.]

While the sexy stuff that members of Congress and the news media want to talk about when they question Alberto Gonzales is torture - after all, the pictures are now iconic and have worldwide distribution - the torture of these and other prisoners in US custody is really a subset of a larger issue.

The bigger question here is whether George W. Bush has the right to ignore the U.S. Constitution and international treaties, violate human rights and civil liberties, promote "preemptive" wars, and build concentration camps for the permanent imprisonment of untried and unconvicted individuals - all simply because he says he can, per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis. And whether we want the chief law enforcement officer of the land, the man who would be charged with prosecuting Bush or those in his administration who may break the law, to be a man who agrees that Bush stands above the law and the Constitution.

The question, ultimately, is whether our nation will continue to stand for the values upon which it was founded.

Early American conservatives suggested that democracy was so ultimately weak it couldn`t withstand the assault of newspaper editors and citizens who spoke out against it, or terrorists from the Islamic Barbary Coast, leading John Adams to pass America`s first PATRIOT Act-like laws, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. President Thomas Jefferson rebuked those who wanted America ruled by an iron-handed presidency that could - as Adams had - throw people in jail for "crimes" such as speaking political opinion, or without constitutional due process.

"I know, indeed," Jefferson said in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1801, "that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough.

"But would the honest patriot,"he continued, "in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world`s best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.

"I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern."

The sum of this, Jefferson said, was found in "freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

"The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

Modern conservatives still revere Burke and Adams and sneer at Jefferson, but many are nonetheless alarmed by Bush`s unprecedented attack on the Constitution. As Russell Kirk wrote in his seminal 1953 book "The Conservative Mind" - the book which inspired a generation of conservatives from Buckley to Goldwater - a "New Society," abandoning the traditional values of America, could easily come into being if "radicals" such as Bush were to take over our government and discard the Constitution.

This New Society, Kirk wrote in his chapter "The Promise of Conservatism," would be dominated by "the gratification of a lust for power and the destruction of all ancient political institutions in the interest of the new dominant elites. The great Plan requires that the public be kept constantly in an emotional state closely resembling that of a nation at war; this lacking, obedience and co-operation shrivel..." Kirk adds that "Big Brother remains to show the donkey the stick instead of the carrot."

When I was working in Russia some years ago, a friend in Kaliningrad told me a perhaps apocryphal story about Nikita Khrushchev, who, following Stalin`s death, gave a speech to the Politburo denouncing Stalin`s policies. A few minutes into Khrushchev`s diatribe, somebody shouted out, "Why didn`t you challenge him then, the way you are now?"

The room fell silent, as Khrushchev angrily swept the audience with his glare. "Who said that?" he asked in a reasoned voice. Silence.

"Who said that?" Khrushchev demanded, leaning forward. Silence.

Pounding his fist on the podium to accent each word, he screamed, "Who - said - that?" Still no answer.

Finally, after a long and strained silence, the elected politicians in the room fearful to even cough, a corner of Khrushchev`s mouth lifted into a smile.

"Now you know," he said with a chuckle, "why I did not speak up against Stalin when I sat where you now sit."

The question for our day is who will speak up against George W. Bush and his Stalinist policies? Who will speak against the man who punishes reporters and news organizations by cutting off their access; who punishes politicians by targeting them in their home districts; who punishes truth-tellers in the Executive branch by character assassination that even extends to destroying their spouse`s careers?

Oddly, so far it`s only been Justice Antonin Scalia, a man with whom I often strongly disagree. Scalia wrote in his minority dissent in the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that the President does not have the power to suspend habeas corpus by executive decree. Instead, he wrote: "If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime, it must be done openly and democratically, as the Constitution requires..."

Scalia went on to quote Alexander Hamilton from Federalist Number 8, who noted that:

"The violent destruction of life and property incident to war; the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free."

"The Founders warned us about the risk," Scalia noted in his Hamdi dissent, "and equipped us with a Constitution designed to deal with it.

"Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis..." but, Scalia added, "that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it."

How ironic that Justice Scalia was willing to stand up to George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales, but most of the Senate Democrats won`t.

The Democrats in Congress say they`re going to confirm Judge Gonzales and "keep their powder dry" for future, larger battles like Supreme Court nominations. But as Pastor Niemöller reminds us, the loss of liberty is incremental, not sudden and dramatic.

One either totally stands for republican democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law in our republic, or one doesn`t. Gonzales has shown that he does not, both by his prevarication in his confirmation hearings, his actions in condoning Bush`s illegal suspension of habeas corpus and PATRIOT Act abuses of constitutionally-protected civil and human rights, and his support of other Bush decrees implicitly per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis.

To quote Scalia`s summary in the Hamdi case, "Because the Court has proceeded to meet the current emergency in a manner the Constitution does not envision [by letting the President suspend habeas corpus], I respectfully dissent."

But is dissent enough?

Or must we work for a wholesale change in our representatives, demanding that they either stand up for the principles for which so many Americans have fought and died, or leave the political arena altogether?

Where are the true democrats among the Democrats? (Or, for that matter, the true republicans among the Republicans?) Have they all lost their voices?

First Bush and Gonzales came for the terrorists, but I was not a terrorist, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the enemy combatants, but I was not a combatant, so I did not object. Then they came for the protestors resisting "free speech zones" near Bush campaign rallies, but I was not a protestor and so I only voiced my unease.

If we - and our elected representatives - do not speak out now, loudly and forcefully, it may not be long before they come for the rest of us.

Thom Hartmann [thom (at) thomhartmann.com] is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books include "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "The Prophet`s Way," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," "The Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?."

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Published on Monday, January 10, 2005 by the Cape Times (Cape Town, South Africa)
Striking Similarity Between McCarthyism and George Bush`s USA Patriot Act
by Leslie Liddell


The United States is said to be a free country. Its constitution has amendments (Bill of Rights) which, among other things, uphold free speech, the right of people to assemble peacefully, the right to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the right to a speedy and fair trial by an impartial jury if you are accused of a crime.

It also states that "all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people". This is the received and perceived truth that many people who live both inside and outside of the US adhere to.

However, during the period from about 1947-1957, McCarthyism, given its name from Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, maintained that communists had infiltrated the US State Department.

Repressive measures against people labeled as communists were rife. Many Americans had their civil liberties and rights undermined.

Professor Ellen Schrecker, a well-known historian and expert on McCarthyism, has written extensively on the era. She says that through "part myth and part reality, the notion that domestic communists threatened national security... based on a primarily ideological conception of the nature of the communist movement... came... the government`s attempt to mobilize public opinion for the Cold War".

During this repressive period, about 150 people were imprisoned, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death. Most of the major punishments were of an economic nature, however.

Schrecker notes: "People lost their jobs. The official manifestations of McCarthyism... the public hearings, FBI investigations, and criminal prosecutions... would not have been as effective had they not been reinforced by the private sector." Targeted people were blacklisted, which meant that they were unable to find employment.

This economic punishment extended to universities, colleges, the media, labor and the entertainment industry.

In all sectors of society, the state got civil society to do its dirty work by firing and blacklisting people. It is estimated that 10,000 people may have lost their jobs during McCarthyism.

The legacy of this period of political repression in the US was extensive. "There were social reforms which were never adopted, some diplomatic initiatives which were never pursued, workers were not organized into unions, some books were not written and some movies were never made."

In addition, the American left was negatively affected and the public space for alternatives to the status quo disappeared. The nation`s cultural and intellectual life suffered.

Finally, Schrecker maintains that the anti-democratic practices associated with McCarthyism continued through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: "McCarthyism alone did not cause these outrages; but the assault on democracy that began during the 1940s and 1950s with the collaboration of private institutions and public agencies in suppressing the alleged threat of domestic communism was an important early contribution."

More recently, legislative proposals in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were introduced - less than a week after the attacks.

President George Bush signed the final bill, the United States Patriot Act, into law on October 26, 2001. It was introduced with great haste and passed with little debate and without a House, Senate or conference report.

As a result, it lacks background legislative history that often retrospectively provides necessary statutory interpretation. It also doesn`t provide for the system of checks and balances that traditionally safeguards civil liberties in the face of such legislation.

The USA Patriot Act introduced a number of legislative changes which significantly increased the surveillance and investigative powers of law enforcement agencies in the US.

The implications for online internet privacy are considerable. For example, the act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to authorize the installation of pen registers and trap and trace devices, and to authorize the installation of such devices to record all computer routing, addressing and signaling of information.

The act also extends the government`s ability to gain access to personal financial information and student information without any suspicion of wrongdoing, simply by certifying that the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

Many of the foundations of American democracy are violated by the Patriot Act.

It also defines "domestic terrorism" so broadly that political organizations could be subjected to the seizure of property for engaging in civil disobedience, for example.

Non-citizens can be imprisoned without charges, simply on the attorney-general`s injunction, without showing a court that they are dangerous or a flight risk.

Once again, the violations against the basic constitutional rights of Americans are being carried out in the name of national security and in the defense of waging a war. During McCarthyism, it was the Cold War. This time, it is the war on terror.

Liddell is national co-ordinator of the Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust.

© 2005 Cape Times

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Dahr Jamail`s Iraq Dispatches

January 10, 2005
Baghdad, As Usual

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/

The usual spiral descent in the airplane landed me into a grey day in Baghdad…the weather the same as when I left a few weeks ago. The usual hordes of ‘Global’ mercenaries crowded the airport…where a person isn’t allowed to take their carry-on into the bathroom with them-for fear of bombs. Keep in mind that the airport is the largest US military base in Iraq.

Then there was the usual joy of waiting at the front checkpoint to be picked up. As usual, Abu Talat had arrived early…only to be gridlocked in the nerve-wracking wait in the line of cars to have his car sniffed by dogs for explosives. Standing inside the checkpoint in the small parking area is not my idea of a good time-everyone eyeing one another, wondering if that person is a kidnapper, or if that car in the distance is a bomb.

Of course it didn’t help that random gunfire was popping not too far off in the distance.

Abu Talat is finally allowed through, and my friend Khalil and I are whisked off. The bright spot of the day, aside from being reunited with my dear friend and interpreter was the making of a new friend.

I tell them both in the car, “I know this sounds crazy since it’s such a horrible situation here,” as we drive past kilometers of cars lined up for gasoline and people carrying jerry-cans in front of fuel stations, “But I missed Baghdad and I’m very happy to be back.”

Khalil laughs and replies, “Everybody says that about this place.”

He took us to his home for a great Iraqi lunch, with Iraqi chai, of course, and great conversation. Aside from the electricity blinking off and on as most of Baghdad is averaging 4 hours of electricity per day, it’s a short stint of normalcy with friends in the most dangerous capital city in the world.

But that’s where the normalcy ends.

A suicide car bomber hit a police station in southern Baghdad today killing 8, three of which were Iraqi Police. Ten people were also wounded in the blast.

The deputy police chief of Baghdad, Brigadier Amer Ali Nayef and his son, Lt. Khalid Amer, were assassinated in Baghdad`s south Dora district today. Their car was gunned down while driving to work this morning. This is the second senior Iraqi official to be assassinated in less than a week. Just last Tuesday, gunmen assassinated the governor of Baghdad, Ali al-Haidari, along with six of his bodyguards.

But the details on the killing of the governor from an eyewitness escaped the news. The convoy was hit by a well coordinated attack. There were two groups of fighters who manned cigarette stands which line the streets of Baghdad, awaiting the governor. In addition, there were gunmen on the tops of nearby shops…the convoy was attacked, and the governors car escaped…only to be chased down by a car full of gunmen who finished the job. The only civilians who were shot were hit by the random firing from the governor’s guards.

The demolition of Fallujah continues. Two of my sources inside the city, who live in different neighborhoods, report that the military is now burning homes. Apparently, they are finding booby traps, so they are piling furniture up in the homes, dousing it with fuel, and burning it.

Nevertheless, another Marine was killed there today.

Another Bradley Fighting Vehicle was destroyed today in Baghdad…as the resistance is using larger bombs for their attacks. Two soldiers died in the blast, with four wounded.

Not long ago a Bradley was bombed by one of these huge devices, killing 6 soldiers.

Sirens blare throughout Baghdad, as usual. Random gunfire cracks across the city, as usual. And the British are sending 400 more troops.

As far as the elections, there are some nice signs around Baghdad now, encouraging folks to vote.

Several of my Iraqi friends tell me they expect only about 20% of Iraqis to vote. Who could blame them? With the resistance having announced they will be sniping polling stations during the elections, as well as the high likelihood of suicide car bombers driving into polling station, better security prior to any type of election would probably bring Iraqis to the polls more than nice billboards.

So, as usual, the horrible catastrophe that is occupied Iraq is getting worse by the day.

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 10, 2005 06:06 PM

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 10. Januar 2005, 16:36
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,336225,00.h…

US-Publikumslieblinge

Michael Moore ganz knapp vor Jesus

Mit den People`s Choice Awards kürt die amerikanische Öffentlichkeit alljährlich ihre Entertainment-Lieblinge. Michael Moores Anit-Bush-Dokumentation "Fahrenheit 9/11" wurde zum besten Film des Jahres gewählt, bestes Drama wurde Mel Gibsons "Passion Christi".

Pasadena - Gut zwei Monate nach der Wiederwahl von US-Präsident George W. Bush und zwei Monate vor der Oscar-Verleihung, bei der Michael Moore mit "Fahrenheit 9/11" in der Kategorie "Bester Film" antritt, gab es für den Filmemacher aus Flint, Michigan schon einmal einen kleinen Triumph. Sein bissiger Dokumentarfilm, mit dem er versucht hatte, die US-Demokraten ins Weiße Haus zu befördern, wurde in der Nacht zum Montag bei der Vergabe der amerikanischen Publikumspreise, den People`s Choice Awards, zum beliebtesten aller Kinofilme des Jahres 2004 gekürt.

Den Spitzenplatz in der Kategorie Filmdrama eroberte ein nicht weniger umstrittenes Werk: Mel Gibsons blutig-brutales Jesus-Epos "Die Passion Christi". Bei den Kinokomödien ging der People`s Choice Award, der seit rund 30 Jahren durch repräsentative Meinungsumfragen ermittelt wird, an den Animationsfilm "Shrek 2".

Während der erneute Erfolg des grünen Monsters "Shrek" als sicher gegolten hatte - immerhin gewann der erste Teil der Dreamworks-Komödie 2002 als beliebtester Film des Jahres -, kam die Vergabe des Preises an Michael Moore für viele überraschend, nachdem der Polit-Aktivist sein Ziel, die Wiederwahl Bushs zu verhindern, im November verfehlt hatte. Moore, der bei der Live-Show des Senders CBS im Civic Center von Pasadena (Kalifornien) vom Publikum mit Jubel begrüßt wurde, widmete seinen Preis den US-Soldaten im Irak sowie deren Eltern. "Überall im Land gibt es Mütter und Väter, die Söhne und Töchter im Irak haben. Wir beten heute Nacht für sie."

Der sichtlich gerührte Moore, der sich immer wieder beim Publikum bedankte, sagte, er betrachte die Auszeichnung als Aufforderung, mehr Filme wie "Fahrenheit 9/11" zu machen. "Ich will nicht, dass Ihr aufgebt. Dieses Land ist immer noch unser aller Land. Nicht einfach nur rechts oder links, republikanisch oder demokratisch."

Preisträger Mel Gibson erklärte, er habe seinen Jesus-Film außerhalb des etablierten Studiosystems realisieren müssen. Der Erfolg sei allein dem großen Zuspruch des Publikums zu danken. Der Preis bedeute ihm daher "viel mehr" als andere. "Volkes Stimme hat gesprochen." Vor allem jüdische, aber auch christliche Organisationen hatten Gibson vorgehalten, er schüre Unfrieden zwischen Anhängern der beiden Religionen.

Die People`s Choice Awards entsprechen oft weit mehr dem allgemeinen Publikumsgeschmack als Auszeichnungen, die von Fachgremien wie der US-Filmakademie vergeben werden. Als populärste Kino-Stars wurden Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie und Renée Zellweger sowie Will Smith, Brad Pitt und Johnny Depp ausgezeichnet. Der in Frankreich lebende Depp erschien per Video-Live-Schaltung mit einer Art Baskenmütze und schmeichelte dem Publikum: "Ihr seid der Boss, und eines Tages hoffe ich, für euch alle Kaffee kochen zu können."

Der beliebteste Talkmaster im nächtlichen US-Fernsehen ist nach wie vor David Letterman. Als beliebteste neue Drama-Serie erwies sich "Desperate Housewives". Die vor beißender Ironie und politischer Unkorrektheit strotzende Serie, die in einem gutbürgerlichen Milieu im Mittleren Westen angesiedelt ist, gilt schon jetzt als würdiger Nachfolger für "Sex and the City". Die Preise für die populärsten Musiker gingen unter anderem an die irische Band U2, die R&B-Stars Alicia Keys und Usher sowie an die Country-Stars Brooks & Dunn, Shania Twain und Tim McGraw.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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January 11, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Iceberg Cometh
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last week someone leaked a memo written by Peter Wehner, an aide to Karl Rove, about how to sell Social Security privatization. The public, says Mr. Wehner, must be convinced that "the current system is heading for an iceberg."

It`s the standard Bush administration tactic: invent a fake crisis to bully people into doing what you want. "For the first time in six decades," the memo says, "the Social Security battle is one we can win." One thing I haven`t seen pointed out, however, is the extent to which the White House expects the public and the media to believe two contradictory things.

The administration expects us to believe that drastic change is needed, and needed right away, because of the looming cost of paying for the baby boomers` retirement.

The administration expects us not to notice, however, that the supposed solution would do nothing to reduce that cost. Even with the most favorable assumptions, the benefits of privatization wouldn`t kick in until most of the baby boomers were long gone. For the next 45 years, privatization would cost much more money than it saved.

Advocates of privatization almost always pretend that all we have to do is borrow a bit of money up front, and then the system will become self-sustaining. The Wehner memo talks of borrowing $1 trillion to $2 trillion "to cover transition costs." Similar numbers have been widely reported in the news media.

But that`s just the borrowing over the next decade. Privatization would cost an additional $3 trillion in its second decade, $5 trillion in the decade after that and another $5 trillion in the decade after that. By the time privatization started to save money, if it ever did, the federal government would have run up around $15 trillion in extra debt.

These numbers are based on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of Plan 2, which was devised by a special presidential commission in 2001 and is widely expected to be the basis for President Bush`s plan.

Under Plan 2, payroll taxes would be diverted into private accounts while future benefits would be cut. In the short run, this would worsen the budget deficit. In the long run, if all went well, cutting benefit payments would reduce the deficit.

All wouldn`t go well; I`ll explain why in another column. But suppose that everything went according to plan. Even in that unlikely case, privatization wouldn`t even begin to reduce the budget deficit until 2050. This is supposed to be the answer to an imminent crisis?

While we waited 45 years for something good to happen, there would be a real risk of a crisis - not in Social Security, but in the budget as a whole. And privatization would increase that risk.

We already have a large budget deficit, the result of President Bush`s insistence on cutting taxes while waging a war. And it will get worse: a rise in spending on entitlements - mainly because of Medicare, but with a smaller contribution from Medicaid and, in a minor supporting role, Social Security - looks set to sharply increase the deficit after 2010.

Add borrowing for privatization to the mix, and the budget deficit might well exceed 8 percent of G.D.P. at some time during the next decade. That`s a deficit that would make Carlos Menem`s Argentina look like a model of responsibility. It would be sure to cause a collapse of investor confidence, sending the dollar through the floor, interest rates through the roof and the economy into a tailspin.

And when investors started fleeing because they believed that America had turned into a banana republic, they wouldn`t be reassured by claims that someday, in the distant future, privatization would do great things for the budget. Just ask the Argentines: their version of Social Security privatization was also supposed to save money in the long run, but all it did was move forward the date of their crisis.

A responsible administration would reverse course on tax cuts and the botched 2003 Medicare drug bill, both of which pose much greater threats to the government`s solvency than the modest financial shortfall of the Social Security system. But Mr. Bush has declared his tax cuts inviolable, and he says that his drug bill will actually save money. (The Medicare trustees say it will cost $8 trillion.)

There`s an iceberg in front of us, all right. And Mr. Bush wants us to steam right into it, full speed ahead.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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January 11, 2005
Report: U.S. Lost 1.5 Mln Jobs to China in 1989 - 2003
By REUTERS

Filed at 3:10 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States lost nearly 1.5 million jobs between 1989 and 2003 because of increased trade with China, according to a report released on Tuesday by a government watchdog committee.

The report was prepared by the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally-appointed panel that has pushed for a tough U.S. approach to China on trade.

The study estimates that imports from China displaced 1.659 million jobs between 1989 and 2003, while exports to that country generated only 199,000 additional U.S. jobs.

The job losses have accelerated and moved into unexpected new sectors as the trade deficit -- which reflects the gap between imports and exports -- with China skyrocketed to a record $124 billion in 2003, report author and EPI senior international trade economist Robert Scott said.

``The assumptions we built our trade relationship with China on have proved to be a house of cards. Everyone knew we would lose jobs in labor-intensive industries like textiles and apparel, but we thought we could hold our own in the capital-intensive, high-tech arena,`` Scott said in a statement.

The report puts a large portion of the blame for the growing U.S. trade deficit with China on that country`s ``refusal to revalue its exchange rate.``

U.S. manufacturers and labor groups complain that Beijing`s decade-old long practice of pegging its currency at 8.28 to the dollar gives Chinese companies an unfair advantage by artificially depressing the price of their goods.

Expected U.S. gains from Beijing`s entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001 ``have yet to materialize`` and instead China is increasingly competitive in more advanced sectors such as autos and aerospace where the United States has long had a big advantage, the report said.

Old-line industries such as textiles, apparel, furniture, rubber and leather have borne the brunt of the U.S. job losses, although computer, electronic, and semi-conductor sectors have seen China-related losses as well, the report said.

``It is hard to overstate the challenges posed by this export behemoth,`` the report said.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Ltd.

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A man-made tsunami

Why are there no fundraisers for the Iraqi dead?
Terry Jones
Tuesday January 11, 2005

Guardian
I am bewildered by the world reaction to the tsunami tragedy. Why are newspapers, television and politicians making such a fuss? Why has the British public forked out more than £100m to help the survivors, and why is Tony Blair now promising "hundreds of millions of pounds"? Why has Australia pledged £435m and Germany £360m? And why has Mr Bush pledged £187m?

Of course it`s wonderful to see the human race rallying to the aid of disaster victims, but it`s the inconsistency that has me foxed. Nobody is making this sort of fuss about all the people killed in Iraq, and yet it`s a human catastrophe of comparable dimensions.

According to the only scientific estimate attempted, Iraqi deaths since the war began number more than 100,000. The tsunami death toll is in the region of 150,000. Yet in the case of Iraq, the media seems reluctant to impress on the public the scale of the carnage.

I haven`t seen many TV reporters standing in the ruins of Falluja, breathlessly describing how, in 30 years of reporting, they`ve never seen a human tragedy on this scale. The Pope hasn`t appealed for everyone to remember the Iraqi dead in their prayers, and MTV hasn`t gone silent in their memory.

Nor are Blair and Bush falling over each other to show they recognise the scale of the disaster in Iraq. On the contrary, they have been doing their best to conceal the numbers killed.

When the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated the figure of 100,000 killed in Iraq and published their findings in one of the world`s leading scientific journals, the Lancet, Downing Street questioned their methodology, saying "the researchers used an extrapolation technique, which they considered inappropriate, rather than a detailed body count". Of course "a detailed body count" is the one thing the US military will not allow anyone to do.

What is so odd is the way in which so much of the media has fallen into line, downplaying the only authoritative estimate of casualties in Iraq with the same unanimity with which they have impressed upon us the death toll of the tsunami.

One of the authors of the forenamed report, Dr Gilbert Burnham, said: "Our data have been back and forth between many reviewers at the Lancet and here in the school, so we have the scientific strength to say what we have said with great certainty."

So, are deaths caused by bombs and gunfire less worthy of our pity than deaths caused by a giant wave? Or are Iraqi lives less worth counting than Indonesian, Thai, Indian and Swedish?

Why aren`t our TV companies and newspapers running fundraisers to help Iraqis whose lives have been wrecked by the invasion? Why aren`t they screaming with outrage at the man-made tsunami that we have created in the Middle East? It truly is baffling.

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python. His book Terry Jones`s War on the War on Terror is published this month by the Nation

www.terry-jones.net
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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City of ghosts

On November 8, the American army launched its biggest ever assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, considered a stronghold for rebel fighters. The US said the raid had been a huge success, killing 1,200 insurgents. Most of the city`s 300,000 residents, meanwhile, had fled for their lives. What really happened in the siege of Falluja? In a joint investigation for the Guardian and Channel 4 News, Iraqi doctor Ali Fadhil compiled the first independent reports from the devastated city, where he found scores of unburied corpses, rabid dogs - and a dangerously embittered population.

Last November, US military forces, backed by British soldiers from the Black Watch, launched their biggest ever assault on the city of Falluja, Operation Phantom Fury.

Over the last two weeks, Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi doctor turned film-maker for Guardianfilms, has succeeded in making it into the city and the surrounding refugee camps. He discovered people had been shot in their beds, rabid dogs were feeding on corpses, and there was little to no water, electricity or sewage. A city of over 300,000 people had been destroyed and its inhabitants were homeless.

With just two weeks until the Iraqi elections, not a single voter in Falluja has received a ballot paper. Far from stabilising the region in preparation for the election, it seems the US military`s decision to use the Iraqi National Guard against this Sunni city has fanned the flames of civil war in the entire country.

Guardianfilms now presents an extract from this report, to be broadcast tonight, January 11, at 7pm on Channel 4 News. This film is distributed by Journeyman Pictures.

[urlWatch an extract from the documentary]http://guardian.co.uk/guardianfilms/fallujah[/url]
Ali Fadhil
Tuesday January 11, 2005

Guardian
December 22 2004

It all started at my house in Baghdad. I packed my equipment, the camera and the tripod. Tariq, my friend, told me not to take it with us. "The fighters might search the car and think that we are spies." Tariq was frightened about our trip, even though he is from Falluja and we had permission from one group of fighters to enter under their protection. But Tariq, more than anyone, understands that the fighters are no longer just one group. He is quite a character, Tariq: 32 and an engineer with a masters degree in embryo implantation, he works now at a human rights institute called the Democratic Studies Institute for Human Rights and Democracy in Baghdad. He is also deeply into animal rights.

Foolishly, I took a pill to try to keep down the flu, which made me sleepy. It was 9am when we crossed the main southern gate out of Baghdad, taking care to stay well clear of American convoys. The southern gate is the scene of daily attacks on the Americans by the insurgents - either a car-bomb or an ambush with rocket-propelled grenades.

It took just 20 minutes from Baghdad to reach the area known as the "triangle of death", where the kidnapped British contractor Kenneth Bigley was held and finally beheaded in the town of Latifya. It is supposed to be a US military-controlled zone, but insurgents set up checkpoints here. As the road became more rural and more isolated, I got nervous that at any moment we would be stopped by carjackers and robbed of our expensive equipment. At a checkpoint a hooded face came to the window; he was carrying an old AK47 on his shoulder and looking for a donation towards the jihad. There were six fighters in total, all hooded. The driver and Tariq both made a donation; I was frightened he would search the car and find the camera, so I gave him my Iraqi doctor`s ID card, hoping that would work. He apologised and asked that we excuse him.

Now, there was nothing ahead but the sky and the desert. It was 1.30pm and a bad time to use this road; we had been told that carjackers were particularly active at this time of day. Tariq pointed out four young men dressed in red, their two motorbikes parked by the side of the road. They were planting a small, improvised explosive device made out of a tin of cooking oil for the next American convoy to leave the base outside Falluja.

It was 3.30pm before we got to Habbanya, a tourist resort on a lake supplied with fresh water by the Euphrates, which was once controlled by Uday, Saddam`s oldest son. It was here that Fallujans, who used to be wealthy as they supplied a lot of the top military for Saddam`s army, came for holidays.

Now the place was freezing, and full of refugees. All the holiday houses were crammed with people, sometimes two families to a room. The first family we came across had been there since a month before the attack started. A man called Abu Rabe`e came up. He was 59 and used to be a builder; he said he had a message for our camera. "We`re not looking for this sort of democracy, this attacking of the city and the people with planes and tanks and Humvees." He had also fled Falluja with his family. They were all living in a former mechanic`s garage in Habbanya.

Most of the people we spoke to in Habbanya were poor and uneducated, and had fled Falluja in anticipation of the US attack. Some were in tents; others were sharing the old honeymoon suites where newlyweds used to come when this was a holiday resort. They squabbled among themselves to persuade me to film the conditions they were living in. There was still a fairground in Habbanya, but nothing was working. In the middle of the bumper cars an old lady had pitched a tent with bricks, where she was living with her son. I tried to talk to her but she told me to go away. There was no cooking gas in Habbanya, so the Fallujan refugees were cutting down trees to keep warm and cook food.

Then someone came up and said the resistance fighters had heard we were asking questions. We decided to put the camera away and go to a friendly village that our driver knew. It was also filled with refugees from Falluja.

One 50-year-old man, a major in the Iraqi Republican Guards under the former regime, took us in. There were four families squeezed into one apartment, all of them once wealthy. The major, like the others, was sacked after the liberation when the US disbanded the army and police. Now jobless, his house in Falluja was wrecked and he was a refugee with his five children and wife near the town where he used to spend his holidays. He was angry with the Americans, but also with the Iraqi rebels, whom he blamed, alongside the clerics in the mosques, for causing Falluja to be wrecked.

"The mujahideen and the clerics are responsible for the destruction that happened to our city; no one will forgive them for that," he said with bitterness.

"Why are you blaming them - why don`t you blame the Americans and Allawi?" said Omar, the owner of the apartment.

"We told the mujahideen to leave it to us ordinary Fallujans, but those bloody bastards, the sheikhs and the clerics, are busy painting some bloody mad picture of heaven and martyrs and the victory of the mujahideen," said Ali, another refugee. "And, of course, the kids believe every word those clerics say. They`re young and naive, and they forget that this is a war against the might of the machine of the American army. So they let those kids die like this and our city gets blown up with the wind."

I wanted to ask the tough old Republican guard why they had let these young muj have the run of the city, but I actually didn`t have to. I remember being in Falluja just before the fighting started and seeing a crowd gathered around a sack that was leaking blood. A piece of white A4 paper was stuck on to the sack, which read: "Here is the body of the traitor. He has confessed to acting as a spotter for American planes and was paid $100 a day."

At the same time as we were standing looking at the sack, I knew I would be able to buy a CD of the man in this sack making his confession before he was beheaded in any CD shop in Falluja. These were the people who controlled Falluja now - not old majors from Saddam`s army.

December 24

In the morning we went back towards Falluja and heard that there were queues of people waiting to try to get back into the city. The government had made an announcement saying that the people from some districts could start to go back home; they promised compensation. About midday we got a mile east of the city and saw that four queues had formed near the American base. They were mostly men, waiting for US military ID to allow them back home.

The men were angry: "This is a humiliation. I say no more than that. These IDs are to make us bow Fallujan heads in shame," one of them said.

I met Major Paul Hackett, a marine officer in the Falluja liaison base. He said that the US military was not trying to humiliate anyone, but that the IDs were necessary for security. "I mean, my understanding is that ultimately they can hang this ID card on a wall and keep it as a souvenir," he said.

They took prints of all my fingers, two pictures of my face in profile, and then photographed my iris. I was now eligible to go into Falluja, just like any other Fallujan.

But it was late by then, somewhere near 5pm (the curfew is at 6pm). After that anyone who moves inside the city will be shot on sight by the US military. Tomorrow, we would try again to get into the city.

December 25

At around 8am, Tariq and I drove towards Falluja. We didn`t believe that we might actually get into the city.

The American soldiers at the checkpoint were nervous. The approach to the checkpoint was covered in pebbles so we had to drive very slowly. The soldiers spent 20 minutes searching my car, then they bodysearched Tariq and me. They gave me a yellow tape to put on to the windscreen of the car, showing I had been searched and was a contractor. If I didn`t have this stripe of yellow, a US sniper would shoot me as an enemy car.

By 10am we were inside the city. It was completely devastated, destruction everywhere. It looked like a city of ghosts. Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn`t see a single building that was functioning.

The Americans had put a white tape across the roads to stop people wandering into areas that they still weren`t allowed to enter. I remembered the market from before the war, when you couldn`t walk through it because of the crowds. Now all the shops were marked with a cross, meaning that they had been searched and secured by the US military. But the bodies, some of them civilians and some of them insurgents, were still rotting inside.

There were dead dogs everywhere in this area, lying in the middle of the streets. Reports of rabies in Falluja had reached Baghdad, but I needed to find a doctor.

Fallujans are suspicious of outsiders, so I found it surprising when Nihida Kadhim, a housewife, beckoned me into her home. She had just arrived back in the city to check out her house; the government had told the people three days earlier that they should start going home. She called me into her living room. On her mirror she pointed to a message that had been written in her lipstick. She couldn`t read English. It said: "Fuck Iraq and every Iraqi in it!"

"They are insulting me, aren`t they?" she asked.

I left her and walked towards the cemetery. I noticed the dead dogs again. I had been told in Baghdad by a friend of mine, Dr Marwan Elawi, that the Baghdad Hospital for Infectious Diseases admits one case of rabies every week. The problem is that infected dogs are eating the corpses and spreading the disease.

As I was walking by the cemetery, I caught the smell of death coming from one of the houses. The door was open and the first thing I saw was a white car parked in the driveway and on top of it a launcher for an RPG.

I went inside, and the sound of the rain on the roof and the darkness inside made me very afraid. The door was open, all the windows were broken and there were bullet holes running down the hall to a bathroom at the end - as if the bullets were chasing something or somebody. The bathroom led on to a bedroom and I stepped inside and saw the body of a fighter.

The leg was missing, the hand was missing and the furniture in the house had been destroyed. I couldn`t breathe with the smell. I realised that Tariq wasn`t with me, and I panicked and ran. As I got out of the house I saw a white teddy bear lying in the rain, and a green boobytrap bomb.

Some of the worst fighting took place here in the centre of the city, but there was no sign of the 1,200 to 1,600 fighters the Americans said they had killed. I had heard that there was a graveyard for the fighters somewhere in the city but people said that most of them had withdrawn from the city after the first week of fighting. I needed to find one of the insurgents to tell me the real story of what had happened in the city. The Americans had said that there had been a big military victory, but I couldn`t understand where all the fighters were buried.

After I saw the body I felt uncomfortable about sleeping in Falluja. The place was deserted and polluted with death and all kinds of weapons. Imagine sleeping in a place where any of the surrounding houses might have one, two or three bodies. I wanted out.

We went back to my friend the old Republican guard officer. I was so tired I could hardly take my clothes off to go to sleep but I couldn`t sleep with the smell of death on my clothes.

December 26

In the morning, I went back to find the cemetery and look for evidence of the fighters who had been killed. It was about 4pm before I got inside the martyrs` cemetery; people kept waylaying me, wanting to show me their destroyed houses and asking why the journalists didn`t come and show what the Americans had done to Falluja. They were also angry at the interim President Allawi for sending in the mainly Shia National Guard to help the Americans.

At the entrance to the fighters` graveyard a sign read: "This cemetery is being given by the people of Falluja to the heroic martyrs of the battle against the Americans and to the martyrs of the jihadi operations against the Americans, assigned and approved by the Mujahideen Shura council in Falluja."

As I went into the graveyard, the bodies of two young men were arriving. The faces were rotting. The ambulance driver lifted the bones of one of the hands; the skin had rotted away. "God is the greatest. What kind of times are we living through that we are holding the bones and hands of our brothers?"

Then he began cursing the National Guard, calling them even worse things than the Americans: "Those bastards, those sons of dogs." It wasn`t the first time I had heard this. It was the National Guard the Americans used to search the houses; they were seen by the Fallujans as brutal stooges. Most of the volunteers for the National Guard are poor Shias from the south. They are jobless and desperate enough to volunteer for a job that makes them assassination targets. "National infidels", they were also called.

I counted the graves: there were 74. The two young men made it 76. The names on the headstones were written in chalk and some had been washed away. One read: "Here lies the heroic Tunisian martyr who died", but I didn`t see any other evidence of the hundreds of foreign fighters that the US had said were using Falluja as their headquarters. People told me there were some Yemenis and Saudis, some volunteers from Tunisia and Egypt, but most of the fighters were Fallujan. The US military say they have hundreds of bodies frozen in a potato chip factory 5km south of the city, but nobody has been allowed to go there in the past two months, including the Red Crescent.

Salman Hashim was crying beside the grave of his son, who had been a fighter in Falluja.

"He is 18 years old. He wanted to be a doctor or engineer after this year; it was his last year in high school." At the same grave, the boy`s mother was crying and remembering her dead son, who was called Ahmed. "I blame Ayad Allawi. If I could I would cut his throat into pieces." Then, to the mound of earth covering her son`s body, she said: "I told you those fighters would get you killed." The boy`s father told her to be quiet in front of the camera.

On the next grave was written the name of a woman called Harbyah. She had refused to leave the city for the camps with her family. One of her relatives was standing by her grave. He said that he found her dead in her bed with at least 20 bullets in her body.

I saw other rotting bodies that showed no signs of being fighters. In one house in the market there were four bodies inside the guest room. One of the bodies had its chest and part of its stomach opened, as if the dogs had been eating it. The wrists were missing, the flesh of the arm was missing, and parts of the legs.

I tried to figure out who these four men were. It was obvious which houses the fighters were in: they were totally destroyed. But in this house there were no bullets in the walls, just four dead men lying curled up beside each other, with bullet holes in the mosquito nets that covered the windows. It seemed to me as if they had been asleep and were shot through the windows. It is the young men of the family who are usually given the job of staying behind to guard the house. This is the way in Iraq - we never leave the house empty. The four men were sleeping the way we sleep when we have guests - we roll out the best carpet in the guest room and the men lie down beside each other.

"Its Abu Faris`s house. I think that the fat dead body belongs to his son, Faris," said Abu Salah, whose chip shop was also destroyed in the bombing.

It was getting dark and it was time to go, but I needed some overview shots of the city. There was a half-built tower, so I climbed it and looked around. I couldn`t see a single building that hadn`t been hit.

After a few minutes I got the sense that this wasn`t a good place for me to be hanging around, but I had to pee urgently. I found a place on the roof of the building. While I was doing that a warning shot passed so close to my head that I ducked and didn`t even wait to pull up my zip, but ran to the half-destroyed stairs to climb down the building. I felt as if the American sniper was playing with me; he had had plenty of time to kill me if he wanted to.

For the rest of the day people were pulling on me to come and see their houses. Again, they asked where all the journalists were. Why were they not coming to report on what has happened in Falluja? But I have worked with journalists for 18 months and I knew it would be too dangerous for them to come to the city, that they are seen as spies and could end up in a sack. So since I was the only one there with a camera, everyone wanted to show me what happened to their house. It took hours.

Back in Baghdad that night, I changed my clothes and decided to send them to the public laundry. I was worried about contaminating my family with Falluja. I was thinking that nobody was going to be able to live there for months. Then, I took a very long bath.

December 27

I woke up at home in Baghdad around 9am. I had had enough of Falluja, but I still felt that I didn`t understand what had happened. The city was completely devastated - but where were the bodies of all the dead fighters the Americans had killed?

I wanted to ask Dr Adnan Chaichan about the wounded. I found him at the main hospital in Falluja at midday. He told me that all the doctors and medical staff were locked into the hospital at the beginning of the attack and not allowed out to treat anyone. The Iraqi National Guard, acting under US orders, had tied him and all the other doctors up inside the main hospital. The US had surrounded the hospital, while the National Guard had seized all their mobile phones and satellite phones, and left them with no way of communicating with the outside world. Chaichan seemed angrier with the National Guards than with anyone else.

He said that the phone lines inside the town were working, so wounded people in Falluja were calling the hospital and crying, and he was trying to give instructions over the phone to the local clinics and the mosques on how to treat the wounds. But nobody could get to the main hospital where all the supplies were and people were bleeding to death in the city.

It was late afternoon when I drove out of Falluja and back to Baghdad, feeling that I had just scratched the surface of what really happened there. But it is clear that by completely destroying this Sunni city, with the help of a mostly Shia National Guard, the US military has fanned the seeds of a civil war that is definitely coming. If there are elections now and the Shia win, that war is certain. The people I spoke to had no plans to vote. No one I met in those five days had a ballot paper.

A week after I arrived in London to make the film for Channel 4 News, the tape of the final interview arrived by Federal Express. It was the interview with Alzaim Abu, who had led the fighters in the Shuhada district of Falluja and fought the Americans in the early battles in the city centre. We had been been trying to track him down for nearly three weeks. Then Tariq had got a call from him the night I had left for London saying that he would talk.

There was a lot of bullshit in the interview; lots of bravado about how many Americans they had killed and about never surrendering and how Fallujans would win. He said that there were a few foreign fighters in the city, but none in his units; mostly, they were Fallujans.

But one thing stood out for me that explained the empty graveyard and the lack of bodies. He said that most of the fighters had been given orders to abandon the city by November 17, nine days after the assault began. "The withdrawal of the fighters was carried out following an order by our senior leadership. We did not pull out because we did not want to fight. We needed to regroup; it was a tactical move. The fighters decided to redeploy to Amiriya and some went to Abu Ghraib," he said.

The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters.
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"President Bush has been working on his inauguration, not the actual speech but the word inaugural."
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"Alberto Gonzales, nominee for the U.S. attorney general, answered some tough questions from Congress today about his role in the Iraqi prison torture scandal. But afterwards he said to make himself relax he used that old trick of imagining your audience in their underwear -- with hoods over their heads being led around on a dog leash by a woman. It just helps to get your mind clear."
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Das haben die USA nun davon. Erst Millionen in die Ukraine pumpen, damit der ihnen genehme Kandidat gewinnt und nun aus Dankbarkeit desertieren die Ukrainer.
Undank ist der Welt Lohn!

Ukrainian Peacekeepers to Leave Iraq

Tuesday January 11, 2005 11:31 AM

By ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC

Associated Press Writer

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday called for an immediate withdrawal of the nation`s peacekeepers from Iraq. The vote was non-binding but reflected growing national dismay over the mission.

The parliament`s call came two days after eight Ukrainian soldiers died in an explosion at an ammunition dump in Iraq. The blast was reported as an accident, but a top commander later raised suspicions that it could have been a terrorist action.

On Monday, President Leonid Kuchma ordered the foreign and defense ministries to develop a plan for withdrawing Ukraine`s troops from Iraq within the first half of 2005.

But the parliament, in a 308-0 vote, called on Kuchma to accelerate the process by issuing an immediate decree on withdrawal.

There was no immediate response from Kuchma to the parliament move. Valeriy Chauly, an analyst with the Kiev-based Razumkov think-tank, said he expected the final decision on a pullout would come only after a new president takes office.

Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who also supports a withdrawal, on Monday was declared the winner of the presidential election; it was not clear when he might take office.

A withdrawal could be a significant symbolic blow for the U.S.-led operation, not only because of the Ukrainian contingent`s size but because of the country`s reputation for eagerly participating in dangerous peacekeeping missions.

It was a major component of the ill-fated peacekeeping operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992-95, and Ukraine currently has peacekeepers in Sierra Leone. Kuchma recently endorsed sending troops to take part in the United Nations observer mission in Syria`s Golan Heights.

Ukraine strongly opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq but later agreed to send troops in an apparent effort to patch up relations frayed by allegations that Kuchma had approved the sale of radar systems and other military equipment to Saddam Hussein`s regime in contravention of U.N. sanctions.

``The situation in Iraq has deteriorated and as a consequence we lost our men,`` acting Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk was quoted as saying on Monday by the Interfax news agency.

Yushchenko`s campaign manager, Oleksandr Zinchenko, said Monday that withdrawal was a difficult procedure, burdened with political, finance, military and diplomatic details, but stressed that the issue would be one of Yushchenko`s top concerns.

``I can only say that the promise that ... Yushchenko made to the Ukrainian people would be kept,`` Interfax quoted him as saying.




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Informed Comment
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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Tuesday, January 11, 2005

US Rejects Sunni Demand for Withdrawal Timetable
2 US troops Killed, along with Baghdad Deputy Police Commissioner and Iraqi Police, Guards

The US rejected on Monday a proposal from the Sunni Association of Muslims Scholars that the US declare a timetable for withdrawal of its troops from Iraq, in return for which the AMS would lift its boycott of the elections and would accept the resulting government as legitimate even if it was Shiite-dominated.

The US spokesman said that the US was not prepared to announce a timetable for withdrawal, and that it would be premature to do so before the new elected Iraqi government was formed.

An informed US view of the political steps prescribed by the Transitional Administrative Law for after the elections in Iraq are laid out by a legal adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority and the US embassy, Brett McGurk. He also answered questions online at the Washington Post on the process. He is worth reading as an American insider. Personally, I think many of his expectations are wildly optimistic, and he seems unconcerned by basic problems like that the names of the candidates are still unknown in Iraq, the Sunni Arabs are unlikely to show up, election workers and candidates are withdrawing under death threats, and religious Shiite parties will probably dominate the resulting parliament.

Guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb in Baghdad Monday as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle passed, killing two US troops and wounding four. AP suggested that Iraqi guerrillas are using more powerful explosives, able to inflict such damage on the Bradleys.

Guerrillas killed the deputy police commissioner of Baghdad and his son with a drive-by attack on their car with machine gun fire. Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed credit for the attack, terming Brigadier Amer Ali Nayef a collaborator with the Americans.

In southern Baghdad, a guerrilla detonated his car bomb (disguised as a police vehicle) outside a police station, killing 4 policemen and wounding 10.

In Mosul, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb as an Iraqi National Guard patrol passed, accompanying US troops. It killed 3 guardsmen and wounded 6.

In the eastern city of Baqubah, US troops said they accidentally killed a 13-year-old girl and wounded a 14-year-old boy.

Wire services report that in Wasit in the Shiite south, an organization calling itself the Secret Republican Army posted threats to mount expert snipers against townspeople who came out to vote on January 30. The warnings appeared in another city, as well.

The Secret Republican Army sounds to me like Baathists (the elite Baath military units were called the "Republican Guards"), and it is chilling that they can still threaten people in Shiite Wasit.

The Ukraine announced that it would withdraw its 1600 troops, the fourth-largest national contingent in Iraq, by summer of 2005. Seven Ukrainian troops were killed in an explosion recently, which now appears to have been an attack rather than an accident.

It is noteworthy that the democratically elected president Viktor Yushchenko vowed to withdraw the troops from Iraq, which had been sent there by the authoritarian previous government against the will of the Ukrainian people, presumably in search of patronage from Washington. Sending troops to support the US occupation of Iraq has been almost universally unpopular with actual publics, and it is unlikely that any of the foreign contingents in Bush`s "coalition of the willing" could stay there if it depended on a popular referendum.

The Washington Post also reports that the police chief of Baiji, a city north of Baghdad, barely escaped being assassinated on Monday. When the police fired back at the attackers, they killed at least one innocent bystander. His family vowed revenge. About 142 national guardsmen in Baiji have resigned in the face of death threats from guerrillas.

Ongoing sabotage of Iraq`s oil pipelines continued to prevent exports from the northern oil fields, and interrupted for a day exports from the south.

posted by Juan @ 1/11/2005 06:33:18 AM

The New Contours of American Militarism

David Ignatius of the Washington Post has a column on Tuesday concerning US options in Iraq. He reports three scenarios from Washington insiders:

1) reduce the number of US troops in hopes that the Sunni Arabs will accommodate themselves to the new Shiite-dominated government, and vice versa;

2) Go on fighting the insurgency in the Sunni heartland while doing reconstruction work in the calmer Shiite south and Kurdish north;

3) Mount a massive and brutal counter-insurgency campaign against the Sunni Arab guerrillas, rather on the model of what the military government did against its Muslim radicals in the 1990s. Ignatius urges the employment of Iraqi forces in this campaign rather than American ones.

One problem with the "special operations" (some would say "death squad") scenario is that it is most likely that these pro-US units would largely be recruited from among Kurds and Shiites, and if they were deployed mainly against Sunni guerrillas, it would have the effect of raising ethnic tensions. Iraq is not El Salvador. Of course, as Ignatius recognizes, the other problem is that it raises thorny ethical problems and questions about what Americans stand for.

"The Iraq Syndrome", a growing phenomenon and legacy of Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, perhaps inclines the American public more toward finding an exit strategy than toward an intensified, brutal 9-year-long counter-insurgency effort.

The increasingly praetorian character of American responses to crises is underlined in an elegiac article by Tom Engelhardt.

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Tuesday, January 11, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

War News for Tuesday, January 11, 2005

"There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." - George W. Bush, July 2, 2003.

Bring ‘em on: Seven policemen killed, eight wounded in car bombing in Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: Seven Iraqis killed in roadside bombing in Yussifiyah. Suicide bomber killed and one US soldier wounded in Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Gas pipeline between Kirkuk and Beiji destroyed in bombing. Additional pipelines attacked southwest of Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi National Guardsmen killed in roadside bombing in Samarra.

Hearts and minds: Relations between US authorities and Iraqis have grown increasingly troubled. On the one hand, American officials insist they are winning Iraqi "hearts and minds" by building infrastructure and venturing off their bases to hand out footballs, teddy bears and toothpaste. But as attacks on US forces have escalated, American commanders have loosened the rules of engagement binding their troops, encouraging them to stand and fight.

Many Iraqis, in turn, are terrified by the sight of a US patrol in their neighbourhood: their fear is that soldiers will be hit by a roadside bomb or bullets and respond by opening fire at anything nearby. After one particularly harrowing day of explosions, soldiers killed a mentally disabled man who failed to heed their commands, said Ali Salman Ali, 37, a shop owner. "The soldiers knew this guy and joked with him all the time. But on this day, they ordered him to stop, and he didn`t. So they shot him dead."

The New Iraqi Army: Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Tuesday the country would spend $2 billion to boost and train its fledgling army and security forces this year to try to end a relentless insurgency.

In a presentation to Iraqi army and police officers and reporters, Allawi said the New Iraqi Army -- which has been merged with the National Guard -- would be increased to a force of 150,000 from 100,000 and more training and equipment would be provided for the police.

Iraqi forces are supposed to take over security when U.S. forces leave the country but they are struggling even to protect themselves.

Fallujah: Fresh evidence has emerged of the extent of destruction and appalling conditions in Fallujah, still deserted two months after a major United States offensive against the insurgent stronghold.

Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi journalist working with The Guardian`s film unit and one of the few reporters to travel independently to Fallujah, describes in a Channel 4 News film on Tuesday a "city of ghosts" where dogs feed on uncollected corpses.

"It is completely devastated," Fadhil writes in The Guardian. "Fallujah used to be a modern city; now there is nothing. We spend that first day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I don`t see a single building that is functioning."

In context: Retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey says casualty rates in Iraq are comparable to those of Vietnam.

McCaffrey said Monday that Americans will lose faith in the Mideast military effort if U.S. leaders fail to develop a clear plan to stabilize Iraq.

More than 12,000 U.S. troops, including about 11,600 in Iraq, have been killed or wounded in the war on terrorism, he said.

"From a national perspective, you could say that isn`t too bad of a price to pay," he told about 300 people at Brooke Army Medical Center. "But let me put it in context. All of the casualty rates in Iraq right now are essentially at the level of Vietnam."

Monster truck: American military commanders in insurgent hotbeds like Ramadi and Mosul have said in interviews that they have seen attackers use increasingly powerful and sophisticated explosive devices against humvees and armored vehicles. The devices have used elaborate timing sequences and, in some cases, specially shaped explosive charges designed to more easily pierce armor plating.

In Mosul, for example, American commanders were stunned early last month when a patrol of Stryker armored vehicles found itself in a mile-long ambush where insurgents had spaced at least 10 artillery shells about 150 to 200 yards apart, detonating them in a measured pattern as troops passed. The armored Strykers suffered little damage, but commanders on the scene said humvees or lesser-armored vehicles would have been far more vulnerable.

In an even bolder attack at the end of the month, insurgents attacked soldiers from the same unit, the First Battalion, 24th Infantry, with a complicated truck bomb designed to defeat barriers the troops had placed in front of an outpost in western Mosul. The truck had extra-large tires and a raised chassis, and was packed with 1,500 pounds of explosives, but the soldiers had recently installed larger barriers. The detonation created a hole 15 feet long, 8 feet wide and 5 feet deep.


But no gays: Many of the soldiers sharing a sendoff lunch with their families Saturday are following the Army tradition of their fathers, uncles and grandfathers.

But most of them are their families` first women in uniform.

More than 20 of the 32 National Guard soldiers being deployed from the Taylor-based 228th Forward Support Company B are women. The soldiers were honored as they prepared to leave today for training before a tour of duty in Iraq. A group of 14 soldiers from Western Pennsylvania joined them.


Elections

Logistical problems: With less than three weeks before Iraq`s national election, there are still major logistical problems that could seriously undermine the vote, according to a United Nations memo obtained by Newsday.

Ballots still need to be printed and flown into the country; some of the warehouses where ballots will be stored are vulnerable to attack; and the names of thousands of candidates are still being entered into computer databases. Moreover, insurgents target anyone associated with the vote, and the Iraqi election commission has found it so difficult to hire enough poll workers that it is asking to use teachers and school administrators.


Embeds: As Iraq moves closer to its first democratic elections later this month, the number of news organizations requesting embedded slots with military units there is on the rise, according to officials. But those new embeds better watch their step. E&P has learned that five journalists have been kicked out of embed slots in the past three months for reporting secure information.

Embedded journalists in Iraq topped 800 at the height of combat in 2003, but their number has since dwindled to the double digits in the past year or so. The tally increased briefly in October when the first Marine Expeditionary Force prepared for its Fallujah assault, drawing 70 journalists to its ranks alone.


Death Squads

Creating a monster: Experience from countries such as Colombia, Sudan and Russia (in Chechnya) shows that "death squads" and paramilitary groups created to combat insurgencies take on a life of their own and are often difficult to rein in. Once established, it is difficult to prevent them from killing whomever they want for whatever reasons they want, opening up the possibility that civilians will be targeted because of personal or political vendettas in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

"If this plan is real, the Pentagon will rue the day it dreamed it up," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "They are creating a monster that could someday kill the very Iraqi democracy they say they want to build."


First glimpse of the monster: An unknown militant group Saraya Iraqna has declared war on extremists acting on the territory of Iraq, reported RIA Novosti citing an article published in the Iraqi newspaper Al Ittihad. The first official message of the group says it aims at “a relentless fight against all kinds of terrorists and Wahabits in the country”.

“Our activity will not be selective. It is directed toward all terrorist organizations on the territory of Iraq, no matter what their religion or ethnic origin is”, says the message. The group promises rewards of USD 3,000 to USD 50,000 to people cooperating in the fight against terrorism.

Many thanks to alert reader whisker for the link.


Torture

Win Without War: For more than a century, the U.S. has opposed the torture of prisoners through the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Torture isn`t just immoral and illegal -- it`s a strategic mistake that makes us all less safe. Responding to Gonzales` torture memo, Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote that ignoring the Geneva Conventions will "undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops." And by inciting anti-American hatred, torture bolsters the position of extremists and boosts terrorist recruitment, making the world less secure. Torture doesn`t even work to find out about attacks before they happen, since people usually give falsified information to escape the pain.

This site is well worth a look. Win Without War is a coalition of progressive organizations dedicated to ending the Iraq war and bringing its perpertrators to justice. Please support them as best you are able.


Paper trail: Usually, incriminating documents on the crimes and misdemeanors of any government or administration await ultimate defeat (and sometimes conquest) to see the light of day, or at least, as in the case of the Nixon administration documentation that came out during the Watergate affair, political defeat. Only three years into the war on terror, however, with the Bush administration still riding relatively high in the saddle, the paper trail already made public on torture, abuse, and other crimes against humanity is unprecedented -- and it leads right up to the top. Karen J. Greenberg, Director of the Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law, and attorney Joshua L. Dratel, President-elect of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and civil lawyer for Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, have now put together a massive book of these documents (just being published this week), The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib. It`s the most comprehensive record yet of memos and reports in which the Bush Administration developed its policies on the treatment of prisoners and on torture. It also includes testimony from interrogators and detainees on abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and reports on prisoner abuses done by the International Red Cross and other organizations. It will be a must-have reference work for any journalist or historian writing on the subject or, for that matter, for any of us.


Without hesitation immediately: Most of the prisoners - some 550 or so - are kept in "maximum security" conditions. If they cooperate, they can be led in cuffs and leg irons to a covered yard for 20 minutes of exercises with one other detainee, followed by a five- minute shower. The standard cell is a prefabricated metal box a little larger than a king-size bed. Guards are required to pass each cell every 30 seconds. There is no air conditioning, and the lights stay on all night.

So who exactly are these people who are being held under such severe conditions? Rose says none of the highest-profile al Qaeda captures have wound up at Gitmo, as it is called. The CIA concluded in a report that "many of the accused terrorists appeared to be low-level recruits who went to Afghanistan to support the Taliban or even innocent men swept up in the chaos of the war." One senior Pentagon official told Rose that "at least two-thirds" of the detainees held as of May 2004 could be released "without hesitation immediately."

Commentary

Opinion: With the insurgency becoming both stronger and bolder, and the chances of conducting a legitimate election growing grimmer by the day, a genuine sense of alarm can actually be detected in the reality-resistant hierarchy of the Bush administration.

The unthinkable is getting a tentative purchase in the minds of the staunchest supporters of the war: that under the current circumstances, and given existing troop strengths, the U.S. and its Iraqi allies may not be able to prevail. Military officials are routinely talking about a major U.S. presence in Iraq that will last, at a minimum, into the next decade. That is not what most Americans believed when the Bush crowd so enthusiastically sold this war as a noble adventure that would be short and sweet, and would end with Iraqis tossing garlands of flowers at American troops.

Analysis: While the world`s attention has been on the disaster in Asia, the situation in Iraq has deteriorated so much that the insurgency has developed into near-open warfare.

The head of Iraq`s intelligence service Gen Muhammad Shahwani now puts the number of insurgents at 200,000, of which 40,000 are said to be the hard core and the rest active supporters.

These figures do not represent an insurgency. They represent a war.

Editorial: The vice president argued that in 1980s El Salvador "a guerilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead. And we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress. ... And as the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied their right to vote. And today El Salvador is ... a lot better because we held free elections."

There is a serious problem with this story. The 75,000 people Cheney mentioned were indeed killed by terrorists, but not by the rebel FMLN forces that he intended to condemn. Rather, they were under assault from the very Salvadoran government that the Reagan administration was supporting and from its paramilitary death squads. With a list of opposition politicians having already been executed or exiled, the 1984 elections were little more than a farce designed to give democratic respectability to a regime that was perpetuating some of the worst human rights abuses in the hemisphere.

The facts of Salvadoran history were definitively established by a UN-sponsored truth commission in 1993. It concluded that 90 percent of the atrocities in the conflict were committed by the army and its surrogates, with the rebels responsible for 5 percent and the remaining 5 percent undetermined.

Opinion: Despite evasive answers to questions about his role in creating a pervasive policy environment that made the U.S. government’s torture of prisoners just good, clean fun, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales seems poised to win Senate approval as Attorney General. That shocking outcome would reaffirm that the politically minded Congress often takes a distorted view of what this country is supposed to stand for.

Although I dislike the term “un-American”—since throughout U.S. history it has often been applied to people who disagreed with whatever war was then the rage—I think the term can safely be applied to torture. Congress should deny high office to anyone who helps create a bureaucratic climate that implicitly endorses such reprehensible behavior. Gonzales has done exactly that.


Casualty Reports

Local story: Astana, Kazakhestan, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Pineville, LA, and Kinder, LA, soldiers killed in Iraq.

Local story: Walker Valley, NY, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Beech Grove, IN, soldier killed in Tal Afar.

Local story: Cass Lake, MN, soldier killed near Baghdad.

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IWR BOOK REVIEW (IWR Parody) - How NOT to Win Friends and Influence People is just as useless today as it was when it was first published in 1937, because Don Rumsfeld has an misunderstanding of human nature that will never be outdated.

In his book, you learn how to make people despise you, lose people over to your way of thinking, and change people the wrong way by causing offense and arousing resentment.

Mr. Rumsfeld provides several recent examples from Iraq which highlight his "successful" philosophy:

* [urlThe Pentagon to put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek

* [urlU.S. Military Says Mistakenly Bombs House in Iraq]http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7272306

* [urlArmor-plated excuses are not what soldiers need]http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/1212montini12.html

* [urlTorture at Abu Ghraib]http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

* [urlLiberation and Looting in Iraq]http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20030414.html
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ROBERT SCHEER
Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
Robert Scheer

January 11, 2005

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?

To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media`s supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain`s leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media."

Stern stuff, indeed. But consider just a few of the many questions the program poses along the way:

• If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?

• How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?

• Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?

• Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?

Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered, well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden helped finance various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that have engaged in terror, including the 9/11 attacks. Nor does it challenge the notion that a terrifying version of fundamentalist Islam has led to gruesome spates of violence throughout the world. But the film, both more sober and more deeply provocative than Michael Moore`s "Fahrenheit 9/11," directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda.

Terrorism is deeply threatening, but it appears to be a much more fragmented and complex phenomenon than the octopus-network image of Al Qaeda, with Bin Laden as its head, would suggest.

While the BBC documentary acknowledges that the threat of terrorism is both real and growing, it disagrees that the threat is centralized:

"There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist ideas and who will use the techniques of mass terror — the attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear. But the nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the `sleeper cells` in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy."

The fact is, despite the efforts of several government commissions and a vast army of investigators, we still do not have a credible narrative of a "war on terror" that is being fought in the shadows.

Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission nor any court of law has been able to directly take evidence from the key post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States. Everything we know comes from two sides that both have a great stake in exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda: the terrorists themselves and the military and intelligence agencies that have a vested interest in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy.

Such a state of national ignorance about an endless war is, as "The Power of Nightmares" makes clear, simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy.





Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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The taming of Sadr City
By Michael Schwartz

Jan 12, 2005
Sadr City - the overcrowded, under-serviced 3 million-person Baghdad slum that has been the site of some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq - is the linchpin of the war.

# Though there have been more spectacular battles in Fallujah and Najaf, Sadr City is of paramount importance because it is the center of the Shi`ite rebellion, and the Shi`ites represent 60% of the Iraqi population. As a consequence, the Mehdi army - the military arm of the Sadrist movement that has dominated the area`s politics for the past quarter century - has become the most important of all the insurgent groups, and a close look how it operates in its home base yields some startling conclusions about the trajectory of the struggle for control of Iraq: The Sadrists have developed an effective political-military strategy aimed at converting Sadr City into a "liberated area", in the classic guerrilla warfare model.
# Their main military strategy is to expel the US from their domain; only when they are under attack themselves do they venture outside Sadr City to attack US bases or supply routes.
# The al-Sadr organization is attempting to construct a coherent "dual" government that replaces the central government and which administers the usual set of public services - from traffic control to apprehending street criminals - within limits set by their inability to coordinate with a national government. This proto-government has been particularly assiduous in addressing the number one problem of public order, street crime, and has actually cooperated with the local police in this campaign.
# Mehdi soldiers - the guerrilla forces led by the Sadrists - though prone to thuggery, are largely under the control of this dual government, which is led by civilians - tribal leaders and Muslim clerics. The Mehdi soldiers act as the police force within the community.
# The Sadrists have been surprisingly successful in co-opting the Iraqi police, by rewarding them for working on community issues and fighting them when they participate in efforts to suppress the rebel political-military structure. American military complaints about the unreliability of their Iraqi trainees is actually a reflection of successfully applied guerrilla policy.
# The Sadrists have begun to enforce strict Islamist fundamentalism by suppressing such "moral crimes" as liquor sales and prostitution. The have utilized an ugly brand of vigilantism (firebombing, assaults and even homicide) to remove moral criminals from the community.
# The Sadrists, and parallel groups in other cities (notably Fallujah), have publicly denounced the spectacular bombings perpetrated by various terrorists groups, complaining about their negative impact on the lives and livelihoods of Iraqi civilians and calling for an active alliance with the Iraqi police in suppressing foreign jihadis and domestic terrorists.
# The organization in Sadr City is an echo of similar developments in Sunni cities (with Fallujah as the center), and it may foreshadow similar developments in the all-important Shi`ite south. The American attacks on various Iraqi cities, including the brutal battle of Fallujah, was an attempt to reverse this trend toward self-governed cities into which American forces rarely intrude.
# The existence of these dual governments in many cities rebuts American claims that US withdrawal would result in chaos. Ironically, just the reverse is true; US success in defeating the guerrillas would result in chaos, whereas a guerrilla victory would bring greater stability (and perhaps too strict an order) to the Iraqi cities.

To understand these non-intuitive conclusions, we begin with the two battles, in Najaf, which converted Muqtada al-Sadr - a young cleric who inherited the leadership of the Sadrist movement after his father and uncle were martyred - from a rather obscure militant into the one of the most visible and admired leaders in Iraqi society.

The battles in Najaf
Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi army were thrust into the center of Iraqi politics by the two battles with American troops in Najaf in April and August last year. In both battles, the US sought to recapture the Shrine of the Imam Ali from the Mehdi army, and the battles were concentrated in the historic cemetery near the shrine and the densely packed residential and commercial district surrounding it. The second battle, particularly, annihilated the neighborhood and inflicted irreparable damage on the lives and livelihoods of the local residents. Dexter Filkins of the NY Times (August 28, 2004) described it:

A scene of devastation. Hotels had crumbled into the street. Cars lay blackened and twisted where they had been hit. Goats and donkeys lay dead on the sidewalks. Pilgrims from out of town and locals coming from home walked the streets agape, shaking their heads, stunned by the devastation before them.

Both sides claimed victory in both battles, and each had good cause to do so. But beneath this disagreement over outcomes lay a larger mystery about why these decisive battles took place in Najaf. Since both sides agreed (particularly in the second battle) that the US was determined to deal a death blow to the Mehdi army, why weren`t the attacks launched at its principle base in Sadr City, particularly since the presence of the sacred Shrine in Najaf made it much more difficult for the US to unleash its most devastating offensive weapons.

The difference between the two settings lies in a simple fact: in Sadr City, the Mehdi soldiers were protecting their home neighborhoods from the ongoing US military incursions; in Najaf they were outsiders who had entered the city for the precise purpose of protecting the shrine, and had brought with them a ferocious battle with the US Marines that devastated the city. The US Army chose to attack the militia in Najaf - after experiencing frustration with attempts to assault Sadr City - "because Sadr`s ragtag militia doesn`t enjoy local support". (Christian Science Monitor, August 13, 2004)

While the Mehdi army could be seen as courageously defending Najaf from US invasion (and this is exactly the view taken by many residents and the vast majority of the international Shi`ite community); many local residents and pilgrims felt that the militia could have prevented all the carnage if they had never come to Najaf. Before the militia arrived, there was almost no fighting, as demonstrated by the huge throngs of pilgrims. During the Saddam Hussein regime, such pilgrimages had been severely limited, and thus his demise resulted in a mini-economic boom for local merchants.

Once the Mehdi army arrived and the fighting began, tourism died and the lives and livelihood of innumerable citizens were destroyed. During the first siege, the opinion of many was expressed by local cleric Sadr al-Din al-Kubanchi, who told NY Times reporter Abdul Razzaq al-Saeidy (April 24, 2004):

It`s not brave to take refuge in the house or the mosque or the markets and use women and children as human shields ... If that happens, the [US] soldiers will attack Najaf and our enemies will happily see our blood flow.

This sentiment was elaborated during the second battle by Abu Muhammed, a pilgrim from Kut, who told Times reporter Filkins:

"I blame Muqtada al-Sadr for what happened here, and the Iraqi government, too," said an old Iraqi man, identifying himself as Abu Muhammad. "We, the simple people, are paying for their mistakes." Mr Muhammad seemed to speak for many Iraqis here, who in dozens of interviews over the last several days denounced not only Mr Sadr but the Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, as well. With their homes and businesses in ruins, it seemed for many Iraqis that most of Iraq`s new leaders had failed. "Look at all the damage," an Iraqi man said to a friend as he walked down a street whose every building had been broken and crushed. "Let God take revenge on the Americans for this."

Though their hatred for the US was undiminished, many residents and pilgrims bitterly resented the presence of the Sadrist militia. In this view, the Mehdi, no matter how well intentioned, had created a war that killed many innocent civilians, destroyed a large part of a holy city, and devastated the lives of a whole community.

Sadr City as a classic `liberated area`
Things operated very differently Sadr City, where the Mehdi army was integrated into local life. The Sadrist movement had erected a governing structure that could viably lead the community, including a legislature (made up of tribal leaders) and an executive branch made up of movement activists (including key clerics), with the Mehdi army playing the role of the police. For the near term, this incipient government had two key tasks: to make Sadr City inaccessible to US troops (and whatever allies it could muster among Iraqi armed forces); and to institute "law and order" within its boundaries. These dual goals, if successfully achieved, would offer Sadr City a semblance of a normal existence that had been disrupted when the US toppled the Saddam regime. It could not, of course, solve the larger economic and infrastructural problems that were preventing the reconstruction and revival of Iraqi society; those problems could only be addressed if and when the national government stopped being a part of the problem.

Sadrist military strategy
Looking first at the relationship with the American army, we note that the Mehdi army has adopted a distinctly defensive posture. Militia members rarely attack American convoys outside Sadr City, nor do they lob grenades into American bases located around Baghdad, two strategies they used regularly during the Najaf battles. On the other hand, once the Americans enter Sadr City, the Mehdi usually resist ferociously. They are determined to carve out areas into which Americans are at least hesitant to come, and, over time, make these areas more-or-less immune to American incursions. This goal may be unreachable in the sense that US military superiority will always allow it to mount an attack from the air or to march through the community by massing a force of sufficient size; but if the end result is that Americans come to Sadr City infrequently and stay briefly, then the guerrillas will have won a sufficient victory to proceed with their broader plans.

Phillip Robertson, writing in Salon.com, described how this strategy played out in practice when he described the reaction of Sergeant Reggie Butler (the ranking non-commissioned officer of the 1st Platoon of the 1st Cavalry) to orders that his unit patrol one of the areas in Sadr City that the Mehdi were most determined to defend:

Butler instantly understood that the officers in the operations center had given the 1st Platoon the worst patrol in the Shi`ite ghetto, a loop around the entire northern side of the city. It was also a provocative one. The Bradleys would go within blocks of the al-Hekma mosque, a place where the Mehdi army has laid many ambushes and constantly fires at American patrols.

During this patrol, there was no fighting because both sides stayed within certain unspoken boundaries. The Americans did not attempt to actively search for guerrillas, contenting themselves with a "snap checkpoint", which involved "choking off traffic in both directions, while Iraqi soldiers searched cars full of young men". The Mehdi spotters, for their part, contented themselves with tracking the progress of the patrol:

At each of the stops, someone fired a few shots from a rifle. "When you hear that pop-pop from an AK, they are tracking you. That`s how they tell everybody where you are," a gunner explained. The invisible men were watching us and holding their fire ... Three hours later, the ceasefire hadn`t collapsed and Butler`s platoon had only had to endure a hail of rocks thrown by Iraqi boys. They had trouble believing their good luck.

But this "truce" was only situational. Several days earlier, a vicious firefight had erupted. In this case, the patrol that invaded Sadr City was intent on searching a residence that the Americans suspected was being used to sell arms. Robertson described the events this way:

On a busy street in the middle of the day, the people and traffic disappeared. Spotters for the Mehdi army had seen the Americans coming in their convoy and signaled the fighters, who were ready to shoot from alleys and rooftops. As the street cleared out, a heavy soldier named Barron was yelling over to me in the back of the last Bradley ... "See that? No people. That`s bad." Seconds after he said it, the street around the Humvees disappeared in clouds of dust where the Mehdi army bullets hit the ground. The dust came up around the wheels. It looked like the Humvees were sinking. The heavy guns on the vehicles shuddered. Gunners standing up in the Humvees were returning fire, but it was hard to see if they hit any of the Mehdi fighters who were trying to hit the convoy. It was a gun battle on an empty street against invisible men ... When we drove into the ambush, the 1st Cavalry soldiers were on their way to meet the Iraqi police and search an arms dealer`s house. As the convoy arrived at the dealer`s street, the four Iraqi police trucks slowed down but didn`t stop. The Iraqis were supposed to conduct the search while the Americans provided security ... With the Iraqi police missing and the locals firing rockets at the convoy, Alpha Company abandoned the cordon-and-search and headed for the base at 50 miles an hour, narrowly missing a roadside bomb.

There are three noteworthy elements to this event that speak to the strategy of the Mehdi army in Sadr City. First, this incursion involved the invasion of someone`s home, one of the most provocative acts the US routinely undertakes. The rules of engagement for such action call for smashing the door (rather than giving the suspect a warning by knocking) and extremely aggressive behavior inside; actions that are pregnant with the possibility of greater violence, including death, if the residents resist or act in a suspicious manner. Sadr City residents consider this terrifying procedure a heinous attack on respected members of the community. Because of notoriously faulty intelligence, the suspects are usually not guilty of anything; but even if this suspect were an arms dealer, his neighbors would not see this as a crime. After all, an arms dealer supplies his neighbors with needed guns to resist crime or the Americans. Because the resistance has spies within the Iraqi police, they knew the destination of this mission; and were able to prevent an American assault on a respected resident of the neighborhood; and to create a deterrent against future house invasions. This sharply contrasts with the actions in Najaf and Karbala, where the battles were between militia members and US troops, both of whom did not live there.

Second, the conduct of the battle was designed to protect the guerrillas from casualties. By occupying strategic places in the buildings above the convoy, the Mehdi were able to fire at the American and Iraqi soldiers while using the buildings to protect themselves from the superior weaponry of the American troops. As Robertson put it, "It was a gun battle on an empty street against invisible men." Typically, the guerrillas sought to start and finish battles before gunships could arrive, thus reducing the danger to themselves and to the buildings. They could easily hide their guns and pose as civilians to escape capture; a strategy that often did not work among the frequently unsympathetic townspeople in Najaf. This posture of protectiveness to the guerrilla cadre reflects classic guerrilla strategy, which seeks to fight battles only when casualties can be limited. (It of course completely precludes suicide attacks, a strategy that has not been practiced by the Sadrists.)

Third, the community was forewarned about the impending action, and given a chance to evacuate the area. Our attention is called to this by Robertson`s dramatic remark, "On a busy street in the middle of the day, the people and traffic disappeared." They disappeared because of the warnings issued by the guerrillas that a battle was brewing.

It is important to note that warning the civilians also warned the Americans, since the quiet streets were a sign that the American 1st Cavalry noticed and understood. The Mehdi army was therefore sacrificing the element of surprise in order to reduce civilian casualties.

Evacuation of civilians from the battlefield is a central element in winning a guerrilla war. High levels of civilian casualties alienate the local population (even if they hate the invader). This sort of consideration is part of the explanation for the almost unanimous respect for Muqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City, His standing is indicated by the following incident reported by Washington Post reporter Scott Wilson during a patrol conducted by American and Iraqi troops (July 6, 2004):

A column of six US military vehicles and a flatbed truck carrying Iraqi National Guard soldiers stopped in traffic next to an outdoor market. A child emerged from the roadside stalls, carrying a cardboard poster of Muqtada al-Sadr ... On tiptoes, the child handed the poster to the Iraqi soldier manning a machine gun, as US soldiers watched in dismay. The Iraqi soldier, part of a nascent security force trained and funded by the United States, held Sadr`s picture aloft for a gathering, cheering mob ... "If we took it from them now, this whole place would explode," said Sgt Adam Brantley, 24, of Gulf Shores, Ala, watching from behind the wheel of a Humvee.

The testimony of the American sergeant - that the community would "explode" if they tampered with the display of the Sadr portrait - is graphic evidence of the Sadrist base in this neighborhood (and most neighborhoods in Sadr City). This military strategy contrasts sharply with the orientation adopted by much of the Iraqi resistance. Many groups try to undermine the viability of the occupation army by attacking convoys and bases in order to inflict casualties, by fighting sustained battles designed to use up huge amounts of the US`s ammunition; and by bombing supply convoys in order to deprive the military of needed ordinance. This strategy intends to exhaust the army and the American people by making the war expensive in every respect. The Sadrist strategy abandons all these goals in favor of carving out liberated areas free of American influence and - most particularly - free of the havoc and destruction caused by the various activities of the American armed forces. It involves withdrawing into Sadr City, not engaging in battles or even demonstrations outside its confines, but creating a strong deterrent against incursions by American armed forces.

Sadrist dual government
Insofar as this military strategy is successful, it enables the creation of a viable governing structure. Knight Ridder reporter Tom Lasseter described how this looks in practice (Houston Chronicle, July 17, 2004):

From directing traffic to organizing blood drives, the militia overseen by firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is taking control of Baghdad`s largest neighborhood, even as Iraqi and US officials demand that the group disband. Al-Sadr`s office, not the beleaguered police station, is often the first stop for Sadr City residents who want to report a crime in this teeming slum of 3 million. "Who runs Sadr City? Only the Mehdi army," said Ali Qassim, who works in an ice cream shop off one of the area`s dusty boulevards ... On Tuesday morning, Iraqi police near downtown Baghdad arrested at least 500 Iraqis in a roundup targeting petty crooks and organized crime groups, but the sweep didn`t extend to Sadr City. To do so would require the Mehdi army`s cooperation. "If there is something wrong in this city, they will fix it," said Jasem Jaber, an Iraqi policeman assigned to Sadr City ... Most residents interviewed said the Mehdi army - named after the Shi`ite Muslim messiah - doesn`t need to carry weapons anymore because it`s in charge.

Christian Parenti, in a thorough Nation article put it more bluntly:

If there is anything like "progress" in Iraq it takes place here, under the radar, in the rubble of occupation. Sadr`s followers, despite many faults, including thuggishness and misogyny, are central to creating what order there is in this ravaged ghetto.

This assertion of the Mehdi army as the backbone of law and order is not a simple usurpation of power by an armed gang. The Sadrists, like most successful guerrilla armies, are the enforcement arm of a politically controlled revolutionary movement. Parenti provides a vivid snapshot of how this larger structure operates in his description of the Sadrist functionary in the al-Thawra district of Sadr City:

I try to meet Muqtada`s local representative, a 29-year-old sheik named Hassan Edhary, but he is on the run. The First Cav wants him, dead or alive. His two predecessors are already in Abu Ghraib. A few weeks ago, US tanks blew up this office. Reconstruction [of the office] started the next day at dawn.

When Edhary arrived suddenly at his office later that week, he sounded and acted very much like other politicians:

A stream of supplicants files through Edhary`s little office, asking for advice, money and letters. One lives in an IDP [internally displaced people] camp and has no roof. Can the organization help? Edhary says, "I don`t have enough people to go investigate your claim. But if you can find a religious sheik in your area to write a letter on your behalf, then come back." A young doctor explains that a group of medical workers has some money and wants to open a free or low-cost pharmacy to serve the people. Can the office contribute some money? The sheik leans close and plays with his string of black prayer beads as the young man talks. Finally, he tells the doctor that Hussein, our hacker pal [and Parenti`s interpreter], can help the clinic with its computers. Hussein and the doctor exchange numbers.

There are several interesting elements to this situation that help us to understand ways in which guerrilla war is essentially connected to a larger political structure:
# Most visible is the fact that Edhary is the accepted political authority. While such petitions could, in principle, be carried to the US-appointed interim administration, in practice virtually all local residents look only to the Sadrists.
# Almost as visible is Edhary`s extreme resource poverty. He is unable to help a clearly worthy medical cause, except to provide donated computer advice. This is a symptom both of the poverty of Sadr City and of the fact that the guerrilla government has no sure means of accumulating resources. (We should note, however, that they have by-and-large refused to extort funds from the community through the coercive power of the Mehdi - a mistake some Mehdi soldiers made in Najaf.)
# Somewhat less visible is the rest of the governing structure. Edhary refers the IDP resident to his local cleric, who must validate the claim before he passes on it. This could easily be a temporizing action (like so many other public officials), but it also reveals the existence of an elaborate tribal and clerical structure that is the skeleton of the dual government.

Though the resources are meager and Edhary`s presence is made episodic by his "wanted, dead or alive" status, the dual government is nevertheless visible and accessible to the local community. As long as his decisions are even-handed; as long as his authority is buttressed by both the Mehdi army and by respected community leaders, and as long as he can avoid the clutches of the Americans, Sheik Edhary will probably retain legitimacy among his constituents - a legitimacy that is aggressively withheld from the US and its appointed interim administration.

Law and order in Sadr City
Sheik Edhary is one element in a much larger system of administration headed by the Tribal Council, a legislative body made up of 28 members. The council issued its most dramatic edict in June last year in response to a year of problematic public order after the fall of Saddam. (Though order was largely restored in the fall of 2003 after the Mehdi army was formed, it became much worse when the US forces began their campaign to eliminate the Mehdi).

The new edict, circulated by leaflet throughout Sadr City, sought to reverse this trend with a comprehensive ban on a daunting range of anti-social activities, all of them enforced by the Mehdi army and all of them punishable by death. (NY Times, July 16, 2004) Among the offenses were:
# Street crime, notably hijacking (a favorite of street criminals who resell stolen vehicles and/or the contents of stolen trucks), kidnapping (a lucrative and widespread criminal activity targeted at prosperous citizens, who pay as much as $50,000 to redeem family members), and robbery (both from commercial sites and from individual homes). Street crime is, by all measures, what most Iraqis consider to be the worst problem of post-Saddam Iraq.
# Political crimes, including both collaboration with the US government and terrorist activities. The leaflet specifically mentioned members of al-Qaeda, as well as locally bred Wahhabis and Saddam loyalists. (This should not be construed as purely anti-Sunni; the Sadrists vocally and physically supported the Sunni guerrillas in Fallujah and elsewhere.)
# Moral crimes, including prostitution, pimping, pornography, gambling and alcohol sales. These crimes reflect the deep streak of Islamist fundamentalism that forms a core part of the Sadrist movement. There are several noteworthy elements to this policy.

First, the list was circulated so broadly that even the American mass media took notice of it. The broad circulation reflects confidence among Sadrist leadership that the campaign would find favor with local residents.

Second, the list of crimes, particularly the moral crimes like selling liquor, was more than a little offensive to Western sensibilities. We will address this issue at length below, but in this context we need to point out that extreme hostility toward these moral crimes is organic to the Sadr City community, and not something imposed from the outside. While many Iraqis are secular and oppose such laws, the Sadr City community is dominated by tribal leaders, clerics and citizens whose fundamentalist version of Islam supports such bans (even if some or most of them find the punishment excessive - see below). For most Sadr City residents, therefore, the morality expressed in this leaflet was very resonant; and it did not generate the revulsion experienced by most Western observers.

Third, capital punishment for thievery is excessive at least, while it is unimaginably brutal for gambling or selling liquor. The Sadrists themselves preferred to use much less drastic (but often extremely brutal) means of enforcing their new legal system; but as long as the Americans controlled the larger political context, they had no way to detain prisoners or punish them with normal judicial sanctions. Their ability to threaten perpetrators therefore depended on punishment that could be enforced without courts and jails. Most such punishments are morally troubling. (More on this below.)

Fourth, for most residents of Sadr City the moral crimes were secondary to the promise that the Mehdi army would act decisively against the most pervasive problem faced by virtually everyone in Iraq: street crime. In a survey conducted (ironically by the American interim government) at about the same time, an overwhelming proportion of Baghdad residents had listed personal safety as the most important problem they faced. Street crime (like robbery, hijacking and kidnapping) was by far the most important, IEDs (street bombs designed to destroy American Humvees and tanks, but which all too frequently also injured or killed civilians) were a distant second; and the American troops themselves (whose reckless shooting whenever they chased guerrillas accounting for a substantial proportion of civilian injuries) were a close third. (The devastating use of gunships and bombers had not yet begun when this survey was completed.) Mehdi`s army was proposing to eliminate all three: by arresting and/or executing street criminals, by driving out al-Qaeda and other terrorists who were responsible for the IEDs in heavily populated areas, and by keeping the American forces out of the community.

The Sadrists and street crime
In the next few days, the Mehdi army proudly advertised the results of its enforcement campaign, including the arrest of an organized ring of thieves who had been stealing from a food warehouse that services the local community. Rather than execute these thieves, they delivered them to the Iraqi police, an option made available by their quasi-symbiotic relations with formal law enforcement. (NY Times, July 17, 2004)

The complexity of the Mehdi policing function is illustrated by Sheik Edhary`s handling of a crisis that occurred while Michael Parenti was observing his office hours:

Some sweaty Mehdi men rush in. They`ve just busted looters with four stolen trucks full of sugar. It turns out the trucks belong to a European [non-governmental organization] NGO, not the government or some rich company. The sheik wants the vehicles and sugar returned, via the police, to the NGO. "We have the trucks in storage. Can we turn them over tomorrow?" asks the rotund Mehdi man in charge of the bust. He`s wearing a dirty football jersey. "I am your servant. I have given my whole life to the religion, but I really cannot do this tonight." Edhary leans away from the men at his desk and snaps taut a section of his black prayer beads, then counts the little glass balls. He is "asking God" for advice. An even bead count means yes; odd means no. "`No! No! Absolutely not," the sheik bounces up from the desk, his outer black robe slipping from one shoulder. He`s addressing the sweaty man. "The trucks must be returned tonight. If the trucks do not move now we will be blamed. Either you do it now, or just go and don`t do it at all. I will find someone else." The sheik is electric with stress but dignified. "I am your servant, as you wish," says the Mehdi guy, but he looks pissed as he and his posse sweep out to deal with the trucks.

Much is revealed here:
# This scene underscores civilian control over Mehdi`s army. It disconfirms the image of the Mehdi as undisciplined fanatics dictating to a cowed civilian population. Instead, the Mehdi soldiers meekly follow the orders of a religious/civil authority, much like normal urban government operations.
# Edhary`s decision demonstrates that the guerrilla government operates within a logical legal framework. If the owner of the trucks had been the government, or the United States, or "some rich company" (read, "non-Iraqi corporation"), then the truck and its contents could be confiscated and utilized by the guerrilla government. Since the truck belonged to an NGO, it had to be returned. The apparent illogic is unraveled if we reference this fact of war: the Iraqi administration, the US occupation and the multinationals are all part of the occupying force and therefore are the enemy. Since time immemorial, warring countries have confiscated the goods of their enemy, even when they were first illegally taken by pirates or thieves.
# Edhary`s insistence on the immediate return of the trucks reveals his concern about public opinion. Any delay might result in community residents thinking that the guerrillas themselves were involved in the theft. That is, Edhary is determined to convince his constituency that the local authority follows both a larger morality and its own laws.
# Edhary`s consultation with God is more than symbolic; it represents the marriage of religion and government. The dual government that the Sadrists are erecting is embedded in Shi`ite Islam, and the functionaries work simultaneously as clerics and government officials. This integration is a source of major complaint by secular Iraqis, and a key point of condemnation by the occupation.

When the Americans could not control the looting after the fall of the Saddam government, the Mehdi soldiers were established by local clerics as alternate law enforcement (Miami Herald, April 13, 2004). The uprising in April, 2004 transformed them into an insurrectionary Shi`ite army, but they have retained both their police function and their subservience to civilian authority. By Spring of 2004 their police credentials were so entrenched that the Mehdis often patrolled their neighborhoods or directed traffic without firearms. (Washington Post, July 9, 2004)

The Sadrists and the local police
The local insurrectionary leadership cooperate with the police around issues of mutual interest (like street crime and traffic control), but unrelentingly attack the police when they participate in American attempts to enter the community or attack the guerrillas. We have already seen that during the summer of 2004, the police left criminal enforcement in Sadr City to the Mehdis; and that the Sadrists delivered arrested criminals to the police rather than execute them. This was the carrot of cooperation.

And we have also seen the stick of violent confrontation. In the aborted attempt to apprehend the suspected arms dealer, the Iraqi police drove right past the house in order to avoid the inevitable battle that would ensue if they attempted to complete the operation. In other circumstances, when they did not or could not avoid American sponsored operations, the Mehdis fought them as ferociously as they fought the Americans (Scott Wilson, Washington Post, May 7, 2004). In one incident, the Sadrists co-existed peacefully with an Iraqi police station until the Americans used it as a launching place for an incursion into the community. The next day, the station was attacked and burned to the ground.

American media have repeatedly reported the unwillingness of Iraqi military forces to fight the guerrillas. In one instance, an attempt to ambush guerrillas setting bombs was canceled because "Iraqi troops refused to participate". The American commander concluded, "They don`t want to work." But the same troops worked hard on other assignments (Washington Post, July 9, 2004). The problem is not cowardice, but an unwillingness to engage the guerrillas. In a rare moment of public candor, Iraqi Major Mehdi Aziz told New York Times reporter Ian Fisher "We are not going to fight our people." Or, as reporter Anne Barnard wrote in the International Herald Tribune (September 6, 2004):

Police officers such as Razak Abdelkarim, 20, say that their friends and neighbors are members of the Mehdi army and that the police cannot function without their consent. "We are in the middle," he said. "If we join the Mehdi army, the Americans will kill us, and if we go and work with the Americans, the Mehdi army will kill us."

The problem of police refusing to fight guerrillas became so pervasive that it gave rise to what might be an apocryphal story of premier Allawi, reported by Paul McGeough of the Sydney Morning Herald. McGeough talked to three eyewitnesses about Allawi`s alleged execution of seven suspected insurgents. According to one of the eyewitnesses:

The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them. Re-enacting the killings, one witness stood three to four meters in front of a wall and swung his outstretched arm in an even arc, left to right, jerking his wrist to mimic the recoil as each bullet was fired. Then he raised a hand to his brow, saying: "He was very close. Each was shot in the head."

Whether or not this incident actually occurred, it is the rationale for the action that is most important. One of the witnesses, defending the act, stated:

Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and soldiers not to be scared if they kill anyone - especially, they are not to worry about tribal revenge. He said there would be an order from him and the Interior Ministry that all would be fully protected.

This incident (or the myth of this incident) is persuasive testimony to the power of the guerrilla movement, not just in Sadr City, but in all the regions where the resistance has taken hold. The Iraqi police are reluctant, resistant and even mutinous when asked to fight locally-based guerrillas because they themselves are members of the communities that nurture, protect and applaud the guerrillas.

The Sadrists and moral crimes
Because the Interim government is secular and because the Americans frown on both the content and harshness of Islamist morality, the Mehdis cannot deliver moral violators over to the Iraqi police. As a consequence, their ad hoc enforcement of these rules tends toward vigilantism.

This is illustrated by a July, 2004, edict that all stores in the Kadhimiya district stop selling liquor within 48 hours, adding that "alcohol, songs and prostitutes" were no longer permitted in what would henceforth be a "sacred" zone (Washington Post, July 20, 2004). This enforcement philosophy was explained by Malek Suwadi al-Mohamadawi, a tribal sheik who helped draft the original proclamation outlawing liquor sales: "If they admit they are doing something wrong and say they will give it up, this will be fine. But if they don`t stop, they should face these punishments." (NY Times July 16, 2004)

In the next few days, many stores eliminated liquor from their offerings, while some of those who refused were firebombed. At least one store owner died in these attacks. The most spectacular attack, described by NY Times reporter Ian Fisher, took place after the earlier warnings and attacks had failed to close a key distributor:

Luckily it was mostly beer - 6,000 cans of it - that was shot up Sunday. But the liquor distributor in Baghdad was hit with a full-scale assault: several cars and a minivan full of masked men with guns and grenades sprayed the building with hundreds of rounds. Fifty workers and customers huddled for safety on a second floor as it was raked with bullets. "It was a miracle of God that we survived this," said one of the liquor distributor`s managers. He would not give his name. "Do you want me to have my head cut off?" he asked. The manager was afraid because this seemed more serious than just an attack on a liquor dealer, a fairly common crime with the rise of religion in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was removed from power last year. The police said that the liquor store raid on Sunday was a well-planned attack by the Mehdi army.

In an even more spectacular incident, the Sadrists demolished a village known for sexual libertinism (Financial Times, April 1, 2004):

A Shi`ite militia group loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Sadr has wiped out a large village in central Iraq which refused to adhere to its puritanical creed, killing many of its inhabitants and forcing the rest to flee. Hundreds of militiamen from the Mehdi`s army group besieged the town of Kawali, 10 km south of the city of Diwaniya, with mortars, and smashed walls with sledgehammers three weeks ago, reducing to rubble the entire village famed for its dancers and prostitutes since the 1920s.

The Sadrists made no attempt to deny their role in this demolition. Sayid Yahya Shubari, the commander of the Mehdi`s army in Diwaniya, told Financial Times reporter Nicolas Pelham:

The Mehdi`s attacked after receiving reports that pimps had kidnapped a 12-year-old girl. "It was a well of debauchery, drunkenness and mafia, and they were buying and selling girls," he said. He said Kawali was flattened after the villagers shot an emissary he had sent to negotiate with them.

And once again, this was not just an ex-cathedra activity by a self-appointed vigilante force. FT reporter Pelham found considerable support for the destruction of Kawali among the local population:

In Diwaniya, a town where women are all but absent on the streets, many younger residents and some policemen praised the Mehdi army`s methods as salvaging their town`s reputation. "People would come from all over the south, and even Baghdad to dance with the Kawali girls," said Bassam al-Najafi, a Diwaniya restaurateur. "Women were leaving their husbands to work there. They are cleansing the town."

The Sadrists have a great deal of energy for eliminating moral crimes, and they are willing to impose severe penalties on those who resist them. Even taking into account their guerrilla status, which deprives them of the routine methods of law enforcement that might make the penalties less harsh but more certain, the zeal and determination that animate these moral crusades presage a strict Islamist civil society if they consolidate their leadership in the Shi`ite regions of Iraq.

This combination of questionable morality and murderous vigilantism is abhorrent to liberal Western sensibilities. But it is also apparent is that the social base for these policies is very broad. As the above account indicates, Diwaniya - even without Sadrist leadership - is a town were "women are all but absent on the streets" and Sadr City has long been known for the fundamentalism of its population. The campaigns to align local law enforcement with Islamist fundamentalism springs from a deep well of moral conviction in the community; it is not an imposition by a small, morally righteous, minority. The question of religious tolerance in Sadr City and other fundamentalist areas, therefore, represents one of the enduring dilemmas of popular sovereignty in Iraq. The Sadrists and numerous Sunni Muslim tendencies have repeatedly indicated their willingness to impose their morality on the non-believers in their communities and in the country as a whole (though they have at times enunciated a more tolerant approach to their secular neighbors). This issue in Iraq is not fundamentally different from the same issue in the United States, where evangelical Christians seek to embed their morality into the criminal code.

Journalist Naomi Klein, writing in The Nation, summarized the political dilemma for Western liberals thusly:

There is no question that Iraqis face a mounting threat from religious fanaticism, but US forces won`t protect Iraqi women and minorities from it any more than they have protected Iraqis from being tortured in Abu Ghraib or bombed in Fallujah and Sadr City. Liberation will never be a trickle-down effect of this invasion because domination, not liberation, was always its goal. Even under the best scenario, the current choice in Iraq is not between Sadr`s dangerous fundamentalism and a secular democratic government made up of trade unionists and feminists. It`s between open elections - which risk handing power to fundamentalists but would also allow secular and moderate religious forces to organize - and rigged elections designed to leave the country in the hands of Iyad Allawi and the rest of his CIA/Mukhabarat-trained thugs, fully dependent on Washington for both money and might. This is why Sadr is being hunted - not because he is a threat to women`s rights but because he is the single greatest threat to US military and economic control of Iraq.

The Sadrists and the terrorists
The Sadrists - and to a lesser extent, the Sunni leadership in Fallujah - have attempted to dissociate themselves from resistance fighters who utilize kidnapping, suicide bombers and other tactics designed to attack the civilian base of the occupation. Though the official edict quoted above listed al-Qaeda, Wahhabis and Saddamists as criminals subject to the death penalty, other pronouncements indicate that the denunciation extends to all "terrorists", both foreign and domestic. The Sadrist opposition to terrorism rests on much more than philosophical grounds; they view the terrorists as killing innocent civilians with bombings that fail to drive the Americans out, while giving the US military an excuse to remain in Iraq. Their general attitude was expressed by Aws Khafaji, a Sadrist cleric, after a day of coordinated terrorist attacks in June (Washington Post, June 25, 2004):

We condemn and denounce yesterday`s bombings and attacks on police centers and innocent Iraqis, which claimed about 100 lives. These are attacks launched by suspects and lunatics who are bent on destabilizing the country and ruining the peace so that the Iraqi people will remain in need of American protection.

A few days later, Muqtada al-Sadr spoke out against beheading: "We denounce those who decapitate prisoners. Islamic law does not permit them to do this, and anyone who does can be counted a criminal and be punished if seized." (NY Times, July 24) A few days later, he condemned the bombing of Christian Churches, (NY Times, August 3). Later that fall, the Sadrists freed 15 Iraqi national guards who were being held in exchange for an arrested Sadrist cleric, declaring "Kidnapping is not our style, let alone killing. The time has not yet come for us to follow this method." (GlobalSecurity.org, September 25, 2004)

Moreover, the Sadrists widely circulated a leaflet declaring their willingness to work with the police in protecting the country`s infrastructure from terrorist bombings (Washington Post, June 25, 2004):

The Mehdi army is ready to cooperate actively and positively with honest elements from among the Iraqi police and other patriotic forces, to partake in safeguarding government buildings and facilities, such as hospitals, electricity plants, water, fuel and oil refineries, and any other site that might be a target for terrorist attacks.

They even aligned themselves with the interim administration for this endeavor. Sayeed Rahim al-Alaq, deputy head of the committee that drafted the list of offenses described above, told New York Times reporter Fisher: "We are with the government. We are anti-terrorists." (July 16, 2004)

The importance of this clear denunciation of the terrorists was nicely expressed by independent reporter Rahul Mahajan (DemocracyNow.org June 28, 2004):

I think that what has happened with the resistance in the last few days is really a dramatic, important and positive development. Last week, as you know, there was a single day of violence on which over 100 people were killed. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi`s jihad claimed responsibility for it ... Across the country, anti-occupation figures - militant Sunni clerics, Muqtada al-Sadr`s organization, even a representative of mujahideen in Fallujah - all made open, public statements denouncing his acts and distinguishing between terrorism committed by foreigners - much of which is directed at Iraqis - and what they call legitimate resistance. It marks the emergence of the resistance as a political force ...

In Sadr City, the on-the-ground policies vis-a-vis the terrorists have yet to be definitively developed. In the absence of clear policies, the terrorists represent an ongoing threat to the viability of the resistance, since their indiscriminate attacks antagonize Iraqi citizens while providing the principle rationale for the presence of occupation troops.

Liberated areas and the question of `law and order`
Despite important differences in religious beliefs, the proto-government in Sadr City is similar to the proto-governments that developed in Fallujah and other Sunni cites after the first battle of Fallujah in April 2004. (For a detailed portrait of the Fallujah government before the November reconquest by the Americans, see the extraordinary series of articles by Nir Rosen in Asia Times Online, July 15-24, 2004 - Inside the Iraqi resistance). The summer of 2004 saw an increasing number of liberated cities, with the American troops on the outskirts, unsuccessfully trying to reconquer them, leading to Tom Engelhardt`s elegant portrait of the new Iraqi reality (TomDispatch, July 25, 2003):

Think of Sunni Iraq - and possibly parts of Shi`ite Iraq as well - as a "nation" of city-state fiefdoms, each threatening to blink off [the US] map of "sovereignty", despite our 140,000 troops and our huge bases in the country.

He quoted independent reporter Robert Dreyfuss to the effect that this process is already very far along (TomPaine.com July, 22, 2004):

Cities all over Iraq are totally outside the control of either the US forces or the government of Iraq. Not only Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra, but other population centers in central Iraq are virtually self-contained city-states. The Kurds run their little enclave all by themselves. Parts of Baghdad are no-go zones for Americans. And in the south, fascist Shi`ite militia and armed gangs controlled by Iranian-backed mullahs and the likes of Ayatollah [Ali al-]Sistani run things without any help from Baghdad.

In attacking first Najaf, then Tal Afar and Samarra, and finally tackling the center of the Sunni resistance in Fallujah, the US was seeking to reverse this process. But these attacks were not designed to restore order; they were, instead, intended to prevent the consolidation of a very orderly anti-American status quo in a constantly expanding set of "liberated" areas.

Ironically, the American attacks in the fall of 2004 underscore the larger contradictions in American policy in Iraq: that the chaos American leaders keep saying they are preventing will, in fact, occur only if US military forces succeed in destroying these nascent city-states.

To see this we need only begin by recalling the description above of the Sadrist regime in Baghdad. While there is ample room for concern that the consolidation of Mehdi power might result in the forcible imposition of fundamentalist orthodoxy, there appears to be little chance that law and order would disintegrate. Without underestimating the thuggish tendencies among the Mehdi and granting that there is currently far too much street crime in Sadr City, the Sadrists are the only effective governing force in the Baghdad Shi`ite community. The removal of US troops would allow Sadrist civilian authority to operate openly and thus consolidate their daily supervision of the militia. This would enhance their ability to control the excesses of the militia and systematically reduce street crime, and would almost certainly result in an orderly (perhaps too orderly) daily existence in the areas they control.

The same prognosis could have been made with even more assurance, in Fallujah and the several other Sunni cities that were off limits to the Americans during the summer of 2004. That is, before the US upset this guerrilla-imposed order with invasions followed by ongoing battles with the resistance. In the early winter of 2004, therefore, the choice in the Sunni areas appeared to be between peacefully run cities controlled by the resistance, or chaotic, constantly disrupted cities in which large numbers of American troops prevented the guerrillas from exercising control.

In the meantime, the Kurdish provinces had a peaceful existence based on a much more fully developed form of local control, resting largely on their own militia, the peshmerga, and the two political formations that control them. The absence of an American military presence in the Kurdish region has not been a problem; on the contrary, this absence is another reassurance that the other areas could and would be quite stable if only the Americans were not disrupting their efforts.

In the Shi`ite areas of the country, the US maintains a form of technical control, but most troops are stationed outside the cites and do not pacify or disrupt daily lives. There is no evidence to suggest that the American presence has reduced violence or prevented chaos. In fact, accepted wisdom has been that American entry into the cities would be a disruptive, not a pacifying, force.

Local law and order would not collapse if the US left. Quite the contrary - US withdrawal would remove the key force currently preventing law and order in local communities. Another form of chaos, less frequently invoked, is civil war, triggered by long-standing friction among the key groupings in Iraqi society. Such issues as the disputes over hegemony in Kirkuk, the degree of autonomy to be granted to the Kurdish provinces; and the Sunni and Kurdish fears that Shi`ite dominance would lead to tyranny of the majority are all real points of division that require attention whenever Iraq becomes a sovereign state.

The American presence, however, can do no more than postpone resolution of these frictions. And, while there is no predicting the course of the negotiations, there is some reason to be optimistic. The key factor is the Shi`ites, since they are the overwhelming majority, and Sistani seems to be able to lead the Shi`ites toward compromise on these issues. Ironically, the greatest barrier to Sistani`s leadership (besides the occupation) is the soaring popularity of Muqtada, which rests on his militant resistance to the US. Though the Sadrists have consistently endorsed cooperation with Sunnis and Kurds, they appear to be more volatile and less committed to this stance than Sistani. The longer the US remains, therefore, the more the ongoing guerrilla war strengthens the position of the Sadrists and weakens the leadership of Sistani. As a consequence, the continuing US presence may be undermining the chances of a peaceful resolution on the key divisive issues in Iraqi society.

The final irony is that US success against the guerrillas would almost certainly guarantee long-term chaos in Iraqi society. The evacuation and destruction of Fallujah certainly suggests this, but the chaos there is so monumental that it is probably not typical. The situations in Samarra - successfully reconquered by the US just before Fallujah - and Mosul - the main battleground after Fallujah - are more representative. In each city, the fall and early winter of 2004 were marked by the ongoing guerrilla war, the constant disruption of city life, an absence of any orderly law enforcement, and degenerating economic and social conditions.

The US effort to destroy the insurgency can only succeed if it also destroys the ability of Iraqis to govern their own communities. Since the local clerics and tribal leaders have - from the very beginning - been instrumental in the resistance, defeating the guerrillas involves detaining or killing the leaders who form the backbone of local civil society. This became apparent in the fall of 2004, before the demolition of Fallujah, when the US failed to convince "moderates" in key cities to negotiate truce agreements that delivered militant leaders to the Americans for arrest and punishment. The failure of these negotiations left the US with the choice of conceding rule to the insurgents or attempting to reconquer the cities and removing the local leadership. In Fallujah, the US military leadership decided that they could only accomplish this by demolishing much of the city and converting the vast majority of residents into refugees.

Contrary to the almost universally accepted mantra, the US is not preventing chaos in Iraq, it is creating it.

So far, Sadr City has escaped the frontal assaults visited upon Tal Afar, Samarra, Mosul and Fallujah. In some sense, the failure of the American military to complete the pacification of these cities may be Sadr City`s main protection, since the US troops have been stretched thin by the ongoing fighting there. Sadr City`s status as the center of Shi`ite insurgency is another protection, since a full-scale attack there could well trigger insurrections throughout the currently quiescent Shi`ite areas of Iraq. As this article is written, the US has honored a semi-official truce that keeps American troops out of the guerrilla-held area, and therefore allows for the Sadrist government to continue its rule of the nascent city-state. As long as this lasts, there will be "law and order" in Sadr City, even if the law is anti-American and the order is fundamentalist Islam.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on TomDispatch, Z Net and Asia Times Online, and in Z Magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is [e-mail]@optonline.net.

(Copyright Michael Schwartz, 2005)

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Dahr Jamail`s Iraq Dispatches

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000165.…

January 11, 2005
“This is not a life.”

Already today at least 18 Iraqis have died as violence continues to escalate as the so-called elections approach.

Suicide car bombers are striking Iraqi Police (IP) stations on nearly a daily basis now.

Today’s target was in Tikrit, where U.S. military spokesman Major Neal O`Brien said six were killed when the police headquarters was bombed.

He also said, “As the Iraqi police continue to get stronger, and continue to pose a threat to the insurgents and terrorists, they will be targeted.”

Most Iraqis I’ve spoken with appear to disagree with Mr. O’Brien.

“The Iraqi Police are puppets of the Americans,” says Abdulla Khassim, an Iraqi man selling vegetables in central Baghdad, “Who can respect them when they are so ashamed themselves many of them wear masks to hide their faces.”

Of course the IP’s who wear the face masks do so for their own security, and that of their families. As anyone seen as a collaborator with the occupiers is immediately subject to attacks by the resistance, as are their families. Many of the Iraqi National Guard, which has now been folded into the Iraqi Army, wear black face masks as well for the same reason.

“Nobody respects them because they obviously cannot provide the security,” Abu Talat tells me as we drive past a truck with two IP’s in it in front of a closed gas station today.

During my last trip I interviewed several IP’s who complained of lack of weapons, radios and vehicles from the occupation forces. Their complaints were centered on the fact that the resistance had better weapons than the police.

Later in my room we watched a press conference on the television with the so-called interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. A journalist asked him if it was true that the cell phone service would be cut on the 15th of this month because of the upcoming “elections.”

He dodged the question…deferring it to the ministry of defense. The same ministry of defense who yesterday announced that the Iraqi Army was 50,000 troops and hoped that it would be increased to 70,000. Just today Allawi announced that it was comprised of 100,000 troops.

Of course the gas crisis continues to worsen. Most of the stations in Baghdad are closed.
Rather than cars filling their tanks, strands of razor wire and empty fuel tanker trucks sit in many of them.

Ugly reminders of the lack of reconstruction about in Baghdad, like this building that was destroyed during the invasion.

Iraqis are reminded daily of the 70% unemployment with the gas shortage driving the costs of everything through the roof. Even petrol is 1000 Iraq Dinars (ID) per liter on the black market, which unless you are willing to endure 12-24 hours waiting in a line, is the only way to get your tank filled.

When I was in Iraq one month ago it was 300 ID per liter. Imagine what you would do if in your country you had 70% unemployment, were without a job, and the cost of fuel rose 333% in one month, thus driving the costs of everything from food to heating oil up?

Speaking of the gas crisis, this morning a pipeline between Kirkuk and the Beji refinery was exploded, and several lines southwest of Kirkuk were also destroyed.

In central Samarra today a car bomb detonated as a US convoy was passing, but no word from the military on casualties, which means there probably were some. A second bomb detonated shortly thereafter, killing at least one Iraqi soldier and a civilian.

Also, a roadside bomb intended for a US convoy near Yusufiyah missed and struck a mini-bus, killing 8 Iraqis and wounding three others. For unknown reasons the mini-bus was then attacked by gunmen, who kidnapped three Iraqis.

Keep in mind that Yusufiyah, just south of Baghdad and in the “triangle of death” was recently the scene of large scale US/UK military operations to rid the area of resistance fighters. Looks like those operations were about as successful as Fallujah, were fighting also continues on a near daily basis.

Driving through Baghdad today, en route to an interview, we are once again spending most of the time sitting in traffic. At most intersections, women and children begging for dinars walk between cars with their hands out…pleading.

Abu Talat fumbles in his pocket for some dinars while an old man pleading for God to help him stands at the car window.

Holding a cane, he is blessing Abu Talat repeatedly for his kindness as he is handed some money.

“Look at what has become of Baghdad Dahr,” he tells me as the traffic finally begins to inch forward again, “All of us are suffering now. This is not a life.”

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 11, 2005 04:37 PM

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Da scheinbar die Verbindungen und Abläufe in der USA-Irak Verbindung in den 80ern nicht allgemein bekannt sind, hier noch einmal die Timetable mit den nötigen Links.
Teilweise wurden Waffenlieferungen der USA an den Irak auf indirekten Wegen abgewickelt.
Die USA gibt dem Irak eine Kredit über 1 Mrd, dafür kann er dann aus einem Drittland Waffen kaufen.
So tauchen dies Waffen als nicht von den USA geliefert auf.

Sehr wichtig für die Cia war The Bank for Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) - known as the "Bank for Crooks and Criminals International"
Sie war auch eine der Banken, die Drogen in großen Umfang gewaschen haben. Der Name der Familie Bush taucht im Zusammenhang mit dieser Bank öfter auf.
Dazu gab es auch einen US-Senatsuntersuchungsausschuß, in dem auch Kerry saß.
Die Bank ist mit 10 Mrd Schulden Pleite gegangen.
Die Namen derjenigen, die mit der Bank Verbindungen hatten lesen sich wie ein who is who der US-Politik.

US Knowledge of Iraq Chemical Warfare in 1980s.
Project: History of US Interventions
Open-Content project managed by Michael Bevin, Derek Mitchell
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=us_…

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 11. Januar 2005, 19:48
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,336397,00.html

US-Heimatschutzminister Chertoff

Lächelndes Fallbeil

Von Marc Pitzke, New York

Der designierte US-Heimatschutzminister Michael Chertoff macht einen zurückhaltenden, geradezu sanftmütigen Eindruck. Er redet leise, fast tonlos und ist doch einer der schärfsten Terroristenjäger Amerikas. Mit Chertoff holt Präsident Bush einen weiteren langjährigen Gefolgsmann in sein Kabinett.

New York - Michael Chertoff ist ein sanfter, freundlicher Mensch. Scheu und heiser, von hagerer, ausgemergelter Gestalt, macht er den Eindruck eines müden Asketen. Wenn er spricht, spricht er farblos und bescheiden und selten über sich selbst. Lieber lobt er andere, zum Beispiel "die Männer und Frauen, die die Front im Krieg gegen den Terror bilden". Oder seinen alten und neuen Boss, den Präsidenten.

Doch mit dem Herrn ist nicht zu spaßen. Als Staatsanwalt jagte Chertoff den Bürgermeister von Jersey City, Gerald McCann, wegen Steuerhinterziehung aus dem Amt. Er brachte nicht nur Top-Mafiosi wie Anthony ("Fat Tony") Salerno hinter Gitter, sondern auch Sol Wachtler, den höchsten Richter des Staates New York, der seine Freundin misshandelt hatte. Und als Parteijurist war er einst im Whitewater-Skandal der eifrigste Jäger der Republikaner gegen Bill und Hillary Clinton.

Selbstverständlich ist Chertoff ein überzeugter Befürworter der Todesstrafe. Freundlich im Ton, eisenhart in der Sache. Ein lächelndes Fallbeil.


Ein Typ ganz nach dem Geschmack von George W. Bush also. Chertoff sei "ein praktischer Organisator, kundiger Manager und brillianter Denker", sagt der US-Präsident über den Mann, der sein neuer Heimatschutzminister werden soll. Vor allem aber ist Chertoff, wie alle Mitglieder des nunmehr kompletten, neuen Kabinetts, ein verlässlicher Gefolgsmann Bushs.

Keine Angst vor Mafiosi und Wirtschaftsbetrügern

"Michael Who?", war die Reaktion vieler Amerikaner auf Chertoffs überraschende Nominierung. Der 51-Jährige stand auf keiner der Wunsch- und Kandidatenlisten, die in Washington für den letzten noch offenen Kabinettsposten kursierten, viele kannten ihn bisher nicht mal. Dabei ist Chertoff hinter den Kulissen seit Jahren einer der einflussreichsten Juristen der USA. Ob er allerdings das Zeug zum politischen Verwaltungsgenie hat, dass die rostige Terror-Abwehr-Maschine namens Heimatschutz-Ministeriums mit seinen 180.000 Angestellten flott machen kann?

Der Harvard-Absolvent aus New Jersey hat sich beharrlich hochgearbeitet in die Etagen der Macht. Er lernte sein Handwerk beim Bundesrichter William Brennan am Supreme Court und einem damaligen New Yorker Chefankläger namens Rudy Giuliani, der sein Protégé wurde. Als Staatsanwalt nahm Chertoff die organisierte Kriminalität aufs Korn, aber auch Lokalprominenz wie Eddie Antar ("Crazy Eddie"), einen schillernden Elektronikhändler mit windigen Geschäften, den er sieben Jahre hinter Schloss und Riegel brachte. "Er ist so hart wie ein Nagel", sagt sein einstiger Kollege John Fahy. Mitarbeiter fürchten sich vor ihm und nennen ihn "einschüchternd".

Nationalen Einfluss gewann Chertoff aber erst, als er den Republikanern bei der Whitewater-Hetzjagd auf die Clintons Munition beschaffte. Später schaltete er sich als leitender Ermittler in die schlagzeilenträchtigsten Wirtschaftsskandale der 90er Jahre ein: Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom. Als rechte Hand des scheidenden Justizministers John Ashcroft setzte er sich anschließend aggressiv an die Spitze der Terroristenjagd in den USA.

Aggressiver Chef-Jäger gegen den Terror

"Er hat eine makellose Reputation", lobt ihn der frühere Staatsanwalt Robert Mintz zwar. Doch nicht alle denken so. "Sein Verhalten in den Whitewater-Ermittlungen und seine derzeitige Rolle im Krieg gegen den Terror wirft Fragen nach seiner Parteilichkeit und seinem Glauben an die Bürgerrechte für alle auf", schrieb die Juristengruppe Alliance for Justice in einem kritischen Bericht, als Bush Chertoff 2003 an ein Bundesappellationsgericht berief.

Die Zeitung "USA Today" nannte Chertoff die "treibende Kraft hinter den kontroversesten Entscheidungen des Justizministeriums im Krieg gegen den Terror". Er sorgte dafür, dass der al-Qaida-Mann Zacarias Moussaoui lange in Einzelhaft blieb. Er verschaffte dem FBI erweiterte Lauschbefugnisse, ordnete nach 9/11 die Massenverhöre Tausender US-Moslems an und half dabei, die Militärtribunale von Gunatanamo Bay aufzubauen.

Chertoff leitete auch das Verfahren gegen den "amerikanischen Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Dort scherte er sich nach Angaben seiner damaligen Ministeriumskollegin Jesselyn Radack manchmal auch nicht ums Prozedere und ließ Lindh ohne Beisein eines Anwalts vom FBI verhören. Das derart herausgekitzelte Geständnis führte dazu, dass sich Lindgh ohne lästigen Prozess schuldig bekannte und nun wegen Unterstützung einer terroristischen Vereinigung für 20 Jahre im Gefängnis sitzt.

"Nicht sicherer als vor 9/11"

Im Heimatschutzministerium erwarten Chertoff nun jedoch Probleme ganz anderer Dimension. Das Riesenministerium, nach dem 11. September 2001 schnell aus 12 Einzelbehörden zusammengeschmolzen, ist seither von Bürokratie und Geldverschwendung geplagt. Und zwar so sehr, dass die USA, so der letzte Generalinspekteur des Ministeriums, Clark Kent Ervin, heute "nicht sicherer sind als vor 9/11".

Für Bush ist Chertoff seit Jahren auch politisch aktiv. Er hat für ihn Parteispenden gesammelt und Wahlkämpfe mitorganisiert. Chertoff findet auch bei den Demokraten Anerkennung. Gegen seinen Aufstieg an das Bundesgericht stimmte trotdzem nur eine Senatorin: Hillary Clinton.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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Die einzigen Lebewesen, die es si ch in den letzten Wochen haben gut gehen lassen, waren die Hunde in Falluja.

DER SPIEGEL 2/2005 - 10. Januar 2005
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,335993,00.html

Irak

Sieg des Terrors

Von Bernhard Zand

Noch halten Washington und Bagdad am Wahltermin Ende Januar fest. Doch Premier Alawi zeigt Nerven: Die Anschläge nehmen zu, der Ruf nach einem Aufschub wird lauter. Selbst einflussreiche Stammesführer kapitulieren inzwischen vor den Islamisten - rund um Bagdad tobt der offene Krieg.

Die Zahl löste Staunen aus, selbst unter Irakern. 200.000 Mann, so meldete Bagdads Geheimdienstchef, Mohammed Schahwani, vergangene Woche, zähle die irakische Terror- und Widerstandsfront. Etwa 40 000 von ihnen seien hauptberuflich als Bombenleger und Scharfschützen aktiv, 160.000 als Teilzeitguerillas und Sympathisanten, die der kämpfenden Truppe Unterschlupf gewähren und sie mit Logistik versorgen.

Eine mächtige Streitkraft steht den gut 150.000 US-Soldaten an Euphrat und Tigris gegenüber - 20 Divisionen stark, bis ins Mark motiviert und offenbar mühelos in der Lage, Nachschub zu rekrutieren.

Niemand im Pentagon hat General Schahwanis Zahlen dementiert, obwohl sie genau um das Zehnfache über Washingtons bisherige Schätzungen hinausgehen. Die Angaben aus Bagdad, sagt der US-Militärexperte Anthony Cordesman, seien realistisch. Sie belegten, was das Pentagon hartnäckig leugne - die "breite Unterstützung", die der Aufstand im Zentralirak inzwischen finde.

Man rechne mit einer Zunahme der Gewalt vor den Wahlen am 30. Januar, hatte Übergangspremier Ijad Alawi vor Wochen gewarnt. Doch was sich seither - überschattet von den Nachrichten aus Südasien - in Iraks Sunnitendreieck abspielt, hat Alawis Nerven und die Zuversicht seiner Regierung erschüttert. Kontinuierlich steigt die Zahl der Anschläge, über 200 Menschen starben in den letzten drei Wochen, allein 80 Polizisten im neuen Jahr. Dienstag voriger Woche traf es mit dem Gouverneur von Bagdad, Ali al-Heidari, wieder einen hohen Repräsentanten der Führung.

Immer gezielter und mit kaum vorstellbarer Kaltblütigkeit gehen Mordkommandos gegen Wahlhelfer vor; ohne auch nur ihre Gesichter zu verbergen, ließen sie sich Ende Dezember bei einer Hinrichtungsaktion auf offener Straße im Bagdader Haifa-Viertel filmen. Hunderte Mitarbeiter der Wahlkommission in Mossul und in der Provinz Anbar haben seither ihren Dienst quittiert. Alawi, der bei seinem letzten US-Besuch im September noch 15 von 18 Provinzen für "stabil und friedlich" erklärt hatte, spricht inzwischen illusionslos von "unserer Katastrophe", wenn es um Iraks Sicherheitslage geht; Donnerstag voriger Woche verlängerte er den Ausnahmezustand im Land bis Anfang Februar.

Bereits drei Tage zuvor hatte Alawi sich mit dem vom Weihnachtsurlaub ins Weiße Haus zurückgekehrten George W. Bush verbinden lassen. Es war ein Notruf. Zwar sei nur allgemein über "Hindernisse" im Vorfeld der Wahlen gesprochen worden, so Vertraute des US-Präsidenten, doch hätten sie den Eindruck, Alawi bereite sich innerlich auf eine Verschiebung des Urnengangs vor.

Andere in Bagdad haben sich längst offen dazu bekannt. Der Justiz- wie der Planungsminister treten ungeschminkt für einen Aufschub ein. Präsident Ghasi al-Jawir, bislang Washingtons Musterbeispiel eines zur Wahl entschlossenen Sunnitenführers, schob vorige Woche die Verantwortung den Vereinten Nationen zu: Den Januar-Termin zu halten sei eine "sehr bittere Herausforderung"; die Uno solle "prüfen, ob der Zeitpunkt möglich ist oder nicht".

Jawir handelte sich damit einen Anruf aus Washington ein. Wenig wurde über das Gespräch bekannt; Bush habe, so heißt es, seinem Amtskollegen gegenüber "nachdrücklich" auf der Forderung bestanden, die Wahlen Ende Januar abzuhalten.

Genau das sei auch die "offizielle Haltung" seiner Regierung, versicherte Iraks Außenminister Hoschjar Sebari. Doch sein Dementi verstärkte eher die Zweifel. Mehr und mehr Iraker fragen sich nun, wie denn die inoffizielle Haltung der Regierung aussehen mag.

In Bagdad sei die Debatte offensichtlich im Fluss, so ein hoher US-Regierungsbeamter, doch Präsident Bush bleibe unnachgiebig. Er habe Alawi darauf hingewiesen, dass dessen Regierung es bisher immer geschafft habe, alle verabredeten Termine einzuhalten - den eigenen Amtsantritt im Juni 2004 inklusive.

Sowohl Bush als auch Alawi stehen vor einem Dilemma: Iraks Premier, der als "Law and Order"-Mann auf Stimmen aus dem Sunnitendreieck angewiesen ist, sieht durch den wachsenden Terror seine Wahlchancen bedroht - doch er kann nicht offen für einen Aufschub eintreten, weil das nach eigenmächtiger Verlängerung seiner Amtszeit aussähe. Bush würde seinem Verbündeten vermutlich gern entgegenkommen - doch in der amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit käme die Verschiebung der Wahl einer Niederlage im Krieg gegen den Terror gleich.

Auch er sei für den Januar-Termin, so sekundierte der britische Premier Tony Blair, "weil es extrem wichtig ist, dass die Terroristen keinen Sieg erringen".

Die Einhaltung des Wahltermins sei zum Selbstzweck verkommen, beklagt Saad Dschabar, Führer der sunnitischen Umma-Partei - mit womöglich historischen Konsequenzen. Weil ein Drittel der irakischen Bevölkerung an der Januar-Wahl nicht teilnehmen werde, müsse man sich mit einem "fatalen Quotensystem" behelfen, das plage schon jetzt die Regierung und untergrabe ihre Legitimität. Man bekomme libanesische Verhältnisse, die den Keim des Bürgerkriegs in sich trügen.

Ob die Wahl nun verschoben werde oder nicht - der Terror finde auch andere Wege zum Sieg, gab Iraks ehemaliger Außenminister Adnan Patschatschi in einem Essay zu bedenken, der einem politischen Vermächtnis des 82-Jährigen gleichkommt: Die Lage habe sich "deutlich verschlechtert", viele Menschen seien entschlossen, am Wahltag keinen Fuß vor ihr Haus zu setzen. Nicht aus Protest, sondern weil sie um ihr Leben fürchteten. "Wer immer als Sieger aus einer so fehlerhaften Wahl hervorgeht, wird andere finden, die sich benachteiligt fühlen. Kaum ein Szenario wird uns tiefer ins Chaos stürzen als dieser höchst wahrscheinliche Ausgang."

"Wer bewusst an dieser Wahl teilnimmt, ist ein Ungläubiger", hatte Osama Bin Laden Ende Dezember in einer Tonbandansprache verkündet und den im Irak fast ungestört bombenden Jordanier Abu Musab al-Sarkawi zum "Fürsten der Glaubensgemeinde im Zweistromland" geadelt. Demokratie sei Götzendienst, und die Wahlbüros seien "Zentren des Atheismus", höhnen auf Flugblättern und Websites Sarkawis diverse Terrorverbände. "Sagt euren Söhnen Lebewohl", fordert vorab ein Aufruf an die Familien jener irakischen Polizisten, die Ende Januar die Wahllokale schützen sollen: "Unser Lohn für sie ist, dass wir sie schlachten werden."

Der Terror hat in der Tat längst gesiegt, bevor der erste Stimmzettel abgegeben ist. In den Städten herrscht Angst, und auf den Dörfern wissen viele Iraker kaum, wer oder was in drei Wochen überhaupt gewählt werden soll. Die Kommunikation im Lande ist weitgehend zusammengebrochen, das gerade erst aufgebaute Mobilfunknetz in Teilen des Zentralirak schon seit Tagen außer Betrieb.

Selbst Bus- und Taxiunternehmer, die von der Regierung zum Transport von Wahlhelfern und Wählern angeheuert worden sind, bekommen an den Tankstellen keinen Treibstoff mehr, die dauernden Anschläge auf die Öl- und Gas-Pipelines haben zu einer drastischen Energiekrise geführt. "Wir haben jeweils zwei Stunden Strom und dann wieder vier Stunden Kälte und Finsternis", so ein SPIEGEL-Mitarbeiter vorige Woche in Bagdad. "Es herrscht offener Krieg", gab Ölminister Thamer Ghadban zu, "ich sehe kein Ende dieser Krise."

Die lange Hand des Terrors reicht indes noch weiter: Die soziale Ordnung des ganzen Landes sei mittlerweile aus den Fugen, sagt ein ehemaliger Offizier aus Falludscha. Iraks Stammesführer, die Saddam teils freiwillig, teils unter Zwang halfen, seine Herrschaft aufrechtzuerhalten, müssen hilflos mit ansehen, wie die Islamisten ihre Autorität untergraben.

Offenbar hatten gemäßigte Politiker wie Premierminister Alawi gehofft, Teile des feudalen Netzwerks für den politischen Wiederaufbau nutzen zu können. Der Plan ist gescheitert. Die Scheichs im Sunnitendreieck, so der Ex-Offizier aus Falludscha, seien kaum mehr in der Lage, ihre Dörfer und Stadtviertel unter Kontrolle zu halten, geschweige denn ihre Stammesbrüder für eine bestimmte Wahlliste zu gewinnen.

Entsprechend fruchtlos sind deshalb auch Versuche der irakischen Nachbarstaaten geblieben, Einfluss auf den bevorstehenden Urnengang zu nehmen. Vor allem Jordanien, Ägypten und Saudi-Arabien - alles Länder, die von Sunniten regiert werden - fürchten einen überwältigenden Sieg der Schiiten im Irak und den damit verbundenen Machtzuwachs Irans. Jordaniens König Abdullah sorgt sich gar, die Wahl im Irak könne einen "schiitischen Halbmond" schaffen, der dann von den Mullahs in Iran bis zur militanten Hisbollah im Südlibanon reiche.

Seit Monaten drängen die Regierungen in Amman, Kairo und Riad die Sunnitenführer Iraks, an der Wahl teilzunehmen - einer offenen Wahl wohlgemerkt, die sie ihren eigenen Landsleuten bislang vorenthalten. Die Arabische Liga lud sogar Mahdi al-Sumaidai nach Kairo, den inzwischen festgenommenen Führer einer extremistischen Salafiten-Bewegung im Irak, die den Aufstand im Sunnitenland unterstützt.

Mittlerweile hat sich aber auch bei den Nachbarn Resignation breit gemacht. Iraks Verteidigungsminister Hasim Schaalan, der vergangene Woche in Kairo war, um noch

einmal an Ägypten zu appellieren, im Sinne Bagdads auf die Sunniten einzuwirken, brach seine Reise nach zwei Tagen ergebnislos ab. Selbst die Irakische Islamische Partei, die einzige größere Sunnitenbewegung, die überhaupt zur Wahl registriert war, hat sich inzwischen zurückgezogen.

Es bleibe wohl nichts übrig, als die Wahlen zu verschieben, räumte Schaalan ein. Wenn dies der einzige Weg sei, die Sunniten zu beteiligen, so müsse er gegangen werden. Obwohl sich Premier Alawi umgehend von Schaalan und den anderen Abweichlern in seiner Regierung distanzierte, halten Diplomaten in Bagdad den Wahltermin nach wie vor für offen.

Die Frage sei nur, ob alle Beteiligten einen Aufschub ohne Gesichtsverlust überstehen. Für Washington müsse es in jedem Fall so aussehen, als habe Bagdad die Entscheidung getroffen - Alawi etwa könne so tun, als beuge er sich einem Beschluss der provisorischen Nationalversammlung. Und die Schiiten, die am meisten zu verlieren haben, müssten die Garantie bekommen, dass die Sunniten sich in zwei oder drei Monaten wirklich zur Wahl stellen.

Nur ein Faktor fehlt in dem Planspiel: der Terror.

© DER SPIEGEL 2/2005

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January 12, 2005
EDITORIAL
Facing Facts About Iraq`s Election

When the United States was debating whether to invade Iraq, there was one outcome that everyone agreed had to be avoided at all costs: a civil war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that would create instability throughout the Middle East and give terrorists a new, ungoverned region that they could use as a base of operations. The coming elections - long touted as the beginning of a new, democratic Iraq - are looking more and more like the beginning of that worst-case scenario.

It`s time to talk about postponing the elections.

•

If Iraq is going to survive as a nation, it has to create a government in which the majority rules - in this case, that means the Shiites - but the minorities are guaranteed protection of their basic rights and enough of a voice to influence important decisions. The Kurds, non-Arab Sunnis who live in the northeastern part of the country, seem to believe that the elections will bring them what they most want: relative autonomy to conduct their own affairs as part of an Iraqi federation. But the Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of the population, have grown increasingly estranged. The largest mainstream Sunni party has withdrawn from the current interim government, and just about all of the country`s leading Sunni Arab politicians now call either for postponing the elections or boycotting them. Given the violence in Sunni areas, even voters who wish to take part may hesitate to turn out. In some places, the polls may not open at all.

A postponement - which would have to be for a fixed period of only two or three months - would not solve all the safety problems. But it would be a sign to the Sunni Arabs that their concerns were being taken into consideration. That in itself could go a long way toward reassuring them that the Shiite majority was not planning to trample on their rights. The interim government should convene an emergency meeting of top leaders from all major Iraqi communities to come up with a revised election timetable and procedures that would optimize the ability of minority groups to get proper representation. The Sunni leaders, in return, would have to promise to take part in the elections that followed.

Worrying about whether the Sunnis will be included in the government does not mean sympathizing with their baser resentments. Under Saddam Hussein, the Sunni minority reaped almost all of the good things Iraq had to offer while trampling on the rights of the Shiites and Kurds. Those days are over, and the Sunnis simply have to accept the fact that they will never again enjoy their old enormous share of the pie. But if Iraq is to start moving beyond its long history of communal hostility, the Shiites need to demonstrate that they will not treat the Sunnis the way the Sunnis treated them.

•

To understand what`s happening in Iraq, imagine the mind-set of the Sunnis - not the loathsome terrorists who shoot election workers and kill civilians with car bombs and mines, but the average people, including middle-class men and women whose lives have been ruined since the invasion.

The United States and its allies made a great many mistakes in dealing with the Sunnis. On the top of the list would be the early decision to disband the Iraqi military and a decree, later reversed, that banned tens of thousands of teachers, doctors and other professionals who had belonged to Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party from government employment - including many people who had joined the party perfunctorily to keep out of trouble.

Since then, the Sunnis have discovered that the American Army - which many regarded as all-powerful - has not protected them from either the criminals or the terrorists who have been operating throughout their region since the overthrow of the Hussein regime. Forced to huddle in their homes to avoid kidnappers or suicide bombers, they have had plenty of time to contemplate the fact that the Americans have also not delivered on their vow to improve infrastructure and provide reliable power and water service. More recently, Sunni civilians have borne the brunt of American counterinsurgency drives like the one in Falluja, which have left residential areas devastated and thousands homeless.

Much of this could have been avoided if the American invasion had been conducted more wisely, but it is the reality now, and the American occupiers can`t fix it. A democratically elected government might be able to build up an effective Iraqi security force and win the war against the guerrillas, whose attacks are making everyday life impossible in the Sunni provinces. But it would have to be a government that included all factions.

A broad range of Sunni leaders, including some of the most moderate and pro-Western, are pleading for a postponement of the elections. They have good reason to fear that as matters now stand, many of their people will be unwilling or unable to take part. Last week the top American ground commander in Iraq said that large areas of four largely Sunni provinces, including Baghdad, are currently too insecure for people to vote. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi admitted yesterday there would be at least "pockets" of the country where voting would be too dangerous.

If the elections wind up taking place under current conditions, the new government could wind up with little or no Sunni representation when the new constitution was prepared. The winners of the elections, who will inevitably be Shiites, could, of course, appoint Sunni representatives. But the next Iraqi constitution is bound to include provisions that will make the Sunnis unhappy, and the people agreeing to those deals need to have the legitimacy that comes with being elected.

It seems clear in retrospect that the elections should have been set up along district or provincial lines, an approach that would have ensured minority representation. It would also have allowed the interim government to carry on with voting in the Shiite and Kurdish areas this month while postponing it in the four violence-racked provinces, giving Sunnis the prospect of electing their share of legislators later. The United Nations organizers are mainly at fault here. They made their decisions under heavy pressure from the Bush administration to come up with a simple system that could be in place by Jan. 30. But it now appears that it would have been better to accept the flaws inherent in a regional approach in order to get solid protection for the Sunnis.

•

For all the talk about letting the Iraqi interim authorities govern Iraq, President Bush will have the final say in large matters, like when to hold elections, as long as American troops are the only effective military in the country. He has always insisted on holding to the Jan. 30 date. Mr. Bush keeps saying that things will go well once the voting actually starts. We certainly hope he`s right, but we doubt that he is as optimistic about the outcome as he appears to be in public.

Many Americans - and many Iraqis - worry that if the elections were postponed, the terrorists would feel empowered by having won. That might indeed be the case for the next few months. But that outcome would be far outweighed by the danger that would come from a civil war, with the Sunni territory becoming a no man`s land where terrorists could operate at will. Others argue that civil war is probably inevitable one way or another, and that we may as well get the voting over with. That kind of pessimism may be warranted. But given the horrific possibilities, we should make every effort to avoid that end. A delay in the voting seems to offer at least a ray of hope, and it pushes Iraq in the direction it desperately needs to go: toward a democracy in which all religious and ethnic groups have a stake.

Mr. Bush does not need to call for a postponement of elections himself. He simply needs to take the pressure off the Iraqi authorities, and let them know they have the power to make whatever decision is best for their country. Some members of the interim government, including people close to Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, have shown some interest in putting off the voting if there is a chance of winning more Sunni participation, and others are said to be leaning that way in private.

The run-up to the election is taking place at a time when there`s speculation about whether President Bush intends to use the arrival of a new, elected government as an occasion to declare victory and begin pulling out American troops. If such an idea is lurking in even the most remote corner of Mr. Bush`s mind, he should at least do everything within his power - including welcoming a postponement - to prevent those elections from being something more than just the starting gun for a civil war.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month
Critical September Report to Be Final Word

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A01

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG`s final conclusions and will be published this spring.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.

Duelfer is back in Washington, finishing some addenda to his September report before it is reprinted.

"There`s no particular news in them, just some odds and ends," the intelligence official said. The Government Printing Office will publish it in book form, the official said.

The CIA declined to authorize any official involved in the weapons search to speak on the record for this story. The intelligence official offered an authoritative account of the status of the hunt on the condition of anonymity. The agency did confirm that Duelfer is wrapping up his work and will not be replaced in Baghdad.

The ISG, established to search for weapons but now enmeshed in counterinsurgency work, remains under Pentagon command and is being led by Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph McMenamin.

Intelligence officials said there is little left for the ISG to investigate because Duelfer`s last report answered as many outstanding questions as possible. The ISG has interviewed every person it could find connected to programs that ended more than 10 years ago, and every suspected site within Iraq has been fully searched, or stripped bare by insurgents and thieves, according to several people involved in the weapons hunt.

Satellite photos show that entire facilities have been dismantled, possibly by scrap dealers who sold off parts and equipment to buyers around the world.

"The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," the intelligence official said.

"We`ve talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we`ve put forward. It`s possible there is a supply someplace, but what is much more likely is that [as time goes by] we will find a greater substantiation of the picture that we`ve already put forward."

Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon`s Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.

Several hundred military translators and document experts will continue to sift through millions of pages of documents on paper and computer media sitting in a storeroom on a U.S. military base in Qatar.

But their work is focused on material that could support possible war crimes charges or shed light on the fate of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, a Navy pilot who was shot down in an F/A-18 fighter over central Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the opening night of the Persian Gulf War. Although he was initially reported as killed in action, Speicher`s status was changed to missing after evidence emerged that he had ejected alive from his aircraft.

The work on documents is not connected to weapons of mass destruction, officials said, and a small group of Iraqi scientists still in U.S. military custody are not being held in connection with weapons investigations, either.

Three people involved with the ISG said the weapons teams made several pleas to the Pentagon to release the scientists, who have been interviewed extensively. All three officials specifically mentioned Gen. Amir Saadi, who was a liaison between Hussein`s government and U.N. inspectors; Rihab Taha, a biologist nicknamed "Dr. Germ" years ago by U.N. inspectors; her husband, Amir Rashid, the former oil minister; and Huda Amash, a biologist whose extensive dealings with U.N. inspectors earned her the nickname "Mrs. Anthrax."

None of the scientists has been involved in weapons programs since the 1991 Gulf War, the ISG determined more than a year ago, and all have cooperated with investigators despite nearly two years of jail time without charges. U.S. officials previously said they were being held because their denials of ongoing weapons programs were presumed to be lies; now, they say the scientists are being held in connection with the possible war crimes trials of Iraqis.

It has been more than a year since any Iraqi scientist was arrested in connection with weapons of mass destruction. Many of those questioned and cleared have since left Iraq, one senior official said, acknowledging for the first time that the "brain drain" that has long been feared "is well underway."

"A lot of it is because of the kidnapping industry" in Iraq, the official said. The State Department has been trying to implement programs designed to keep Iraqi scientists from seeking weapons-related work in neighboring countries, such as Syria and Iran.

Since March 2003, nearly a dozen people working for or with the weapons hunt have lost their lives to the insurgency. The most recent deaths came in November, when Duelfer`s convoy was attacked during a routine mission around Baghdad and two of his bodyguards were killed.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
The Torture Myth

By Anne Applebaum

Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A21

Just for a moment, let`s pretend that there is no moral, legal or constitutional problem with torture. Let`s also imagine a clear-cut case: a terrorist who knows where bombs are about to explode in Iraq. To stop him, it seems that a wide range of Americans would be prepared to endorse "cruel and unusual" methods. In advance of confirmation hearings for Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales last week, the Wall Street Journal argued that such scenarios must be debated, since "what`s at stake in this controversy is nothing less than the ability of U.S. forces to interrogate enemies who want to murder innocent civilians." Alan Dershowitz, the liberal legal scholar, has argued in the past that interrogators in such a case should get a "torture warrant" from a judge. Both of these arguments rest on an assumption: that torture -- defined as physical pressure during interrogation -- can be used to extract useful information.

But does torture work? The question has been asked many times since Sept. 11, 2001. I`m repeating it, however, because the Gonzales hearings inspired more articles about our lax methods ("Too Nice for Our Own Good" was one headline), because similar comments may follow this week`s trial of Spec. Charles Graner, the alleged Abu Ghraib ringleader, and because I still cannot find a positive answer. I`ve heard it said that the Syrians and the Egyptians "really know how to get these things done." I`ve heard the Israelis mentioned, without proof. I`ve heard Algeria mentioned, too, but Darius Rejali, an academic who recently trolled through French archives, found no clear examples of how torture helped the French in Algeria -- and they lost that war anyway. "Liberals," argued an article in the liberal online magazine Slate a few months ago, "have a tendency to accept, all too eagerly, the argument that torture is ineffective." But it`s also true that "realists," whether liberal or conservative, have a tendency to accept, all too eagerly, fictitious accounts of effective torture carried out by someone else.

By contrast, it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy`s genitals, he`s going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn`t know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea."

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They`ll just tell you anything to get you to stop."

Worse, you`ll have the other side effects of torture. It "endangers our soldiers on the battlefield by encouraging reciprocity." It does "damage to our country`s image" and undermines our credibility in Iraq. That, in the long run, outweighs any theoretical benefit. Herrington`s confidential Pentagon report, which he won`t discuss but which was leaked to The Post a month ago, goes farther. In that document, he warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees in Iraq, that their activities could be "making gratuitous enemies" and that prisoner abuse "is counterproductive to the Coalition`s efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry." Far from rescuing Americans, in other words, the use of "special methods" might help explain why the war is going so badly.

An up-to-date illustration of the colonel`s point appeared in recently released FBI documents from the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These show, among other things, that some military intelligence officers wanted to use harsher interrogation methods than the FBI did. As a result, complained one inspector, "every time the FBI established a rapport with a detainee, the military would step in and the detainee would stop being cooperative." So much for the utility of torture.

Given the overwhelmingly negative evidence, the really interesting question is not whether torture works but why so many people in our society want to believe that it works. At the moment, there is a myth in circulation, a fable that goes something like this: Radical terrorists will take advantage of our fussy legality, so we may have to suspend it to beat them. Radical terrorists mock our namby-pamby prisons, so we must make them tougher. Radical terrorists are nasty, so to defeat them we have to be nastier.

Perhaps it`s reassuring to tell ourselves tales about the new forms of "toughness" we need, or to talk about the special rules we will create to defeat this special enemy. Unfortunately, that toughness is self-deceptive and self-destructive. Ultimately it will be self-defeating as well.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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The Independent
Fear stalks city where the police hide behind masks
Wednesday, 12th January 2005, by Robert Fisk


OURNALISM yields a world of clichés but here, for once, the first cliché that comes to mind is true. Baghdad is a city of fear. Fearful Iraqis, fearful militiamen, fearful American soldiers, fearful journalists.

That day upon which the blessings of democracy will shower upon us, 30 January, is approaching with all the certainty and speed of doomsday. The latest Zarqawi video shows the killing of six Iraqi policemen. Each is shot in the back of the head, one by one. A survivor plays dead. Then a gunman walks up behind him and blows his head apart with bullets. These images haunt everyone. At the al-Hurriya intersection yesterday morning, four truckloads of Iraqi national guardsmen - the future saviours of Iraq, according to George Bush - are passing my car. Their rifles are porcupine quills, pointing at every motorist, every Iraqi on the pavement, the Iraqi army pointing their weapons at their own people. And they are all wearing masks - black hoods or ski-masks or keffiyahs that leave only slits for frightened eyes. Just before it collapsed finally into the hands of the insurgents last summer, I saw exactly the same scene in the streets of Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Now I am watching them in the capital.

At Kamal Jumblatt Square beside the Tigris, two American Humvees approach the roundabout. Their machine-gunners are shouting at drivers to keep away from them. A big sign in Arabic on the rear of each vehicle says: "Forbidden. Do not overtake this convoy. Stay 50 metres away from it."

The drivers behind obey; they know the meaning of the "deadly force" which the Americans have written on to their checkpoint signs. But the two Humvees drive into a massive traffic jam, the gunners now screaming at us to move back.

When a taxi which does not notice the US troops blocks their path, the American in the lead vehicle hurls a plastic bottle full of water on to its roof and the driver mounts the grass traffic circle. A truck receives the same treatment from the lead Humvee. "Go back," shouts the rear gunner, staring at us through shades. We try desperately to turn into the jam.

Yes, the Russians would probably have chucked hand grenades in Kabul. But here were the terrified "liberators" of Baghdad throwing bottles of water at the Iraqis who are supposed to enjoy an American-imposed democracy on 30 January.

The rear Humvee has "Specialist Carrol" written on the windscreen. Specialist Carrol, I am sure, regards every damn one of us as a potential suicide bomber - and I can’t blame him. One such bomber had just driven up to the police station in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, and destroyed himself and the lives of at least six policemen.

Round the corner, I discover the reason for the jam: Iraqi cops are fighting off hundreds of motorists desperate for petrol, the drivers refusing to queue any longer for the one thing which Iraq possesses in Croesus-like amounts - petrol.

I drop by the Ramaya restaurant for lunch. Closed. They are building a 20-floor security wall around the premises. So I drive to the Rif for a pizza, occasionally tinkling the restaurant’s piano while I watch the entrance for people I don’t want to see. The waiters are nervous. They are happy to bring my pizza in 10 minutes. There is no one else in the restaurant, you see, and they watch the road outside like friendly rabbits. They are waiting for The Car.

I call on an old Iraqi friend who used to publish a literary magazine during Saddam’s reign. "They want me to vote, but they can’t protect me," he says. "Maybe there will be no suicide bomber at the polling station. But I will be watched. And what if I get a hand-grenade in my home three days’ later? The Americans will say they did their best, Allawi’s people will say I am a ’martyr for democracy’. So, do you think I’m going to vote?"

At Mustansiriya university - one of Iraq’s best - students of English literature are to face their end-of-term exam. January marks the end of the Iraqi semester. But one of the students tells me that his fellow students had told their teacher that - so fraught are the times - they were not yet prepared for the examination. Rather than giving them all zeros, the teacher meekly postpones the exam.

I drive back through the al-Hurriya intersection beside the "Green Zone" and suddenly there is a big black 4x4, filled with ski-masked gunmen. "Get back!" they scream at every motorist as they try to cut across the median. I roll the window down. The rear door of the 4x4 whacks open. A ski-masked Westerner - blond hair, blue eyes - is pointing a Kalashnikov at my car. "Get back!" he shrieks in ghastly Arabic. Then he clears the median, followed by three armoured pick-ups, windows blacked, tyres skidding on the road surface, carrying the sacred Westerners inside to the dubious safety of the "Green Zone", the hermetically-sealed compound from which Iraq is supposedly governed. I glance at the Iraqi press. Colin Powell is warning of "civil war" in Iraq. Why do we Westerners keep threatening civil war in a country whose society is tribal rather than sectarian? Of all papers, it is the Kurdish Al Takhri, loyal to Mustafa Barzani, which asks the same question. "There has never been a civil war in Iraq," the editorial thunders. And it is right.

So, "full ahead both" for the dreaded 30 January elections and democracy. The American generals - with a unique mixture of mendacity and hope amid the insurgency - are now saying that only four of Iraq’s 18 provinces may not be able to "fully" participate in the elections.

Good news. Until you sit down with the population statistics and realise - as the generals all know - that those four provinces contain more than half of the population of Iraq.

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Wednesday, January 12, 2005
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IN MEMORIAM

Today In Iraq Regrets to Announce

The Final Demise
Of

The Rationale for the War in Iraq

January 20, 2000 – Shortly Before Christmas, 2004


May It
1517 Coalition Soldiers
And Over 100,000 Iraqis

Rest In Peace
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Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction
Dick Cheney
Speech to VFW National Convention, Aug. 26, 2002

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
George W. Bush
Speech to U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 12, 2002

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing, Dec. 2, 2002

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing, Jan. 9, 2003

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.
George W. Bush
State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.
Colin Powell
Remarks to U.N. Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003

We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
George W. Bush
Radio Address, Feb. 8, 2003

So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad?... I think our judgment has to be clearly not.
Colin Powell
Remarks to U.N. Security Council, March 7, 2003

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
George W. Bush
Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003

Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.
Ari Fleisher
Press Briefing, March 21, 2003

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And... as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.
Gen. Tommy Franks
Press Conference, March 22, 2003

I have no doubt we`re going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman
The Washington Post, Page A27, March 23, 2003

One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark
Press Briefing, March 22, 2003

We know where they are. They`re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld
ABC Interview, March 30, 2003

Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty.
Neo-con scholar Robert Kagan
The Washington Post op-ed, Apr. 9, 2003

I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found.
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing, Apr. 10, 2003

We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.
George W. Bush
NBC Interview, Apr. 24, 2003

There are people who in large measure have information that we need... so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing, Apr. 25, 2003

We`ll find them. It`ll be a matter of time to do so.
George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters, May 3, 2003

I`m absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We`re just getting it just now.
Colin Powell
Remarks to Reporters, May 4, 2003

We never believed that we`d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld
Fox News Interview, May 4, 2003

I`m not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.
George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters, May 6, 2003

U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.
Condoleeza Rice
Reuters Interview, May 12, 2003

I just don`t know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there`s no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they`re still hidden.
Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne
Press Briefing, May 13, 2003

Before the war, there`s no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.
Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps
Interview with Reporters, May 21, 2003

Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we`re interrogating, I`m confident that we`re going to find weapons of mass destruction.
Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff
NBC Today Show interview, May 26, 2003

They may have had time to destroy them, and I don`t know the answer.
Donald Rumsfeld
Remarks to Council on Foreign Relations, May 27, 2003

For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
Paul Wolfowitz
Vanity Fair interview, May 28, 2003

It was a surprise to me then -- it remains a surprise to me now -- that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it`s not for lack of trying. We`ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they`re simply not there.
Lt. Gen. James Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
Press Interview, May 30, 2003


Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month
Washington Post, January 12, 2005
Page A01

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Intelligence officials said there is little left for the ISG to investigate because Duelfer`s last report answered as many outstanding questions as possible. The ISG has interviewed every person it could find connected to programs that ended more than 10 years ago, and every suspected site within Iraq has been fully searched, or stripped bare by insurgents and thieves, according to several people involved in the weapons hunt.

Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon`s Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.


Many thanks to Navy Wife for the link and to TomPaine.com for the quotes

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# posted by matt : 1:55 AM
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Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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BUSH PROPOSES DIVIDING IRAQ INTO RED, BLUE STATES Hopes to Split Nation in Two by Jan. 30 Deadline With little more than two weeks until the Iraqi elections, President George W. Bush today proposed splitting the strife-torn nation into a series of red and blue states “in recognition of the deep hatreds that divide the Iraqi people.” While many in diplomatic circles had expected the U.S. to attempt to smooth over the differences between Iraqis in the run-up to the election, Mr. Bush said that he instead hoped to split the nation in two, with each half “hating the other’s guts.” Using a map of Iraq and a pointer, Mr. Bush showed reporters how Iraq would be carved up, with a wide swath of red states in the middle of the country bordered by two narrow slivers of blue states. Mr. Bush said that, effective immediately, the red states would be populated by Iraqis “who love freedom” while the blue states would contain “insurgents, terrorists, and Iraqis who favor gay marriage.” “I’m a uniter,” Mr. Bush said, “but I’m also a pretty darn good divider.” In other Iraq news, the U.S. announced that recently departed CNN commentator Tucker Carlson would be added to the election-night news team for the Arabic-language television network established there by the U.S. government. Mr. Carlson said that the fact that he did not understand Arabic would not be a problem, explaining, “I never listen to what other people are saying anyway.” Elsewhere, Vice President Dick Cheney blasted the United Nations’ handling of Iraq’s oil-for-food program, alleging that the organization accepted bribes and kickbacks that were rightfully Halliburton’s.

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Jan 13, 2005


Golems of violence
By Mark LeVine

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, it has become commonplace that religious extremism, particularly of the Muslim kind, lies at the heart of the problems that seemingly condemn the Muslim-majority world to political and social backwardness, economic stagnation and cultural oppressiveness. For the planners and supporters of Bush administration policy in Iraq, the actions of the country`s Sunni minority, and the thousands of foreign jihadis who have come to fight the "Great Satan" between the two rivers (as Musab al-Zarqawi has allegedly renamed his Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda), have become a poster child for all that is wrong with Islam.

Most scholars of the Middle East and Islam would take issue, strongly, with such simplistic (mis)characterizations of contemporary Islam and Muslims. But there is more than a grain of truth to the accusation that religious beliefs and motivations are among the biggest contributors to the violence plaguing Iraq. Indeed, the attitudes of religious leaders in the country, especially Sunnis, has played a powerful and negative role in the continuing violence that threatens to derail, or at best seriously delimit the positive impact, of the scheduled January 30 elections.

Of course, the attitudes of senior US religious-cum-political leaders (and can there be any doubt George W Bush functions as both for millions of Americans?) aren`t helping much either. Much attention has been devoted to the numerous Bush administration errors - disbanding the Iraqi army, not putting enough US forces on the ground - that encouraged the current chaos and violence in Iraq. Yet as important has been the clearly religious - jihadi, actually - foundations of the US invasion and occupation of the country. Guiding US policy in Iraq and the larger Middle East are several troubling dynamics, the combination of which have led to 100,000 dead Iraqis, well over 1,000 dead US soldiers, and counting; not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars literally wasted on useless violence (go ask the victims of last month`s tsunami what better ways there are to spend that kind of money).

Crusader mentality
First there is the "imperial" and "crusader" mentality that has come to dominate US foreign policy (the words are outgoing National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice`s and Bush`s respectively, not mine). Next there is the belief among some of the most important political figures in the country, not to mention tens of millions of God-fearing Christian Americans, that the war in Iraq heralds the coming of the Apocalypse and is therefore part of God`s plan and beyond criticism (no matter what the human and economic costs). Most important, fin-de-millennium America has witnessed the rebranding of Christianity as a religion of large-scale, divinely sanctioned violence that is specifically wed to a hyper-consumerist market fundamentalism, which, as Thomas Frank demonstrates in his best-selling What`s the Matter with Kansas?, has the perverse ability to brainwash tens of millions of Americans to support economic policies that are manifestly against their class interests and violate the most cherished tenets of the Gospels (humility, serving the poor, struggling for social justice).

Making the synergy work is the ability of what could be termed "market-fundamentalist Christianity" to redirect Americans` anger at the life conditions it produces toward a mythological bogeyman called the "liberal elite".

While the above discussion explains why Bush has been re-elected despite an invasion gone terribly awry - legally, politically and economically - it shouldn`t blind us to the fact that an equally disturbing rebranding of Islam in Iraq and across the Muslim world has enabled an equally disastrous decision by the highest levels of Iraq`s Sunni establishment to use mass violence rather than mass civil protest to confront the US-sponsored occupation. As one of the country`s most senior religious figures blithely explained to me during my travels through Arab Iraq last spring, the Sunnis would "kill the infidels" without question or remorse in order to defeat the occupation. The blood of the occupation would be answered by the blood of the insurgency, with little consideration of the implications of unleashing such a wave of violence across a country that had already lived through "35 years of death", as a young Shi`ite religious leader explained to me exasperatedly in describing his despair at the turn to violence by his Sunni colleagues and compatriots.

Of course, Iraqi Shi`ites have their own militants. Not just Muqtada al-Sadr, but numerous higher-level Shi`ite religious figures, including ayatollahs such as Ahmed al-Baghdadi (whose message to America when I interviewed him in Najaf was even more extreme than that of his Sunni counterparts in Baghdad) also are prepared for jihad to rid Iraq of the occupation. But such views are clearly outweighed by the more pragmatic and largely non-violent strategy of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and his disciples, young and old, who realize that their majority status, coupled with their belief that the United States cannot sustain an occupation for very long at the current costs in dollars and soldiers, has led them to bide their time and strip the US of power and authority one election, and one redrafted law, at a time.

But the Sunni establishment by and large does not have this view. Part of the reason is, of course, that their minority status leaves them naturally frightened of any new political system that might marginalize or even oppress them, as the country`s Shi`ites have been oppressed for centuries. As important, according to several Iraqi students of the country`s religious establishment, is that the past decade plus of sanctions succeeded in isolating the country`s Sunni establishment from the outside world, and especially more modern and even progressive currents within Islam, whereas their Shi`ite counterparts spent these years either in exile (and thus more open to outside influences) or at least in close touch with the outside world via Iran.

Golems of violence
Viewed broadly, then, it would seem that a combination of ignorance about the other side and arrogance about its own power and righteousness of its goals has led conservative, even extremist American and Sunni Iraqi leaders alike to create what we could refer to as twin golems of violence to protect and advance their opposing interests. But like the monster in the old Jewish folk tale, while originally created to protect and serve its community, the Sunni and US golems quickly became uncontrollable, instigating more violence than either side could have done on its own.

In Jewish folklore, the golem is either forced to flee the town by its inhabitants or is destroyed by its creator. Sadly, in real life, it seems that neither the Bush administration nor the Sunni leadership of Iraq is capable of or interested in taking on its golem. This reality - a combination of pride and moral cowardliness on both sides - has left elections as perhaps Iraq`s only hope for an end to the violence. But this will only happen if the Iraqi people surprise the world and use the elections to run both golems - and with them, the insurgents and the occupation forces alike - out of town.

The ability of the vast majority of Iraqis of all ethnic groups and sectarian allegiances who are desperate for an end to both the occupation and the insurgency to achieve such a miracle will depend on who votes on election day and what parties and candidates they vote for. Specifically, women, secular, and non-sectarian or ethnic (that is, "Iraqi" as opposed to "Sunni", "Shi`ite" or "Kurdish") voters will have to come out in large numbers to make the healing of Iraq possible; yet this is a very tall order considering that all three groups have been largely shut out of the public sphere during the past year.

Women have been largely imprisoned in their homes because of the violence and chaos of the insurgency, even though beforehand Iraq had among the most socially advanced female populations in the developing world. And so while the electoral law stipulates that one out of every three candidates for the assembly be a women, if women are too scared to vote or are otherwise prevented from doing so, their elected representatives will have little power or incentive to push to protect the interests of half the population.

Iraq also was once one of the most secular countries in the Muslim world. However, the decade-plus of sanctions, Saddam Hussein`s patronage of the Sunni religious establishment and the political repression of the Shi`ites have all made it very difficult for secular politics to thrive in post-occupation Iraq. Similarly, while for most of the past 80 years Kurds and Sunni and Shi`ite Arabs have managed to sustain a surprisingly resilient and deep "Iraqi" national identity, perhaps one of the signal accomplishments of the occupation has been the successful transformation by the US of what had threatened to become a countrywide Arab into a more manageable Sunni revolt.

While such a splitting of Iraqi allegiances to more narrow sectarian and/or ethnic interests has a long imperial pedigree, the blowback from it is that even as most Iraqis prefer to remain united under one sovereign government than break apart into what would surely be three unsustainable states, the violence of the occupation and insurgency are making it hard to build a common, cross-ethnic and sectarian political movement. The violence, the closed public sphere and the power of ethnic and sectarian parties are major impediments to Iraqis voting their "Iraqi" rather more narrowly defined conscience.

The Lebanon scenario
Because of these dynamics there is every reason to believe that this month`s elections will at best produce a deeply divided assembly that will have to overcome extreme odds to build a common future for Iraq`s diverse population. What we`ll likely see are several major blocs divided among Shi`ites, Kurds and Sunnis, with women in effect marginalized from or co-opted into the emerging male and religiously defined power structure - in short, the "Lebanon scenario" more than one Bush administration official has declared would be an acceptable and even preferred outcome.

The problem with such an outcome is that in Lebanon the post-colonial power structure failed to chase away or disarm the golems of ethnic and religious hostility so carefully nurtured under French rule. It took a 14-year civil war to do that, and even today Lebanon survives despite a barely functioning state and a lack of substantial political development or intercommunal reconciliation since the war ended. And that`s in a country with only 3.5 million people and no oil.

Of course, with literally hundreds of parties and thousands of candidates registered, Iraqis might surprise the world and elect a legislature with enough independent and non-sectarian members to forge the national consensus that will be the sine qua non for writing the country`s new constitution in the coming year. Let`s hope such an outcome comes to pass; if it doesn`t, the blame will be shared equally by the golems and their creators, in Washington and Fallujah alike.

In his recent surprise visit to Baghdad, British Prime Minister Tony Blair exclaimed that the battle in Iraq is "between democracy and terror". He and his friend Bush keep leaving out one-third of the true equation - empire. Iraq has become a battleground among democracy, terror and empire. And empire has always been sustained by religious chauvinism, exclusivity and the violence they breed. Unless and until imperialism and religious extremism are removed from the equation, democracy will continue to lose out to terror, in Iraq, in the United States and across the globe.

Mark LeVine (www.meaning.org/levinebio.html) is an associate professor of history at the University of California-Irvine and the author of Why They Don`t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld Publications, 2005). He is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus and writes a weblog hosted by History News Network (http://hnn.us/blogs/37.html).

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus.)

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Soros group raises stakes in battle with US neo-cons
By James Harding in Washington
Published: January 11 2005 22:23 | Last updated: January 11 2005 22:23

A group of billionaire philanthropists are to donate tens of millions more dollars to develop progressive political ideas in the US in an effort to counter the conservative ascendancy.

George Soros, who made his fortune in the hedge fund industry; Herb and Marion Sandler, the California couple who own a multi-billion-dollar savings and loan business; and Peter Lewis, the chairman of an Ohio insurance company, donated more than $63m (£34m) in the 2004 election cycle to organisations seeking to defeat George W. Bush.

At a meeting in San Francisco last month, the left-leaning billionaires agreed to commit an even larger sum over a longer period to building institutions to foster progressive ideas and people.

Far from being disillusioned by the defeat of John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, the billionaires have resolved to invest further in the intellectual future of the left, one person involved said.

Their commitment to provide new money comes amid criticism of the efforts of high-profile donors such as the Hungarian-born Mr Soros to sway US politics as well as doubts about the effectiveness of record funding in helping the Democratic cause in 2004.

The details of the San Francisco meeting are closely held. Mr Soros and his son Jonathan, the Sandlers and Mr Lewis asked aides to leave the room as they discussed the planned financial commitment.

But the still-evolving plan, according to one person involved, is “joint investment to build intellectual infrastructure”.

The intention is to provide the left with organisations in Washington that can match the heft of the rightwing think-tanks such as Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. At a state level, the aim is to build what one person called a “deeper progressive bench”.

The sums involved are the subject of speculation: one person said he had heard a commitment to spend more than $100m over 15 years, another said at least $25m over five years. Several people said their understanding was that the billionaires had decided to spend more, rather than less, than they did in 2004.

Mr Soros donated $27m, the Sandlers $13m and Mr Lewis $23m to so-called 527 groups privately-funded political organisations during the 2004 campaign, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, the campaign finance tracking service.

Stephen Bing, a film producer and heir to a real estate fortune who donated $13m, is also expected to be involved in the investment in progressive infrastructure.

Andrew Stern, who is president of the Service Employees International Union, has been working to include organised labour in the initiative.

Leftwing policy experts have already got wind of the new funds. One former aide to Mr Kerry said there had been talks with the Center for American Progress about making permanent the network of foreign policy experts established by Democrats in the 2004 campaign. He said he had been told: “Money is not a problem.”



Find this article at:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c0e45a86-6408-11d9-b0ed-00000e2511c…

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Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by the Long Island, NY Newsday
The Projected Winner in Iraq: Failure
by Edwin Black


Iraq`s proposed elections later this month are a lose-lose proposition.

Most Sunni and Kurdish political parties have either formally withdrawn or are threatening to because the insurgency has now targeted the entire electoral process. That reality has been driven home daily. Last month, a grenade was tossed into a school with a note warning the building to not become a polling place. Weeks ago, an election commissioner on Baghdad`s main street was dragged from his car in broad daylight and shot in the head by men who didn`t even mask their faces.

Osama bin Laden has declared in an audiotape that those who participate in the election - even by voting - will be deemed infidels and targeted. Electoral commissioners have resigned en masse. The Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq`s highest Sunni religious authority, has demanded all Sunnis boycott the election.

But the Shias are adamant that elections proceed. Their supreme religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, has decreed that voting is the highest religious obligation. Sistani rebuffed recent Sunni-Kurd election delay requests, saying the question was "not even up for discussion." Indeed, a delay makes no sense, as the insurgency becomes only more lethal with each day. Hence, Arab Sunnis and Kurds - together some 40 percent of the population - are now on an electoral collision course with the majority Shias, who compose approximately 60 percent. The dynamics of this looming showdown embody the very ethnic torrents that have plagued Iraq for centuries. Minority Sunnis and majority Shias have massacred and oppressed each other in Iraq since the seventh century, taking time off to do the same for minorities such as Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews and Kurds.

Since the 1920s, Sunni Ba`athist strongmen have ruled, Saddam Hussein being the latest. The concept of one-man one- vote, in which the results will parallel the religious groups, automatically guarantees that the Shia majority will finally seize control of the nation, settling old scores and disenfranchising everyone else. This only sets the stage for another civil war.

Historically, the assumption or seizure of authority in Iraq has never constituted a true representative government accepted by the warring tribal factions, but rather an expression of ethnic supremacy. More and more, the Jan. 30 vote seems not a national election, but a mainly Shia election. So even if the election takes place, even if the Shias deliver a statistical majority for the turnout, the forces of Sunni and insurgent rejection will demonize the results and elected officials, thus further plunging the populace into violence.

Adding a volatile dimension is the distinct possibility that majority Shia rule will not propel the nation toward Western-style democracy, but speed it toward an Iranian-style theocracy. Shia Iran and the dominant Shia holy cities such as Najaf have been joined at the hip and the heart for centuries. Citizens on both sides of the border freely pass and function jointly in matters religious, spiritual and social.

Should a Shia-controlled Iraq legislate itself into an Iranian- style theocracy, and even consider a pan-Islamic confederacy, the ramifications are towering. Such bi-national unions in the Islamic Middle East have been common since World War II.

The people of Iraq have never wanted Western-style pluralistic democracy or elections. The idea has always been imposed from abroad. In 1920, the nations of the Middle East were created where no nations had previously existed by Western oil imperialism and the League of Nations - this to validate under international law the post-World War I oil monopolies France and England had created. Pro-western monarchs and other rulers were installed to sign on the dotted line, legitimizing Western oil monopolies. At the same time, the Western capitals spurned the Arab national movement. When the Arabs hear the term "democracy," they hear a code word for "stable environment for oil."

A post-election Iraq will resemble pre-election Iraq, with a savage insurgency determined to sabotage the government. America will then have to decide if it is still willing to hold the invented nation together with political thumbtacks and military muscle, or support the forces of ethnic partition. Either way, we have no alternative but to survive in Iraq long enough to intelligently withdraw. That will require alternative energy resources to detach us from this place where we are not wanted, where we should not be, and upon which our industrialized world is now dependent.

Iraq, the so-called Cradle of Civilization, has a 7,000-year head start on the United States and Britain. If its people wanted a pluralistic democracy, they could have created one without a permission slip from Washington or London. Elections do not make democracies; democracies make elections.

Edwin Black is the author of "Banking on Baghdad, Inside Iraq`s 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict," from which this is adapted.

© 2005 Newday, Inc.

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Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Other "Salvador Option" for Iraq
by Jim Goronson


In the 1980s El Salvador and Iraq were two of the most egregious human rights abusing nations in the world. What did these nations have in common at the time? Strategic relationships with the U.S. government. El Salvador had the infamous paramilitary "death squads", including national police forces like the now defunct Treasury Police, a military headed by lunatics like Major Roberto D`Aubuisson that seemed to specialize and delight in brutalizing the civilian population (they were far better at that than fighting in the battlefield), and a seemingly endless supply of money, guns, and Special Forces advisers from the Reagan administration. $6 billion from 1981 to 1992--70,000 people killed--the vast majority innocent civilians.

Iraq of course was controlled by one of the most infamous dictators in recent history-Saddam Hussein-who at the time was seen as a key strategic ally against the fundamentalist Shiite regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. With the help of the U.S., Hussein managed to brutalize his own population (on a par with the Salvadoran government) while waging a vicious war with Iran during the course of the decade.

Fast forward to January 2005, the U.S., engaged in an ostensible "liberation from tyranny" of the Iraqi population, finds itself engaged in an intractable conflict against a guerrilla insurgency that exists within the fabric of Sunni society. Donald Rumsfeld & Co. at the Pentagon, fretting over the fact that the seemingly all-powerful U.S. military cannot quell the insurgency and in fact is probably losing the conflict, desperately look to El Salvador`s bloody death squad past as a possible course of action to take. The "Salvador option", as it is being called, would entail the sending of Special Forces advisers to "advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers". A crucial component of such operations would be to instill fear in the Sunni population, who so far have not been forced to pay for their support of the resistance.

What`s particularly disgusting to me is the widespread conservative belief that U.S. foreign policy towards El Salvador in the 1980s and early 90s was a success. That the policies of STATE-SPONSORED TERRORISM somehow succeeded in quelling the leftist guerrilla insurgency. An examination of the facts leads to a different conclusion. For starters:

The "insurgents" (nee "terrorists") won the war in El Salvador. The other Salvador option for Iraq.

That`s right-the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla army, while not achieving a military victory, nevertheless succeeded in forcing the right-wing Salvadoran government and their benefactors the U.S. government to the negotiating table that led to the historic peace accords of 1992. The fundamental steps taken towards democracy in El Salvador (e.g. establishment of a civilian police force, the U.N. truth commissions that put the public spotlight on military officers and their government for countless human rights abuses and numerous atrocities, the successful transition of the FMLN into a progressive political party) were absolutely NOT due to our government`s provision of $6 billion dollars to the Salvadoran government to fight the civil war. Rather, it was the extreme sacrifice of over 70,000 Salvadorans who struggled and died for social and economic justice.

So, in order to take the offensive against the insurgency in Iraq the Pentagon is thinking about employing strategy and tactics that are inspired by our shameful legacy in El Salvador. Torture, assassinations, kidnappings, "draining the pond to starve the fish." I`m sure that Saddam Hussein would like to join in the fun! And do note that some other nefarious characters from the 80s are involved: Rumsfeld, John Negroponte (Ambassador to Iraq), Elliot Abrams (Middle East advisor for President Bush). This is perhaps the clearest indication yet of what the invasion and occupation of Iraq is really about-the extension of imperial control over a nation that is deemed to be of (obvious) strategic importance for American economic interests. Yes folks, it`s a three letter word that starts with "O".

Jim Goronson is the National Coordinator of U.S.- El Salvador Sister Cities.

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January 13, 2005
White House Fought New Curbs on Interrogations, Officials Say
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - At the urging of the White House, Congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by American intelligence officers, Congressional officials say.

The defeat of the proposal affects one of the most obscure arenas of the war on terrorism, involving the Central Intelligence Agency`s secret detention and interrogation of top terror leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and about three dozen other senior members of Al Qaeda and its offshoots.

The Senate had approved the new restrictions, by a 96-to-2 vote, as part of the intelligence reform legislation. They would have explicitly extended to intelligence officers a prohibition against torture or inhumane treatment, and would have required the C.I.A. as well as the Pentagon to report to Congress about the methods they were using.

But in intense closed-door negotiations, Congressional officials said, four senior members from the House and Senate deleted the restrictions from the final bill after the White House expressed opposition.

In a letter to members of Congress, sent in October and made available by the White House on Wednesday in response to inquiries, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, expressed opposition to the measure on the grounds that it "provides legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled under applicable law and policy."

Earlier, in objecting to a similar measure in a Senate version of the military authorization bill, the Defense Department sent a letter to Congress saying that the department "strongly urges the Senate against passing new legislation concerning detention and interrogation in the war on terrorism" because it is unnecessary.

The Senate restrictions had not been in House versions of the military or intelligence bills.

In interviews on Wednesday, both Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican negotiator, and Representative Jane Harman of California, a Democratic negotiator, said the lawmakers had ultimately decided that the question of whether to extend the restrictions to intelligence officers was too complex to be included in the legislation.

"The conferees agreed that they would drop the language but with the caveat that the intelligence committees would take up the issue this year," Ms. Collins said.

Ms. Harman said, "If there are special circumstances around some intelligence interrogations, we should understand that before we legislate."

Some Democratic Congressional officials said they believed that the Bush administration was trying to maintain some legal latitude for the C.I.A. to use interrogation practices more extreme than those permitted by the military.

In its report last summer, the independent commission on the Sept. 11 attacks recommended that the United States develop policies to guarantee that captured terrorists were treated humanely.

Martin Lederman, a former Justice Department lawyer who left the department in 2002, said in an interview on Wednesday that he believed that the administration had "always wanted to leave a loophole where the C.I.A. could engage in actions just up to the line of torture."

The administration has said almost nothing about the C.I.A. operation to imprison and question terror suspects designated as high-value detainees, even as it has expressed disgust about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Senior officials have sought in recent public statements to emphasize that the government will continue to abide by federal laws that prohibit torture.

At his confirmation hearing last week on his nomination to be attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales said he found torture abhorrent.

The issue of the C.I.A.`s treatment of detainees first arose after agency officials sought legal guidance on how far its employees and contractors could go in interrogating terror suspects and whether the law barred the C.I.A. from using extreme methods, including feigned drowning, in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the first of the Qaeda leaders captured by the United States. He was apprehended in Pakistan in early 2002.

An August 2002 legal opinion by the Justice Department said that interrogation methods just short of those that might cause pain comparable to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death" could be allowable without being considered torture. The administration disavowed that opinion last summer after the classified legal opinion was publicly disclosed.

A new opinion made public late last month, signed by James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, explicitly rejected torture and adopted more restrictive standards to define it.

But a cryptic footnote to the new document about the "treatment of detainees" referred to what the officials said were other still-classified opinions. The footnote meant, the officials said, that coercive techniques approved by the Justice Department under the looser interpretation of the torture statutes were still lawful even under the new, more restrictive interpretation.

Current and former government officials said specific interrogation methods were addressed in a series of still-secret documents, including an August 2002 one by the Justice Department that authorized the C.I.A.`s use of some 20 interrogation practices. The legal opinion was sent to the C.I.A. via the National Security Council at the White House.

Among the procedures approved by the document was waterboarding, in which a subject is made to believe he might be drowned.

The document was intended to guide the C.I.A. in its interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah and a handful of other high-level detainees. Instead, it led to a series of exchanges between the Justice Department and the intelligence agency as they debated exact procedures to be employed against individual detainees.

At times, their discussion included an assessment of whether specific measures, on a detainee by detainee basis, would cause such pain as to be considered torture.

In addition to Ms. Collins and Ms. Harman, the lawmakers in the conference committee negotiations were Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan.

The Senate measure to impose new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures, drafted by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, was in an amendment introduced by Mr. Lieberman and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. And in little-noticed comments on the Senate floor in December, Mr. Durbin complained that the decision by conferees to delete the measure had been "troublesome."

"I think the intelligence community should be held to the same standards as the Department of Defense," Mr. Durbin said in those remarks, "and taking this language out of the bill will make that very difficult to monitor, as I hoped we would be able to do."

A Congressional Democrat said the White House stance had left the impression "that the administration wanted an escape hatch to preserve the option of using torture" against prisoners held by the C.I.A.

The only public statement from the Bush administration about the kinds of restrictions proposed by Mr. Durbin came last June, when the Defense Department expressed strong opposition to a measure in the military authorization bill. That measure, adopted by the Senate, also imposed restrictions prohibiting torture as well as cruel, inhuman and other degrading treatment but it applied only to Defense Department personnel.

In a letter to Congress, Daniel J. Dell`Orto, the Pentagon`s principal deputy counsel, criticized the legislation as unnecessary, saying it would "leave the current state of the law exactly where it is." Mr. Dell`Orto also criticized as "onerous" and inappropriate other provisions in the measure that would require the Pentagon to submit annual facility-by-facility reports to Congress on the status of detainees.

Ultimately, the House did not include the measure in its version of that military bill, and the final version of the legislation included only nonbinding language expressing a sense of Congress that American personnel should not engage in torture.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Da scheint mal wieder ein Schuß für die USA von hinten los gegangen zu sein. Da wird die UN beschuldigt und versucht Annan abzuschießen, weil sie den Handel mit geschmuggelten Öl gedeckt haben.
Und nun scheint sich rauszustellen, dass die größten Aktionen dieser Art mit Wissen, wenn nicht im Auftrag der USA durchgeführt wurden.
Ich will die USA einmal loben, sie sind in ihrem Handeln konsequent. Es gibt kein Land der Erde, dass sein Handeln mit einer größeren Gier betreibt als die USA, dann aber bei anderen die höchsten moralischen Ansprüche einfordert.

January 13, 2005
US ignored warning on Iraqi oil smuggling, UN says
By FT.COM


For months, the US Congress has been investigating activities that violated the United Nations oil-for-food programme and helped Saddam Hussein build secret funds to acquire arms and buy influence.

President George W. Bush has linked future US funding of the international body to a clear account of what went on under the multi-billion dollar programme.

But a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, shows that the single-largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food programme was conducted with the knowledge of the US government.

"Although the financial beneficiaries were Iraqis and Jordanians, the fact remains that the US government participated in a major conspiracy that violated sanctions and enriched Saddam`s cronies," a former UN official said. "That is exactly what many in the US are now accusing other countries of having done. I think it`s pretty ironic."

Overall, the operation involved 14 tankers engaged by a Jordanian entity to load at least 7m barrels of oil for a total of no less than $150m (€113m) of illegal profits. About another $50m went to Mr Hussein`s cronies.

In February 2003, when US media first published reports of this smuggling effort, then attributed exclusively to the Iraqis, the US mission to the UN condemned it as "immoral".

However, FT/Il Sole have evidence that US and UK missions to the UN were informed of the smuggling while it was happening and that they reported it to their respective governments, to no avail.

Oil traders were told informally that the US let the tankers go because Amman needed oil to build up its strategic reserves in expectation of the Iraq war.

Last week Paul Volcker, head of the independent commission created by the UN to investigate failures in the oil-for-food programme, confirmed that Washington allowed violations of the oil sanctions by Jordan in recognition of its national interests.

However, only a fraction of the oil smuggled out of Iraq reached the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Most was sold to the Middle East Oil Refinery, in Alexandria, Egypt; to a refinery in Aden, Yemen; and to Malaysia and China. "This operation was not permitted under the Security Council resolutions dealing with the oil-for-food programme," said Michel Tellings, one of the two UN inspectors responsible at the time for the implementation of the programme. "The volume of oil was not inspected and payments were not made to the UN escrow account, as required by the programme."

In January 2003, Millennium, a little-known Jordanian company, asked Odin Marine, a shipping broker based in Stamford, Connecticut, to find tankers to load millions of barrels of Iraqi oil. Odin declined to comment.

"The ship owners were very wary," recalled another broker involved in the deal. "They received papers from Jordan with all kinds of government stamps claiming it was legitimate,but never actually received anything from the UN."

In fact, no UN papers could have been provided since Millennium was not allowed to lift oil from Iraq, and the port of loading, Khor al-Amaya in southern Iraq, did not have UN authorisation to operate.

Nevertheless, shipping companies willing to take the cargo were found. "One of the vessels I fixed was the Argosea, which was owned by the Greek shipping company Tsakos," the broker said.

At the same time, Millennium chartered a couple of supertankers, including the Empress des Mers, to hold its oil in the Gulf.

According to a spokesman for the Bahamian-based company that owned the Empress des Mers, the vessel was to be loaded at sea from other tankers and sit in the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates off Fujairah, a port at the entrance of the Gulf.

The operation was too big to go unnoticed. In the middle of February 2003, UN inspectors began receiving calls from companies that were lifting oil from Mina al-Bakr, the only UN-authorised port in southern Iraq.

The companies complained that tankers had suddenly appeared a few miles away in Khor al-Amaya. Their activities had halved the pace of loading in Mina, which was served by the same pipeline, leading to delays that were causing demurrage fees.

Furious because the Iraqis had a history of refusing to reimburse those costs, the lifters informed Mr Tellings who in turn notified the US and UK missions to the UN.

Mr Tellings provided detailed information, including the names of some of the ships spotted by inspectors in the area. He believed the tankers would be challenged by the Multinational Interception Force (MIF), the force led by the US navy that had been enforcing the embargo on Iraq.

"Three or four days later, I chased [the US and UK representatives] and asked them what had happened with my information. They told me that they had communicated it to their capitals and that they were puzzled themselves by the lack of action."

US mission spokesman Richard Grenell said: "We were tireless advocates to bring to the attention of the committee any and all oil smuggling and illegal activity. But while the [oil-for-food] investigation is going on we are not going to talk about specific issues."

Mr Tellings was not the only one who informed US authorities. Saybolt, the Dutch company hired by the UN to oversee oil loading operations in Iraq, reported the incident to the MIF.

On February 21 2003, when reports of the smuggling first appeared in the US press, Jeff Alderson, spokesman for the Maritime Liaison Office (MLO), the US navy office in Bahrain that co-ordinated the MIF activities, was quoted as saying that he had "no information" about it.

His successor, Jeff Breslau, confirmed to Il Sole/FT that "we have no record that we were warned" about the smuggling. But Il Sole/FT has discovered that on February 17 2003, Saybolt sent an e-mail to the MLO about smuggling that specifically mentioned the Argosea. The same day, the MLO sent a reply to Saybolt acknowledging that notification.

For months, international traders looked for ways to make the cargo legal.

"There were plenty of letters from the Jordanian ministry claiming that the oil was legitimate," saidone trader. "But we concluded that there was no way that it could be legally bought."

Eventually, however, customers willing to take a chance were found. "After six months, we were asked to discharge the oil," said the spokesman for the Empress des Mers. The cargo was taken to Egypt, he added.

Out of this operation, traders estimate, Iraqis pocketed about $50m, all off the UN books, while subsequent sale of the oil netted $150m in profits.

Millennium, the company that arranged the operation, is owned by Khaled Shaheen, a Jordanian magnate who is president of Shaheen Investment & Business (SBIG), and his two brothers, according to a company search.

However, Millennium clearly operated with the approval of the Jordanian government. Papers exchanged with the shippers, and e-mails from Odin Marine describe the company as "Millennium, for the trade of raw materials and mineral oils for and on behalf of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources".

An e-mail sent on March 6 2003 by Odin Marine to confirm the fixing of one of the vessels mentioned that "the Jordanian government through the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources empowered Millennium to conduct this transaction on their behalf, as per the attached power of attorney".

Claudio Gatti is a New York-based investigative reporter for Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily

© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2005.

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Grundsätzlich hat Friedman Recht.
Nur die Wahlen werden nichts ändern. Vielleicht geben sie aber den USA die Chance ohne größeren Gesichtsverlust aus dem Sumpf rauszukommen.
Es scheint eins der wichtigsten Themen augenblicklich in Washington zu sein, wie kommen wir aus dem Irak wieder raus?

January 13, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Ballots and Boycotts
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

In trying to think through whether we should press ahead with elections in Iraq or not, I have found it useful to go back and dig out my basic rules for Middle East reporting, which I have developed and adapted over 25 years of writing from that region.

Rule 1 Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over by the time the next morning`s paper is out.

Rule 2 Never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person who is supposed to be doing the conceding. If I had a dime for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasir Arafat, I would be a wealthy man today.

Rule 3 The Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure that they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 4 In the Middle East, if you can`t explain something with a conspiracy theory, then don`t try to explain it at all - people there won`t believe it.

Rule 5 In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away - unless the coast is completely clear.

Rule 6 The most oft-used phrase of Mideast moderates is: "We were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it`s too late. It`s all your fault for being so stupid."

Rule 7 In Middle East politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, "How can I compromise?" And the minute it becomes strong, it will tell you, "Why should I compromise?"

Rule 8 What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in Arabic, in Hebrew or in any other local language. Anything said in English doesn`t count.

It is on the basis of these rules that I totally disagree with those who argue that the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections should be postponed. Their main argument is that an Iraqi election that ensconces the Shiite majority in power, without any participation of the Sunni minority, will sow the seeds of civil war.

That is probably true - but we are already in a civil war in Iraq. That civil war was started by the Sunni Baathists, and their Islamist fascist allies from around the region, the minute the U.S. toppled Saddam. And they started that war not because they felt the Iraqi elections were going to be rigged, but because they knew they weren`t going to be rigged.

They started the war not to get their fair share of Iraqi power, but in hopes of retaining their unfair share. Under Saddam, Iraq`s Sunni minority, with only 20 percent of the population, ruled everyone. These fascist insurgents have never given politics a chance to work in Iraq because they don`t want it to work. That`s why they have never issued a list of demands. They don`t want people to see what they are really after, which is continued minority rule, Saddamism without Saddam. If that was my politics, I`d be wearing a ski mask over my head, too.

The notion that delaying the elections for a few months would somehow give time for the "Sunni moderates" to persuade the extremists to come around is dead wrong - literally. Any delay would simply embolden the guys with the guns to kill more Iraqi police officers and to intimidate more Sunnis. It could only convince them that with just a little more violence, they could scuttle the whole project of rebuilding Iraq.

There is only one thing that will enable the Sunni moderates in Iraq to win the debate, and that is when the fascist insurgents are forced to confront the fact that their tactics have not only failed to prevent the elections, but have also dug the Sunnis of Iraq into an even deeper hole.

By boycotting the elections, not only will they lose their unfair share of the old Iraq, they will also have failed to claim even their fair share of the new Iraq. The moderate argument among the Sunnis can prevail only when the tactics of their extremists have proved utterly bankrupt.

For all these reasons, the least bad option right now for the U.S. is to forge ahead with the elections - unless the Iraqi Shiites ask for a postponement - and focus all of America`s energies not on appeasing the fascist insurgents, but on moderating the Shiites and Kurds, who are sure to dominate the voting.

Despite my seventh rule, we have a much greater chance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq by appealing to the self-interest of the Kurds and the Shiites to be magnanimous in victory, than we do of getting the fascist insurgents to be magnanimous in defeat.

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The Independent
We won’t go home and we won’t vote, say refugees of Fallujah
Thursday, 13th January 2005, by Robert Fisk


HEY live beneath old fly-blown tents in the car-park of the Mustafa mosque and their canvas-roofed kitchen stands next to a pool of raw sewage, but the refugees from Fallujah will not return home.

First, because many have no homes to go to; second, because they are - with the encouragement of local clerics - listing a series of demands that include the withdrawal of all American soldiers from the city, the maintenance of security by Fallujans themselves, massive compensation payments and the return of money and valuables which those who have just visited Fallujah say were stolen by American troops.

And they are very definitely not going to vote in the 30 January elections. Squatting on the floor of his concrete-walled office in his black robes to eat a lunch of chicken and rice, Sheikh Hussein - he pleads with me not to print his family name - insists that his people are not against elections.

"We are not rejecting this election for the sake of it," he says. "We are rejecting it because it is the ’tent’ of the occupation. It is the vehicle for the Americans to ensure that [interim President Iyad] Allawi gets back in. And we are still under occupation."

A bearded and bespectacled academic is sitting beside the sheikh, Dr Abdul-Kader of the department of Islamic Science at Baghdad University, who gravely reminds me of the civilian dead of Fallujah. "There were hundreds," he says. "We found bodies in homes and graves in the gardens of homes."

The sheikh’s closest relatives live in Fallujah; his own Sunni mosque lies at the centre of the camp in Baghdad where 925 of Fallujah’s 200,000 refugees are living. But he says he has travelled twice to his family’s homes and tells a disturbing story of what he found. "The first time I visited after the Americans occupied the city, our main house was standing. It had survived. All the things inside, beds, furniture, rugs, were safe. But when I went back a week later, it had been destroyed. Many other houses were in the same state.

"They survived the American-resistance battles intact but were then destroyed afterwards. Why? People there told me they saw movie cameras and that the Americans fired shells into the empty houses and that they were making some kind of film."

Tales of American theft in Iraqi cities are not new. Amnesty International has listed numerous incidents in which US troops took money from homes or from the clothes of arrested men. The US authorities acknowledged one case of large-scale pilfering by a young American officer south of Baghdad in 2003 but said that he had been moved out of Iraq and would be "too difficult" to trace.

The stories of looting in Fallujah are only adding to the refugees’ sense of grievance. And to the over-enthusiastic demands for compensation. "We will settle for $5bn (£2.7bn) to $10bn," Sheikh Hussein says. "This is for the destruction in Fallujah, the shedding of blood and the killing of innocents; history will write of this. The Americans started off by killing native Americans and still they kill people they look down on." Everyone in the room, including a student of computer sciences from Fallujah who has so far listened in total silence, vigorously nod their heads.

"One day," the sheikh continues, "I was stopped and taken to an American base and questioned by the CIA, and they said, ’You are a religious man and we want advice’. I said, ’What I want to tell you is not to enter the cities because the people are waiting for a chance to attack you. They will make you suffer in different ways. Pull out your troops to the deserts, far away from the gunfire of the resistance, though that stretches a long way’. But they were very, very stupid. They didn’t take the chance to go out. They stayed to force us to have elections so they could get out and leave their agents in power. I say this; the American troops will retreat suddenly, or they will find themselves prisoners inside the trap of Iraq.

"You know, you Westerners laugh at us Easterners, especially when we say, ’If Allah wills’. But the Prophet - peace be upon him - once said that the Iraqis would be scourged, that they would not receive a single dirham or a grain of rice in the hand, and this happened in the economic embargo of the 1990s.

"Then America came here after 9 April, 2003, with all its power and soldiers, so proud of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. But now the morale of these soldiers is rotting each day. They have psychological problems. My advice to them is to leave. They have a choice to make: they must leave or they will be forced out."

Fighting continues each night in Fallujah despite American claims of victory and to be "breaking the back" of the insurgency. As the sheikh puts it, not without some humour: "The Americans move in the streets during the day from 6am to 6pm but they do not move when the muqawama (resistance) imposes its own curfew on them between 6pm and 6am."

Outside in the windy car-park, the tents flap and the refugees queue to take soup from a 4ft-deep cauldron of yellow, scummy soup. Bags of dates have broken open and spilled on to the concrete.

It is Fallujah in miniature. Twenty teachers from the city are now running a camp school for 120 children. Doctors see patients in the sheikh’s private home. A great-grandfather in the camp says he cannot go back to his city while the Americans are there. And when I ask him if he will vote, he laughs at me. "The Americans must leave Fallujah unconditionally," the sheikh says. "They have done too much harm there to be accepted."

I suggest that Fallujah’s troubles started the day the 82nd Airborne killed 18 protesters outside a local school just after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. Dr Abdul-Kader admonishes me. "It started even before that," he says. "Fallujah people suffered under Saddam and they liberated their own city. They did not do so to live under occupation."

Über die Seite:
http://www.selvesandothers.org/

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Ein ausführlicher Artikel über Aceh,Sumatra:
http://www.counterpunch.org/roosa01122005.html

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In praise of blasphemy

A multicultural society needs not more taboos but more tolerance for taboo-breaking
Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday January 13, 2005

Guardian
Last Saturday, BBC2 showed a brilliant piece of musical theatre. Jerry Springer - The Opera was obscene, offensive, blasphemous; and the BBC was absolutely right to broadcast it. Right because the obscenity, offensiveness and blasphemy are used not just to entertain, but to convey a disturbing message about American-style popular television culture and the emotional emptiness of an atomised consumer society in which, as one chorus refrain has it, life means to "eat, excrete and watch TV".

"Oh, how my heart aches for love," the chorus sighs later, and the opera succeeds in making us feel real pathos in the character of a fat, ugly, raucous woman who wants to be a pole dancer. It does this by musical art: just listen to the fat lady sing. In a long dream sequence in hell, the Jerry Springer character is confronted by one of his programme guests who has a monkey-wrench planted in the back of her skull. We gather she has been murdered as a result of her appearance on his show. "You know, Steve," he says to his sidekick, "a person with less broadcasting experience might feel responsible."

But the BBC has acted responsibly. As its director of television, Jana Bennett, explained, the BBC weighed the programme`s "artistic merit" against the offence it would plainly cause, and found the merit weighed more. Which it does. The opera is not perfect, of course, and I could make a case that it`s ultimately parasitic on the debased American popular culture it satirises. But this is exactly the kind of bold artistic experiment that public service broadcasting should be showing - on BBC2, after children`s bedtime, with appropriate health warnings.

The Christians who burned their television licences outside Television Centre were protesting at the wrong address. If they want to demonstrate anywhere, it should be outside the American studio where the real Jerry Springer records the programme that, as the opera notes, has a worldwide audience "bigger than Bob Hope/ and, give or take a few million, bigger than the fucking Pope". There, in the Jerry Springer show itself - as also in our own endlessly tawdry Big Brother, briefly and foolishly graced by Germaine Greer - is the true degradation of humankind.

It`s interesting that the vast majority of the nearly 50,000 complaints to the BBC were lodged before the show was broadcast. Those that came after were less numerous, and many viewers called in support. A Christian from Hemel Hempstead wrote approvingly to the Times to thank the opera`s authors and the BBC: "Surely public service broadcasting is at its best when it presents to viewers uncompromising questions and challenges them, without any degree of condescension, to find a solution."

So I believe the BBC has just strengthened the case for a generous renewal of its charter. And we must stand up for it against our own nasty little version of the American religious right, called Christian Voice, which found it appropriate to defend Almighty God by posting the private telephone numbers of BBC executives on its website. When abusive phone calls predictably resulted, the director of Christian Voice, Stephen Green, said: "I was a bit naive in thinking perhaps our website would only be visited by Christians." What did he imagine people were going to do when given those numbers: sing hymns down the line?

However, there is one claim made by outraged Christians that deserves closer attention. The same Stephen Green commented: "If this show portrayed Mohammed or Vishnu as homosexual, ridiculous and ineffectual, it would never have seen the light of the day. The BBC would not dare put on a programme rubbishing the Sikh religion..." Now I may be wrong, but I have a sneaking feeling that this complaint contains at least a grain of truth.

For example, I would be very keen to see Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti`s play Behzti, which Sikh protests - and death threats to the playwright - forced the Birmingham Rep to remove from its programme. If that play is of comparable artistic merit to Jerry Springer - The Opera, and a televisable performance can be arranged, BBC2 should show it too. And, of course, Salman Rushdie`s The Satanic Verses should be available in all good bookshops.

You might argue that the established, majority religion can and should take a bit more stick than minority religions, generally brought to this country by more recent migrants. But that is not the classic liberal position and I don`t think it`s the right one. "The sum of all we drive at," wrote John Locke in his Letter Concerning Toleration, "is that every man may enjoy the same rights that are granted to others. Is it permitted to worship God in the Roman manner? Let it be permitted to do it in the Geneva form also." What Locke claimed for different forms of religious observance must surely hold today for different targets of religious disrespect: if you allow sauce to the Christian goose you must allow sauce to the Muslim gander. Or protect them both equally from sauce.

And there is the choice that faces our increasingly multicultural society. We can try to defend an ever growing number of "cultures", defined by religion, race, ethnic tradition or sexual preference, from public comment they regard as grossly offensive. There`s a case for this, but let`s be clear what it will mean. The result must inevitably be that we shall have less free speech. Future historians may look back on the last three decades of the 20th century as a high point of freedom of expression, never to be achieved again. There may be a net gain in other public goods - such as civic peace - but there`ll be a net loss of liberty.

Alternatively, we can take the view that, precisely because Britain is increasingly multicultural, all variations of religion, all "cultures" - including, of course, atheism, devout Darwinism, etc - should get used to living with a higher degree of public offence. Either you try to protect everyone from offence, or you allow offence equally for all. I`m emphatically of the offence-to-all persuasion.

Of course, there must be limits. That limit comes when offensive comment significantly increases the danger of violence or intimidation towards a given community. It`s notoriously difficult to determine when that line is crossed. And there are many different lines: one for the law courts, another for the BBC, yet another for a small magazine or theatre. But all should have this in common: that they are drawn by a sober assessment of the likelihood of significant harm being done to the offended community as a result, and not by threats from the offended community to do harm toothers (authors, editors, television executives) if the piece is not removed. The point is to prevent intimidation, not to yield to it.

If our goal is to achieve a multi-cultural society that is both free and peaceful, then what we need is not the multiplication of taboos but the expansion of tolerance. The belief in the value of tolerance is not like a belief in Jesus Christ, the prophet Muhammad, Ahura Mazda or, for that matter, the scientific wisdom of Darwin; it`s the belief that alone makes it possible for all other beliefs to coexist.

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

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Thursday, January 13, 2005

Falling like Flies
53 Iraqi Parties Withdraw from Elections

Xinhuanet reports that:



` According to the Al Furat newspaper, 53 political parties and organizations as well as 30 individuals have asked their names to be dropped from the election lists in a bid to show their rejection of elections under US occupation. `



There had been 105 parties and individuals, and 6 coalitions, participating in the elections. There were only about 30 individuals running as independents, and it appears that they have all now withdrawn. And half of the registered parties have also withdrawn, if al-Furat is correct. The individuals mostly never had a chance, since voters only get one vote, and few would have wasted it on a single individual when they could vote for an entire party list. So their withdrawal may in part simply reflect a realistic assessment of their chances. But parties at least had the potential of gaining a seat or a few seats, and their withdrawals are serious.

The same news service says that among those withdrawing is The Patriotic Front for Iraqi Tribes, a Sunni Arab party. The party, which groups 40 major tribes, said that the security situation had to improve before elections could be held. Xinhuanet said that it was also protesting the arrest of Shaikh Hasan Zaidan Khalaf al-Lahibi last week. He plays a role in uniting the tribes, and has his own party.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that, as well, Shaikh Hasan`s own party, the National Front for Iraqi Unity, has withdrawn from the election to protest his recent arrest. (This party is no. 101 on the list given here Wednesday of slates). At the Babil Hotel in Baghdad, a party official announcing the withdrawal complained that the Americans seemed uninterested in protecting candidates, and complained that the security situation made elections difficult at this time.

Al-Zaman reports that the large and powerful Dulaim tribe of Western Iraq has issued a statement condemning the killing by US troops of one of its chiefs, Shaikh Abd al-Razzaq Inad Mu`jal al-Ka`ud, last week, as well as the extensive destruction of life and property that has accompanied the US occupation in their areas. The Dulaim say that they want the United Nations to establish a fund to recompense them for their massive losses. They called for an immediate restoration of the pre-invasion Iraqi army and other security agencies. They complained that lack of security in Sunni Arab areas made voting out of the question, and said that anyway many parties were counterfeiting ballots. Of all the enemies you could have in Iraq, I would have advised the Americans not to make one of the Dulaim.

As Trudy Rubin reports from Amman, some of the Sunni Arab parties` reluctance to participate may come from foreboding of Shiite victory, something to which many Sunni Arabs have not reconciled themselves.

Minister of State Adnan Janabi, a key aide of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, has resigned to protest being detained and handcuffed by US troops at a checkpoint outside the Green Zone, where government offices and the US embassy are barricaded. It was revealed last week that Janabi was giving envelopes with $100 in them to journalists who covered the press conferences of the Iraqi National Accord, a party mainly made up of ex-Baathists that probably has little popularity in Iraq.

Wire services report 11 dead in Iraq violence, including two car bombings and a gun battle in Mosul, the assassination of the deputy police chief of Baquba, the burning of four bank guards and the shooting of a policeman in Baghdad.

Al-Hayat reports that the Shaikh al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, issued a call for Sunnis and Shiites both to participate actively in the January 30 elections. Al-Azhar University it the most prestigious Sunni seminary in the world, and its rector is widely respected. He is sometimes accused, however, of bending to government pressure, and his ruling of this week must be scene in this light.

Even as the NYT`s Christine Hauser praised the courage of Iraqi electoral workers, the newspaper`s editors published an editorial on Wednesday calling for the postponement of the elections.

Every path forward has costs. Postponing the elections leaves in place the increasingly unpopular Allawi interim government, populated by old CIA assets, which destroyed its credibility by acting as a cheering section for the US destruction of Fallujah. It could be argued that the Sunni Arab guerrilla war benefits from the perceived illegitimacy of the Allawi government, which has disappointed those who hoped it might restore order.

Postponement would risk radicalizing Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most respected leader in Iraq, who has already once demonstrated his willingness to call the faithful into the streets in the hundreds of thousands if he did not get his way on one person, one vote elections on a fast timetable. A postponement without his acquiescence would be dangerous in the extreme.

On the other hand, the credibility of elections in which the candidates have to remain anonymous to avoid being killed, and in which Sunni Arab candidates are increasingly unavailable, and in which half the lists have rushed to withdraw, is also very low. The credibility of the elections is not improved by the US killing or detaining and humiliating the party and clan leaders among the Sunnis who had still been willing to contest them, helping to drive them out of the race.

As usual in Bush`s Iraq, there are no good options here because the administration`s prior bad decisions have poisoned the most promising wells for the future.

posted by Juan @ 1/13/2005 07:34:00 AM

Pressman: Implications of Abu Mazen

Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut Political Science Department shares his thoughts in a guest editorial on the victory of Mahmud Abbas in the Palestinian elections last Sunday

Implications for the Middle East of Mahmud Abbas`s Victory

Jeremy Pressman

Artikel auf der Seite:
posted by Juan @ [url1/13/2005 06:30:39 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/pressman-implications-of-abu-mazen.html[/url]

The Third Baath Coup?

If, as I have argued, the Baathists along with some Salafi (Sunni fundamentalist) allies are behind the guerrilla war, what do they want? They want to drive the Americans out of Iraq and make a third Baath coup, putting the Shiite genie back in its bottle and restoring Sunni Arab primacy.

A third Baath coup is no more inherently implausible than the first two. The Baathists probably have access to some 250,000 tons of munitions which are still missing. They know how to use them, and have been the managerial class, and many are Iran-Iraq War and Gulf War veterans with substantial military experience.

As long-time readers know, I have long held a position similar to that enunciated by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter`s assessment that the lion`s share of violence in Iraq is the work of Baathist military intelligence and military gone underground, and that the tendency to blame everything on Zarqawi and a handful of foreigners is a propaganda move that suits both the Baath mukhabarat and the Bush administration. AP correspondent in Baghdad, Borzou Daragahi, makes much the same argument.

Only 6 percent of the fighters captured at Fallujah were foreigners, and Fallujah anyway had long had a high foreign-born population, being a frontier and desert port. By Baath I don`t necessarily mean committed ideological Baathists, but the party was how they were formed politically, along with networks of clientelage based in the Sunni Arab heartland.

The Baath has been systematically killing members of the new political class. This is visible at the provincial level. The governors of Diyala and Baghdad provinces have recently been killed. The killing and kidnapping of members of the provincial governing councils go virtually unremarked in the US press but are legion. A female member of the Salahuddin GC was kidnapped and killed recently. The police chiefs of many cities have been killed or kidnapped, or members of their family have, such that many more have just resigned, often along with dozens of their men. The US is powerless to stop this campaign of assassination.

And this is my problem with the idea of just having the US suddenly withdraw its military from Iraq. What is to stop the neo-Baath from just killing Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim Jaafari, Iyad Allawi (who is rumored not to sleep in the same bed twice), etc., all the members of the provincial councils and the new parliament, and then making a military coup that brings the party and its Sunni patronage networks back to power?

I think this coup would look more like the failed 1963 effort than like 1968, and has the potential to roil the country and the region for decades. The tanks and helicopter gunships and chemical weapons that the Sunni Arab minority regime used to put down the other groups are gone, and it is not clear that car bombs, Kalashnikovs and sniping could substitute for them. They can probably take the Green Zone and the television stations if the US abruptly withdraws, but could they really put down the South effectively again?

For this reason, I fear I think the US is stuck in Iraq. Sistani clearly fears a Sunni Arab coup, as well, and this is one reason he has not acted forcefully to end the military occupation, which he deeply dislikes.

Is the Neo-Baath Coup scenario one that the US could live with?

posted by Juan @ [url1/13/2005 06:19:23 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/allawi-pockets-will-not-be-able-to.html[/url]

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January 16, 2005
FRANK RICH
All the President`s Newsmen

ONE day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.

This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart`s famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn`t just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.

I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN`s signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.

On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers` money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration`s No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you`d think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson`s departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.

But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show`s purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala`s benediction: "God bless you for that."

"On the right" was the columnist Robert Novak, who "in the interests of full disclosure" told the audience he is a "personal friend" of Mr. Williams, whom he "greatly" admires as "one of the foremost voices for conservatism in America." Needless to say, Mr. Novak didn`t have any tough questions, either, but we should pause a moment to analyze this "Crossfire" co-host`s disingenuous use of the term "full disclosure."

Last year Mr. Novak had failed to fully disclose - until others in the press called him on it - that his son is the director of marketing for Regnery, the company that published "Unfit for Command," the Swift boat veterans` anti-Kerry screed that Mr. Novak flogged relentlessly on CNN and elsewhere throughout the campaign. Nor had he fully disclosed, as Mary Jacoby of Salon reported, that Regnery`s owner also publishes his subscription newsletter ($297 a year). Nor has Mr. Novak fully disclosed why he has so far eluded any censure in the federal investigation of his outing of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, while two other reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time, are facing possible prison terms in the same case. In this context, Mr. Novak`s "full disclosure" of his friendship with Mr. Williams is so anomalous that it raised many more questions than it answers.

That he and Mr. Begala would be allowed to lob softballs at a man who may have been a cog in illegal government wrongdoing, on a show produced by television`s self-proclaimed "most trusted" news network, is bad enough. That almost no one would notice, let alone protest, is a snapshot of our cultural moment, in which hidden agendas in the presentation of "news" metastasize daily into a Kafkaesque hall of mirrors that could drive even the most earnest American into abject cynicism. But the ugly bigger picture reaches well beyond "Crossfire" and CNN.

Mr. Williams has repeatedly said in his damage-control press appearances that he was being paid the $240,000 only to promote No Child Left Behind. He also routinely says that he made the mistake of taking the payola because he wasn`t part of the "media elite" and therefore didn`t know "the rules and guidelines" of journalistic conflict-of-interest. His own public record tells us another story entirely. While on the administration payroll he was not only a cheerleader for No Child Left Behind but also for President Bush`s Iraq policy and his performance in the presidential debates. And for a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC.

He took to CNN last October to give his own critique of the CBS News scandal, pointing out that the producer of the Bush-National Guard story, Mary Mapes, was guilty of a conflict of interest because she introduced her source, the anti-Bush partisan Bill Burkett, to a Kerry campaign operative, Joe Lockhart. In this Mr. Williams`s judgment was correct, but grave as Ms. Mapes`s infraction was, it isn`t quite in the same league as receiving $240,000 from the United States Treasury to propagandize for the Bush campaign on camera. Mr. Williams also appeared with Alan Murray on CNBC to trash Kitty Kelley`s book on the Bush family, on CNN to accuse the media of being Michael Moore`s "p.r. machine" and on Tina Brown`s CNBC talk show to lambaste Mr. Stewart for doing a "puff interview" with John Kerry on "The Daily Show" (which Mr. Williams, unsurprisingly, seems to think is a real, not a fake, news program).

But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."

This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel`s "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn`t have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry.

Ever since Mr. Williams was exposed by USA Today, he has been stonewalling all questions about what the Bush administration knew of his activities and when it knew it. In his account, he was merely a lowly "subcontractor" of the education department. "Never was the White House ever mentioned anytime during this," he told NBC`s Campbell Brown, as if that were enough to deflect Ms. Brown`s observation that "the Department of Education works for the White House." For its part, the White House is saying that the whole affair is, in the words of the press secretary, Scott McClellan, "a contracting matter" and "a decision by the Department of Education." In other words, the buck stops (or started) with Rod Paige, the elusive outgoing education secretary who often appeared with Mr. Williams in his pay-for-play propaganda.

But we now know that there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news "reports" in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be "reporting" why the administration`s Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits "covert propaganda" purchased with taxpayers` money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris.

Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman`s death by friendly fire - it`s assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn`t "heard" whether the administration`s senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.

If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of "Crossfire," it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which "others" Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Mehr Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Thursday, January 13, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

War News for Thursday, January 13, 2005

"There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." - George W. Bush, July 2, 2003.

Bring ‘em on: Aide to Ayatollah Sistani killed along with his son and four bodyguards in Salman Pak. Another Sistani aide killed in Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: Six construction workers killed and Turkish businessman kidnapped by gunmen in central Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Member of Diyala province local council shot to death in Baquaba. One Iraqi police officer killed and six wounded in roadside bombing in Baquaba. Iraqi National Guard captain gunned down in Quaim.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqi soldiers killed and eight wounded in two separate attacks in Mosul. One insurgent killed and one wounded in another incident in southern Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Assistant to the mayor shot dead in Baquaba.

Bring ‘em on: Two car bombings in Mosul kill two Iraqi soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. Four bank guards burned to death in attack on van carrying coins in Baghdad. Policeman shot dead in Baghdad. Three civilians killed by Iraqi soldiers when their car failed to stop at a checkpoint in Duluiya. Four Iraqi soldiers killed in attacks around Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed in Al Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: French reporter kidnapped in Baghdad, Iraqi interpreter disappears in same incident.

Infiltrated: As usual, it was an inside job. Brig Amer Ali Nayef, deputy head of the Baghdad police, and his policeman son, Lt Khaled Amer, were driving to work in an unmarked civilian car, hoping to move through the streets of Dora without being noticed.

But the two carloads of gunmen who approached from behind knew the car, its registration number and its occupants. They blazed away with Kalashnikovs until Nayef, dead at the wheel, drove into a house.

Every day now brings its sinister evidence that the Iraqi security forces - supposedly screened by American military officers - have been infiltrated by the insurgents.


Two hours grace: Engineers have repaired a major pipeline linking Kirkuk`s oil fields with the northern refinery of Beiji after a sabotage attack interrupted pumping for three weeks, an official with the North Oil Co. said Thursday.

The official said pumping to the refinery resumed two hours before Beiji`s reserves would have run out.

The Grand Coalition: Kazakhstan does not consider withdrawing its military mission from Iraq yet, Kazakh Defense Minister Mukhtar Altynbayev said on Thursday.

In August 2003 Kazakhstan sent a 27-man strong platoon of combat engineers to Iraq to be attached to the international stabilization force. The Kazakh unit is tasked with mine-clearing operations, and delivering water to the locals.

Tough sell: With elections less than three weeks away, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is spending much of his tenure`s final days wooing Iraqis and reassuring them of his ability to lead this nation fatigued by war and terror.

It could be a tough sell.

In the six months since the U.S.-backed, tough-talking leader took the helm, things have gotten steadily worse in much of Iraq. An insurgency now nearing its two-year mark has intensified, racial and religious divisions have deepened and discontent has grown over a wide array of problems, from crime and unemployment to power outages and fuel shortages.

Dahr Jamail: During my last trip I interviewed several IP`s (Iraqi police) who complained of lack of weapons, radios and vehicles from the occupation forces. Their complaints were centered on the fact that the resistance had better weapons than the police.

Later in my room we watched a press conference on the television with the so-called interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. A journalist asked him if it was true that the cell phone service would be cut on the 15th of this month because of the upcoming "elections."

He dodged the question, deferring it to the ministry of defense. The same ministry of defense who yesterday announced that the Iraqi Army was 50,000 troops and hoped that it would be increased to 70,000. Just today Allawi announced that it was comprised of 100,000 troops.

Lower expectations: The White House sought Wednesday to lower expectations for Iraq`s elections, suggesting that there could be little or no voting in the most unstable provinces and that polling is likely to be disrupted in places by violence.

The election carries large stakes for President Bush. With the war a central focus of his presidency, Bush has steadfastly refused to delay the elections and repeatedly promised they will be a key turning point for Iraqis. But insurgents have launched an escalating campaign of violence that is taking its toll, both in U.S. military casualties and in increased risks for Iraqi voters and candidates. Some Sunni factions also are mounting a boycott.

Support the troops!: An Army National Guard soldier said Tuesday that the inadequate training and equipment he received had led him to abandon his unit rather than face deployment to Iraq

Among his concerns, Jacobo said, was that he had been unable to find anyone at his Texas training base who could fix his M-4 assault rifle, the primary weapon he would carry in Iraq. The weapon jams, he said.

Soldiers in Jacobo`s Modesto-based National Guard unit — the 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment — went public late last month with concerns that they would suffer needlessly high casualty rates in Iraq because of poor training. Military officials have denied the soldiers` charges, voiced in an article in the Los Angeles Times.

The soldiers, who trained at the Army`s Ft. Bliss Training Complex, said there were equipment problems, including trucks without adequate armor and a shortage of night-vision goggles. They also said they had received very little "theater specific" training to prepare them for conditions in Iraq. For example, the soldiers said they had learned nothing about convoy protection or guarding against insurgents` roadside bombs.

Good for the LNG!: A US National Guard unit has defied a Pentagon request that sought to stop television news crews filming six flag-draped soldiers` coffins arriving in Louisiana.

The Pentagon has barred US media from filming the coffins of US service members arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

But the Louisiana National Guard allowed a CBS news crew on Wednesday to film the arrival of six soldiers` coffins at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse, near New Orleans, Louisiana.

Numbers

Forensics: Of the 951 combat deaths from the start of the war in March 2003 through the end of November, 486 were caused by blast injuries and 310 by bullets, according to the report by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, a Pentagon agency charged with investigating deaths during military operations.

The causes of the remainder of the combat deaths include 89 "blunt force" injuries and 66 labeled "other," everything from burns and asphyxia to electrocution and drowning.

Of the 306 noncombat deaths, 225 were caused by accidents, mostly involving vehicles, in particular, Humvees. Forty were attributed to suicide, 27 to natural causes, and two were homicides. Five deaths were due to undetermined causes, and results were pending on seven others, the report said.

Car bombs: Vehicles packed with explosives, often detonated by suicide attackers, have become one of the insurgency`s most lethal weapons. An Associated Press tally shows there have been at least 181 of them since Iraq`s interim government took over June 28 -- just a handful at first but surging to a rate of one or more a day in recent months.

Those bombs killed about 1,000 people, both Iraqis and Americans, and wounded twice as many. The tally found that 68 bombings were suicide attacks and the rest were detonated by other means. Most involved cars, but some used trucks and even motorcycles.

According to the AP tally, there were two car bombs on the last day of June, 11 in July and 12 in August. The numbers surged in the following months, with 26 in September, 43 in October and 48 in November -- eight of them on a single day, Nov. 6. December saw 27 and January is averaging about one a day -- a dozen in the first 11 days.

Active duty: This week, the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is 4,936 more reservists mobilized than last week.

At any given time, services may mobilize some units and individuals while demobilizing others, making it possible for these figures to either increase or decrease. Total number currently on active duty in support of the partial mobilization for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve is 163,655; Naval Reserve, 3,539; Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, 11,741; Marine Corps Reserve, 13,473; and the Coast Guard Reserve, 967. This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to 193,375, including both units and individual augmentees.

Non-active duty: An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq, reflecting Washington`s growing problems with troop morale.

Comedy Clown Corner

Cannabis ‘n Coke Clown: Retired U.S. Gen. Barry McCaffrey said the war against drugs is a bigger problem than the war against terror.


<>McCaffrey -- the drug czar under former President Bill Clinton -- says 52,000 people die from drugs each year compared to the 12,000 U.S. troops that have been killed or wounded in Iraq since the war started.

General, maybe you’d better stop doing those drugs you’re so worried about. Because you must be stoned if you think the war in Iraq has anything to do with fighting terrorism.

Couture Clown: Paul Bremer, former U.S. administrator in Iraq, defended the decision by U.S.-led forces to disband Saddam Hussein`s army and bar senior Baathists from government jobs after what he called the "liberation" of the country.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Bremer said a key objective of the war had been to create a "New Iraq" after more than 30 years in which Saddam used the army and intelligence services "to inflict misery, torture and death".

Creepy Clown: "Somebody has been reading too many spy novels."

That reaction came today from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to reports, published on Newsweek`s Web site, that suggest military planners are mulling a so-called "Salvador option" for use against Iraqi insurgents.

Newsweek reports the plan is for American Special Forces units to train Iraqi soldiers to serve as "death squads" to hunt down insurgents. The Newsweek report also suggests the units might even go into places like Syria to hunt down insurgent leaders.

Rumsfeld says "the Pentagon doesn`t do things like that."

Killer Clown: On the same day that the White House conceded that its futile search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was, indeed, finally over, President Bush told Barbara Walters that the invasion of Iraq was "absolutely" worth it.

ABC News reports: "The invasion of Iraq, which ousted Saddam Hussein and has cost the lives of some 1,300 U.S. military personnel and billions of dollars, was `absolutely` worth it, despite the absence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, President Bush told ABC News` Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview that will air this Friday."

American Moral Leadership

Which four?: At the urging of the White House, Congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by American intelligence officers, Congressional officials say.

The Senate had approved the new restrictions, by a 96-to-2 vote, as part of the intelligence reform legislation. They would have explicitly extended to intelligence officers a prohibition against torture or inhumane treatment, and would have required the C.I.A. as well as the Pentagon to report to Congress about the methods they were using.

But in intense closed-door negotiations, Congressional officials said, four senior members from the House and Senate deleted the restrictions from the final bill after the White House expressed opposition.

Commentary

Opinion: Americans seem eager to "support our troops" these days. It says so on the bumper of every other car on the road, anyway.

But how our government treats the troops when they come home - as veterans - is no cause for bumper sticker pride.

A trillion-dollar deficit, caused mainly by huge tax cuts during the past four years, has led the VA to impose many economies, small and large. Seven VA hospitals are scheduled to be closed, for instance. The VA is also reviewing the possibility of reneging on a landmark 1996 reform that more than tripled the number of veterans eligible for health-care coverage - from 2 million to 7 million.

Opinion: Terry Jones asks in the Guardian:"Why are there no fundraisers for the Iraqi dead?"

"According to the only scientific estimate attempted, Iraqi deaths since the war began number more than 100,000. The tsunami death toll is in the region of 150,000. Yet in the case of Iraq, the media seems reluctant to impress on the public the scale of the carnage.

"I haven`t seen many TV reporters standing in the ruins of Fallujah, breathlessly describing how, in 30 years of reporting, they`ve never seen a human tragedy on this scale. The Pope hasn`t appealed for everyone to remember the Iraqi dead in their prayers, and MTV hasn`t gone silent in their memory."

Opinion: One of the most chin-forward letters to the editor ever published in The Sun came in early June 2003, from Victoria Clarke, who at the time was the spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. She argued that the reports of looting, murder and disorder in Baghdad following the fall of Saddam Hussein had been greatly exaggerated, and that on a per capita basis, the Iraqi capital was considerably safer and more law-abiding than crime-ridden Baltimore. And every day, she noted, the Coalition Provisional Authority was extending security and order, preparing Iraq for democratic sovereignty.

Well, that was then and this is now. Just yesterday, two oil pipelines, one of them only three days old, were bombed near Kirkuk, a bank truck was stolen and three guards were killed in Baghdad, four civilians and five soldiers died in attacks in Mosul, a Japanese base came under mortar attack, the bodies of eight Ukrainian soldiers were airlifted back to Kiev, and it was reported by an American general that Iraq`s electricity supply had fallen to a record low.

Opinion: I wouldn`t go calling anyone a liar, but as we say in our quaint Texas fashion, this administration is stuffed with people who are on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck. They`ve been telling us only four out of the 18 provinces in Iraq will be too unsafe to vote in. Doesn`t sound that bad, does it? Unless you happen to know that about 50 percent of the population lives in those four provinces.

Will someone explain to me what earthly good they expect to do by misleading us? If, God forbid, the Iraqi election turns out to be a disaster, will we be better off for not having expected it? How long are Bush and Cheney going to sit there pretending the problem is that the media won`t report the "good news" out of Iraq? Be a lot more useful if they paid attention to some of the bad news.

Editorial: "There’s an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can’t get fooled again." -- George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002.

After almost two years, the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has been called off. The 1,200 military and intelligence specialists that comprised the Iraq Survey Group has pored through military installations, factories and laboratories, and interviewed scores of scientists, technicians and Saddam Hussein loyalists. They’ve come up with nothing.

Now, more than 1,100 American troops are dead, uncounted thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and the country is a seething tinderbox that explodes every day. The operation the neocons predicted would be a cakewalk could total more than $200 billion through 2005, by some estimates. Instead of being greeted with flowers and chocolates, U.S. troops face sniper fire and car bombings every day. The sales job that defined the Bush administration’s first term has exploded in its face, and there’s no end in sight.

Opinion: For more than three years, President George W. Bush has been using the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and legal sophistry produced by attorneys appointed to key positions in the White House, Justice Department and the Department of Defense to justify the exercise of essentially unlimited and unchecked presidential power.

Six months before the 2002 torture memo was issued, Bush used opinions from the same legal team in declaring that the Geneva Conventions, treaties signed and ratified by the United States and obeyed by presidents for more than 50 years, were optional obligations to be applied or ignored as he saw fit. Prisoners taken in the course of actions he chose to label as the war on terrorism - whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere - would be entitled to Geneva protections only if he judged them deserving of it. And they would be held, questioned and treated as he determined they should be.

For all their bullying assertions of power and moral superiority, these are frightened little men who lack faith in the elemental principles of the most noble and heroic nation in human history. They`re afraid that American ideals are too weak to prevail against the ruthless rage of terrorists, afraid that the rule of law is inferior to the rule of violence and intimidation.

In this, they are terribly terribly wrong.

Opinion: While it is tragic that many more American soldiers will die in vain, courtesy of George W. Bush, the future would be infinitely worse had the war gone according to plan. If the United States military had successfully pacified the Iraqis, thereby facilitating an occupation that was relatively easy for America, Iraq would have been just the first domino to fall. Iran would have toppled next, and then Kazakhstan, and then anywhere else Islam and petroleum intersect to provide the pretext for corporate plunder.

That Iraq has become a quagmire should be viewed as a painful yet welcome development by those Americans who do not want our country to be the national equivalent of the Hell’s Angels. Periodically throughout our history, the American majority has had to relearn the importance of what Dr. Phil and international law books term “boundaries”. Having again stormed into a smaller nation that posed no threat, Americans will now pay the excruciating price of having forgotten our most recent lesson in humility.

The invasion of Iraq was classic Soviet-style hegemony, an indefensible crime camouflaged by a blizzard of lies. Despite what red state moralists contend, invading a defenseless country, raping its people, committing mass murder, and then looting the place is not praiseworthy in the commonly accepted definition of the term. It is, in fact, a debasement of Americanism. Given the current zeitgeist of the United States, the Bush crusade to vanquish evildoers by emulating them will end only after the agony of continuing becomes unbearable.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Philadelphia area soldier killed in Ar Ramadi.

Local story: Evening Shade, MO, soldier killed in Taji.


Note to Readers

The editorial staff of Today in Iraq - that would be Yankeedoodle and myself - extend vast amounts of heartfelt gratitude to loyal reader Scaryduck who has most graciously underwritten the cost of expanding the #*%@!!! haloscan comments limit from 1000 to 3000 characters. Speaking as one who has several times used language that made the cat blush when my comments were cut off by that stupid and arbritrary limit, I say "Thank you, o, thank you, Scaryduck!" and I hope all you regular comment writers will raise a glass of your favorite libation to him as well. Oh, and check out his blog - it`s just over there to the right.

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Jan 12, 2005

China becomes No 3 trading nation

BEIJING - China has become the world`s third-largest trading nation, following the United States and Germany, as its foreign trade value hit a record high of US$1 trillion in the first 11 months of 2004, and the whole year`s figure was expected to reach US$1.1 trillion. Simultaneously, Shanghai reportedly has overtaken Rotterdam as the No 1 port in terms of cargo throughput, handling 382 million metric tons last year.

Figures from the General Administration of Customs (GAC) showed that the nation`s foreign trade surplus reached US$21 billion, with exports soaring to US$529 billion. Media reports on Tuesday said China`s exports rose 33% in December, widening the trade surplus to an all-time high. Overseas shipments reached $63.8 billion, pushing the trade gap to $11.1 billion, according to the Ministry of Commerce website that day. Imports also increased 25% from a year earlier to a record $52.7 billion.

This year`s foreign trade is also expected to maintain a similar growth rate, according to experts. Zhang Hanlin, a researcher with the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said: "Exports will increase by 20-22%, and imports will grow 25%, increasing overall foreign trade by 20%." The global economy is likely to grow by 3.5-4% this year, according to him. China`s major foreign trade partners are also expected to witness economic growth. The European Union will expand by 1.8%, Japan by 1.5-1.8%, and the US and South Korea will grow by 3.5% and 5%.

Further tariff cuts are the second factor set to boost China`s foreign trade, Zhang said. IT (information technology) products, home appliances and textile products will remain the major driving forces of China`s exports. Zhang holds that the IT sector, which experienced over 50% growth in exports last year, has established a solid production base in China. Fierce competition in the sector means that increasing numbers of foreign manufacturers will move their factories to China, which will stimulate trade growth. And though the textile industry faces an average export tariff of 1.3%, which was implemented by the GAC at the beginning of this year, its exports will keep growing this year, Zhang predicted.

But he pointed out that there will be no let-up in terms of trade disputes despite the Chinese government`s efforts to ease them. As for imports, automobiles will experience an increase because of the country`s tariff cut last year from 37.6% down to 30% this year. Automobile imports grew over 40% in recent years, with this trend set to continue in 2005, Zhang said.

Experts believe China should not over-emphasize its trade volume, noting that the trade structure is more important. The processing trade volume reached $600 billion last year, accounting for more than half the total. About 58% of exports came from the processing trade, and it accounted for 50% of imports. Zhang said: "China does not benefit dramatically from large amounts of such foreign trade. As more foreign firms move their manufacturing bases to China, they also bring materials from abroad and sell processed products overseas. We need to find out who is making money from this trade. The answer is not China, but rather the multinationals."

Zhao Jinping, an expert from the State Council Research and Development Center, said China may be a large trading nation, but it has yet to become a robust trading nation. China Economic Times quoted him as saying that China`s foreign trade remains weak in three respects: its trade does not exercise a great influence on either the domestic or world economy; exporters are weak in terms of their research and development (R&D) capabilities and brand development; domestic firms do not hold the right to distribute profits in their hands.

Wang Linsheng, another expert from the University of International Business and Economics, agreed. "China lacks core technology intellectual property rights, its own brands and a complete marketing network," Wang pointed out. He suggested the country should add value to its exports by increasing investment in R&D, acquiring core departments from foreign firms and establishing joint ventures. China`s exports remain low-tech, with the general trade in high-tech products accounting for very little of overall trade. The government should establish a system to support those exporting firms, he said.

Zhang Yansheng, director of the Institute of International Economic Research under the National Development and Reform Commission, said a modern industrial economy needs to be established based on mature technology and innovation. China should promote its advanced sectors and develop them into a driving force for foreign trade, he said.

xxx China`s foreign trade volume has been galloping in recent years, from joining the world`s top 10 in 1997, to the top 7 in 2000, and entering the top 4 in 2003. According to the General Administrationn of Customs, the price of imported products grew by 10.4% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2004, becoming the highest figure in the past 10 years, while the volume rose by 25.2%. These two factors lifted the first three quarters` trade value by 38.2%.

Rapid global economic growth and rocketing oil prices are the reasons for this growth. Textile exports exceeded those of natural resources, such as oil, for the first time. "It is a pleasant phenomenon to see a drop in the export of natural resources," Zhang said. Exports of high-value-added products, such as machinery and IT products, started to be the driving force of trade in 2004.

The country`s macro-economic adjustment measures took effect in terms of foreign trade, turning the $10 billion trade deficit into a surplus of $10 billion by the end of last October. Imports maintained a growth rate of over 40% in the first four months of 2004. Steel, cement, real estate and aluminum industries have all experienced a much-needed cooling down. Meanwhile, sectors like coal, electricity, oil and transportation have received government support. China imported 99.59 million tons of crude oil in the first 10 months of last year, up 34.3% year-on-year.

More exports to Korea than US
The volume of Chinese imports purchased by South Korea exceeded those that went into the US for the first time last year, the Korea Customs Service said Tuesday. On a customs-cleared basis, China accounted for 13.2%, or $29.6 billion, of South Korea`s total imports, but only made up 12.8%, or $28.8 billion of the bulk of US imports, the office said. Last year, South Korea posted the single largest trade surplus with China at $20.2 billion, more than three times the $5.7 billion registered in 2001.

(Asia Pulse/XIC/Yonhap)

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Published on Thursday, January 13, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Anti-Americans
by Guy Reel


It`s been a little more than two months since the election, and one thing is clear: You`ve got to hand it to the rightie-tighties. The pursed-lipped, pseudo-moralist right-wing commentators and pundits have the debate right where they want it. Their arguments are so easy and simple, they have mass appeal. They have the Democrats cornered, and unless the frame of the debate is changed, the Democrats have little chance of reversing the political fortunes of the nation for some time.

The following observations are aimed at the right-wing pundits - not at the numerous Republicans who just want the same things we all do: safety, security, a good educational system, a high standard of living, an ability to offer hope for the rest of the world. Most mainstream Republicans by definition aren`t radicals, and most don`t even listen to the cable news and right-wing radio commentators. Thus, many of them are by chance not aware, or are deliberately unaware, of the right`s poisonous commentary that passes for political debate in America. What that means is - most Republicans don`t know about the radical voices that speak for them. For the pundits who dominate the airwaves - the rightie-tighties - are painting their opponents as enemies not just of America, but of normalcy, decency, and common sense. In other words, the right-wing commentators are creating an atmosphere that threatens the fabric of our democracy by casting liberal foes as enemies and as corrupt spiritual and moral cowards. To stop this insanity, and the division, Republicans of good conscience need to stand up and be counted among the reasonable.

Think about it for a second. Here`s the way the extreme right-wingers - i.e., people you hear every day, all day, on TV and radio - have termed the debate:

If you fight for civil liberties, you`re pro-criminal.

If you fight for justice in U.S. foreign policies, you`re anti-American.

If you think people should have a right to determine their life partners and give them health benefits, you`re pro-queer.

If you question the justice of a war based on false intelligence, you don`t support the troops.

If you think the U.S. government should not be spying on its own citizens, you`re pro-terrorist.

If you think the United States should not be torturing those it holds captive, you`re coddling murderers.

If you think people should not be held indefinitely without trial or lawyers, you support terrorism.

If you think society should help the poor, you`re soft on the shiftless.

If you want equal education for all, you`re pro-black at the expense of whites.

If you want health care for all, you`re a socialist.

If you think everyone has a right to a fair trial, you`re soft on crime.

If you hope for a fairer tax system, you`re for higher taxes.

If you want a government that helps people, you`re for big government.

The list of lies could go on. But in short, it is clear that the righteous right has done a great job of framing the debate as one that pits "normal" and "good" Americans against all the "others" - the poor, the minorities, the gays, the disenfranchised, and the liberals who sometimes champion their causes. Consequently, many of these "normal" Americans are convinced that the Democrats and the liberals are their enemies. Of course, the right-wing`s ability to fight ideological wars in the homeland is remarkably more efficient than their ability to manage real fighting overseas; perhaps that`s to be expected, since many of the neocons and their mendacious pundit friends are notorious draft-dodgers.

Their rhetorical trick is no secret. The right-wing blowhards make no distinctions between Democrats, liberals, and extreme left-wingers who do indeed sometimes espouse values that are out of touch with most people. Thus, Democrats or liberals are called anti-American, and are painted as against common-sense values that ordinarily would unite us all.

But here is the rub: The opposite is what is actually true: The real anti-Americans are the rabid right-wingers who are polluting our airwaves with endless lies and paranoia that are poisoning the nation and its future.

The real anti-Americans are those who, if you will just take a moment to listen to the pundits and observe the policies of this administration, are against the greatest principles upon which this country was founded:

They are against personal liberty, having endorsed government suspension of habeus corpus and having backed the government`s power to monitor what books you check out of the library.

They are for big government, wanting a government so invasive that it can monitor your bedroom activities or stop a grandmother from smoking pot to alleviate her cancer pain.

They are against civil liberties, having supported the government`s power to spy on our bookstore, credit card and hotel receipts.

They have fought for a weaker military, having compromised the country`s military might and harmed our readiness to wage necessary wars, all the while fighting against better benefits for veterans and those in harm`s way.

They favor a weaker America, supporting fiscal policies that are emasculating the nation through ruinous deficits and reckless fiscal acts that threaten the dollar and our standard of living, thus compromising our position as the world`s greatest power.

They support a secretive government, founded on cronyism and ideological loyalties rather than upon democracy and openness.

They are undermining the United States` leadership as a moral beacon for the world, having ignored many of our allies and sponsored an arrogant foreign policy that encourages terrorism.

They are against basic morals, such as help for the poor, education for all, social security, and universal health care for children, the poor and the unemployed.

They are on the side of the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of the underdog, having redirected tax and regulatory policies that favor the richest among us.

They are against the young and unborn, having enacted policies that increase the number of abortions and the infant mortality rate.

They are against states` rights, having backed judges who favor greater federal power in energy, health care, and electoral policies.

They are for environmental policies that are not conservationist - i.e., are not conservative - but instead reward polluters and promote consumption of resources.

They are anti-capitalist, favoring not a free marketplace but a big government that determines winners and losers through payouts to the biggest contributors to their coffers - i.e., the wealthiest drug, energy, business and military contractors.

They are hypocrites, immoral in their personal conduct - as are we all - but they loudly and happily condemn those on the other side as hypocrites and examples of moral failings.

They are against the greatest of American values - common sense - by offering arguments even the most casual listening reveals are blatantly illogical and prone to fallacy.

They look upon the ordinary people, even those who support them, with contempt, as they speak as demagogues yet condemn those who speak out against them as demagogues.

None of this sounds like the Americans I know.

That`s especially true of the Republicans I know. Yet, the Republicans are allowing these dangerous demagogues to speak as conservatives, which they are not; they are allowing them to speak out as as pro-American, which they are not; and they are letting them pose as Republicans, which they certainly are not. These right-wing pundits are dangerous not just for the Democrats, but will almost certainly prove to be, ultimately, the undoing of the Republicans. That`s because once a few of their lies collapse, their entire system of propaganda will collapse in a matter of weeks. Republicans with sense and with morals must speak out to be heard above them, and they must do it now - for their own survival as well as for our well being as a nation.

America has always stood for justice, freedom, and hope for the downtrodden. If you don`t believe it, read the enscription on the Statue of Liberty. America is a conservative nation, given to conservative values of freedom, caution, happiness, and hope. Yet none of these values are embodied by the people who speak for the far right today. They are not conservative, and they believe in few of our American ideals. Listen to them. They have lied so succesfully they have convinced those who do believe them that it is the "other side," not them, who are the anti-Americans. It is a common tool of propaganda - do what the enemy does, while blaming the enemy for it - and it must be stopped.

Many, many Republicans are not on the side of these pundits. Yet party affilitation and the "blue-state/red-state" dichotomy has colored our thinking. We are being divided by the lies of the right-wing pundits.

It must be said now, and it must be said again and again: These pundits claim the Democrats and the liberals are anti-American. But of course it is the other way around. The extreme right-wing commentators are anti-American in every way - in their values, morals, conduct, hypocrisy, and propagandist denegration of the values they claim to espouse.

That is the way to reframe the debate. The liberals aren`t the anti-Americans. The anti-Americans are the ultra right-wing hysterics who are warning you against the nefarious liberals. The anti-Americans are the ones who are actually warning you against basic American values, yet they are the same people pretending to be wrapped up in the cloth of the American flag.

If that seems harsh, it must be said because, after all, they say it every single day about anyone who disagrees with them.

Guy Reel is an assistant professor of mass communication at Winthrop University. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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Published on Thursday, January 13, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Why We Are Horrified By The Destructive Forces Of Nature But Accept Our Own Violence
by Lucinda Marshall


The recent avalanche of American generosity towards those whose lives have been destroyed by the horrific damage of the Tsunami offers a troubling contrast to our callousness towards those whose lives have been wrecked by the man-made horrors of war. The uncomfortable reality is that the purposeful suffering inflicted by armed conflict is more morally tolerable than suffering caused by natural disasters.

To understand this dichotomy of conscience, consider why wars are fought. They are not fought to liberate a people or bring democracy to a country. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had little to do with liberating women or throwing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein out of power and even the White House now admits that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. These wars, like all wars, have been fought because of greed and the quest for power and control, and the perceived need to restore honor. They are being fought to maintain and perpetuate a dominator, patriarchal society

We accept the cost of war, that collateral damage is a necessary if unfortunate side effect of our violence. Due to the near total information lockdown imposed by the military there are few pictures of Fallujah after the U.S. attack on that city. That is regrettable because it would be interesting to see pictures of Fallujah side by side with the devastation caused by the Tsunami. One wonders what difference, if any, there is between a city that has been bombed away and one that has been flooded away. They are both reduced to rubble, the surrounding landscapes permanently altered.

More profoundly, what about the impact on people`s lives? We are rushing to send water and medical supplies, food and clothing to the victims of the Tsunami. But in Iraq, we have deliberately destroyed the water and electrical systems and made little effort to repair and replace them. The result is an extreme shortage of potable water and not enough power for such things as refrigerating food. We have bombed hospitals and cut off medical supplies, gasoline is scarce and expensive. People are without homes, jobs or schools. And as is always the case, civilians, most of them women and children, bear the brunt of this collateral damage.

By their very nature, wars are purposely destructive. We destroy the land and the people living there who are in our way or challenge our right to control them. It is no accident that we poison the land with permanently devastating weapons like depleted uranium and nuclear bombs or that the victims are disproportionately female. The rise of the patriarchal society in which we live was made possible by the domination of both the natural world and of women.

So why our greater horror at the devastation caused by the Tsunami? Quite simply, we are determined not to let the forces of nature have the upper hand. It is worth remembering that this country was settled in large part by taming the wilderness and its inhabitants. Today we pollute our waterways, our air and land with all manner of toxic pollution. We do this with no regard for the destructive impact of our actions because we have come to believe that the water, the air, indeed the whole world, are ours to control and use as we please. The damage done is merely the collateral damage of our insatiable need to have the most, to be the biggest and the best.

And everywhere, we shut our eyes to the victimization of women, particularly due to conflict. We shut our eyes to the shocking numbers of women who live in poverty and don`t have enough to eat. We see the male privilege that allows sexism and violence against women as how the system works rather than mechanisms that perpetuate patriarchal control.

The domination of women and the earth have always been crucial to patriarchy because it is the only way to control the perpetuation of life. Forcing a woman to have sex against her will or denying her food to feed her family controls who lives and who dies. We add chemical fertilizers to crops in an attempt to grow more food, we mine the earth of its resources to supply our `needs` and build structures in which to live. Conversely, when we go to war, we destroy our enemy`s homes and infrastructure and poison their resources in order to control them.

Because these acts are deliberate, we are not affronted by the damage they cause. Just like men frequently beat women `for their own good`, the havoc of war, albeit unfortunate, is considered acceptable because it strengthens our control. Natural disasters on the other hand, particularly of the size of the recent Tsunami, are not within our control*. They assault our sense of power over the land and over our lives. We are quick to offer aid to the survivors and restore things to their man-made state because it is unthinkable that such a tragedy occurred at the hand of forces beyond our control (which we quickly want to re-assert).

War and violence however, are ours to control and it therefore seems perverse that we are so accepting of the incredible damage and hundreds of thousands of lives lost due to our insatiable lust for power. Unlike deaths due to natural causes, we are culpable for this carnage. It is time to realize that true empowerment will only be achieved by taking responsibility for the destruction that takes place by our own hands.

*Obscenely, we did in fact know that such an earthquake was likely to occur and chose not to warn those affected for fear of economic repercussions. While it is not clear how many lives this would have saved, the implicit arrogance vis a vis the forces of nature versus our own selfishness is clear.

Lucinda Marshall ([e-mail]) is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, www.feministpeacenetwork.org which publishes Atrocities, a bulletin documenting violence against women throughout the world. Her work has been published in numerous publications including, Awakened Woman, Alternet, Dissident Voice, Off Our Backs, The Progressive, Rain and Thunder, Z Magazine , Common Dreams and Information Clearinghouse.

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Dahr Jamail`s Iraq Dispatches

January 13, 2005
A Restless Calm…

I’m typing as mortars are blasting away in the nearby “Green Zone.” Mortars are easy to tell-the higher pitched ‘thunk’ of their launch, then a pause, then a loud boom that echoes through the still night. Blaring sirens wail in the distance, along with the random cracking of gunfire. Nightfall always seems to bring action in this area of central Baghdad-just last night there were many sporadic gun battles out my window.

Earlier today while I was in the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad the US base there was mortared 8 times. We heard it just after finished huge plates of kebabs at a sidewalk restaurant. After finishing the meal an old woman came to our table and asked if she could take our leftovers.

He took two plastic bags and began dumping our half eaten salads and extra bread into them. She thanked us and blessed us, then began to shuffle off…Abu Talat and I both quickly walked over to her and gave her a small wad of Iraqi Dinars. We walked back to the car not saying a word about it.

Funny that everyone lately is talking about how calm it is here in Baghdad…expecting things to grow so much worse as the election approaches. If this is calm…

Calm looks like the military not releasing the number of times each day they are attacked…at last count this was around 70 per day that they admitted to…which means it is probably more.

It also looks like a van with four bank guards being destroyed, burning the men to death; it looks like another US soldier being killed in al-Anbar province (read-Fallujah), four Iraqi soldiers being killed in Samarra, and Iraqi soldiers in Duluiya slaughtering three Iraqi civilians in their car at a checkpoint. In addition, in Hiyt, west of Ramadi, two US military vehicles were destroyed in a rocket attack. In Haqlaniya, also west of Ramadi, a roadside bomb detonated near a patrol, destroying two more US military vehicles. No word yet on casualities from either attack, although witnesses reported watching helicopters evacuating bloody soldiers from the attack scene near Hiyt.

Both of these locations are in the vicinity of Fallujah.

Calm looks like mortars and gunfire everyday, sporadically around Baghdad. Calm looks like two vehicle bombs in Mosul today, one a suicide van bomb that killed an unknown number of civilians when it missed a US convoy, the other a suicide car bomb that killed two Iraqi soldiers.

Of course it also looks like gas lines up to 6 miles long.

It is impossible to drive for long in Baghdad without running into these…lines of cars on the sides of highways and side streets, as people stand outside their cars waiting, then pushing their car forward each time the line inches a few meters closer to the sacred gas station. With 70% unemployment in Iraq, obtaining fuel is the most common full-time job for Iraqis now.

Sitting in another traffic jam while trying to decide how we’ll work if any more fuel stations close and the black markets begin to dry up, I suggest to Abu Talat, “We can get a donkey. You can drive and I’ll sit on the back and write in my notebook and take photos.”

“Yes, that is certainly an option,” he laughs, “Definitely a much better idea than trying to steal a fuel tanker.”

That had been my previous idea.

Earlier today I interviewed a man who was in the intelligence service of the former regime. He asked me if I wanted to go into Fallujah.

“Um, no thanks,” I said, “Not right now,” speaking to him from across a small table as we drank our orange Miranda soft drinks. The room was darkened by curtains, and he spoke to me only on condition of anonymity…after he took my satellite phone and placed it in another part of the building.

“They can track the satellite phones even when they are not on,” he explained to me, “Only by removing the SIM card can they not be tracked.”

Information I hope I never need to apply. One learns the most interesting things in Iraq nowadays.

He gives me a quick rundown of what he knows of Fallujah, telling me that the military controls two main checkpoints into the city and the main road which divides what is left of the demolished city. “There are still 25 attacks each day by the mujahideen there against the occupiers,” he says, “And the resistance is in control of large areas of the city to this day.”

Who knows how accurate this is. And with the military cordon around most of the city, it’s almost impossible to verify for now.

He claims that only 3% of the people killed during the assault were fighters, and the rest civilians. I’m sure this is a little low…but certainly closer to the truth than the US estimate that 1200-1300 of 2000 killed were fighters, and definitely closer than the statement from Allawi that every single person killed in Fallujah was a fighter. Even members of the Iraqi Red Crescent have stated that the majority of bodies, at least 60%, are of women, children and elderly.

He suddenly says, “That’s it, no more,” and the interview is over.

We thank him for his time and are back on the street.

There are white military surveillance balloons floating all over Baghdad now.

Most of the Iraqi Army (formerly known as Iraqi National Guard) is wearing black facemasks as they ride around in the backs of pickups with makeshift machine guns in them. They seem like boys with toys compared to the Humvees with the 50 calibers on top of them, rocket launchers slung over the backs of the seats of the soldiers riding atop them…their faces hidden under helmets and behind goggles.

Baghdad feels restless during this “calm” time. There is an expectant energy in the air as the days tick off leading to January 30th. It’s as if we are all waiting for the bombs and fierce clashes to kick off at anytime. Or maybe they will not occur until afterwards…nobody can say.

Driving down the highway this afternoon a van passes with a man waving a pistol at cars…making them give way so it can speed ahead.

“This is our civilization now,” says Abu Talat, laughing his deep contagious belly laugh as he lights another of his terribly harsh Gold Seal cigarettes.

If you don’t laugh here, you lose your mind in a hurry.

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washingtonpost.com
Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground
War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 14, 2005; Page A01

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director`s think tank.

Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."

Low`s comments came during a rare briefing by the council on its new report on long-term global trends. It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1,000 U.S. and foreign experts. Within the 119-page report is an evaluation of Iraq`s new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists.

President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council`s report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.

"At the moment," NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist activity."

Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.

Bush described the war in Iraq as a means to promote democracy in the Middle East. "A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East," he said one month before the invasion. "Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both."

But as instability in Iraq grew after the toppling of Hussein, and resentment toward the United States intensified in the Muslim world, hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders. They found tons of unprotected weapons caches that, military officials say, they are now using against U.S. troops. Foreign terrorists are believed to make up a large portion of today`s suicide bombers, and U.S. intelligence officials say these foreigners are forming tactical, ever-changing alliances with former Baathist fighters and other insurgents.

"The al-Qa`ida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," the report says.

According to the NIC report, Iraq has joined the list of conflicts -- including the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, and independence movements in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao in the Philippines, and southern Thailand -- that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology.

At the same time, the report says that by 2020, al Qaeda "will be superseded" by other Islamic extremist groups that will merge with local separatist movements. Most terrorism experts say this is already well underway. The NIC says this kind of ever-morphing decentralized movement is much more difficult to uncover and defeat.

Terrorists are able to easily communicate, train and recruit through the Internet, and their threat will become "an eclectic array of groups, cells and individuals that do not need a stationary headquarters," the council`s report says. "Training materials, targeting guidance, weapons know-how, and fund-raising will become virtual (i.e. online)."

The report, titled "Mapping the Global Future," highlights the effects of globalization and other economic and social trends. But NIC officials said their greatest concern remains the possibility that terrorists may acquire biological weapons and, although less likely, a nuclear device.

The council is tasked with midterm and strategic analysis, and advises the CIA director. "The NIC`s goal," one NIC publication states, "is to provide policymakers with the best, unvarnished, and unbiased information -- regardless of whether analytic judgments conform to U.S. policy."

Other than reports and studies, the council produces classified National Intelligence Estimates, which represent the consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies on specific issues.

Yesterday, Hutchings, former assistant dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, said the NIC report tried to avoid analyzing the effect of U.S. policy on global trends to avoid being drawn into partisan politics.

Among the report`s major findings is that the likelihood of "great power conflict escalating into total war . . . is lower than at any time in the past century." However, "at no time since the formation of the Western alliance system in 1949 have the shape and nature of international alignments been in such a state of flux as they have in the past decade."

The report also says the emergence of China and India as new global economic powerhouses "will be the most challenging of all" Washington`s regional relationships. It also says that in the competition with Asia over technological advances, the United States "may lose its edge" in some sectors.

Staff writer Bradley Graham and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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`They put a hood on me, tied my hands and took me to Camp Fallujah`
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad

The Independent

14 January 2005

The General was a slim 58-year-old, his hair black, big hands, a suit that hung uneasily upon him, a bespoke tailor`s work that could never equal his pea-green uniform with swords on the epaulettes.

It was at least three minutes before I remembered the young colonel in his 30s who had led the first Iraqi tank unit across the Karun river north of Basra against the Iranian army in 1980, bulkier then, but the same black hair, the same way of sitting ramrod-straight when answering questions from reporters, 25 years of our lives - and Iraq`s defeat having gone by in the meantime.

He wanted to talk about the resistance to America`s occupation and about how his life was transformed by the "liberation"of Iraq by the United States, changed utterly by his own arrest by the "liberators".

He was still a general when the American pro-consul, Paul Bremer, disbanded the Iraqi army in 2003. They came for him while he was eating dinner with his family on 3 November, 2003.

"There were helicopters overhead and they came to my home from the neighbours` houses, over the roof, through the front and back doors. They took everything that was of value - money, old books, anything they wanted. They put a hood on me and tied my hands behind my back and took me to Camp Fallujah, one of Saddam`s former palaces outside the town.``

That was the easy part. "They made me sit in the dirt for a day without food or being able to go to the lavatory,`` the General says. "Three American officers carried out the first interrogation. They wanted information about my military career and about other military leaders. They put a strong light in my face so I couldn`t see anything. The interpreters had Egyptian, Saudi or Lebanese accents. They kept getting my name wrong, even though I spelled it for them. I told them my name, rank and number, but they violated the Geneva Conventions - they wanted to know more, and I was an officer.``

The General never accepted pro-consul Bremer`s disbandment of the army. He wanted to abide by the Conventions - even though the Iraqi army rarely did - but the Americans regarded him as a civilian, a supporter of the insurgents.

"They wanted to know who was behind the resistance, who was financing it, where they got their arms, how they crossed the border from Syria.`` The second interrogations, the General says, took place outdoors. "There were three American officers, and they took turns in beating me. They used plastic bottles of water to beat me on the face and the neck and the chest. Once, the bottle broke and the plastic cut into my ear.``

He showed me a deep scar that cuts through his earlobe. "One of the Americans was a tall man with crew-cut hair, a captain so the guards told me later. The second was shorter, with black hair. The third was the tallest, heavy with dark eyes. They sat on chairs. I was made to sit on the dirt while I was beaten. Then, for three days and nights I was made to stand on one foot or forced to sit on the ground but not lie down.``

The General claimed he endured three false executions as American soldiers pulled the triggers of empty rifles beside his face while he was hooded.

On one occasion, tied to a tent pole, his jailers took off his hood to allow him to see American jets bombing Fallujah. "At the second interrogation, they kept asking me military information - what was the `Mehdi army`, who were the Wahhabis in Fallujah, how do they buy their arms, how do foreign fighters cross the border of Syria? They asked: `Where are the arms being sold?` I told them: `They are on sale in the bazaar - you buy guns there yourselves.```

After nine days, the General was taken - hooded and in a truck on unpaved roads - to the soon-to-be notorious Abu Ghraib prison. "Here our interrogators were wearing civilian clothes, jeans and t-shirts. Each had an interview room of their own. We sat on the concrete in front of them. Some of these interrogations were very stupid. They would ask us about Shia political parties, the influence of Iran, the frontiers of Iraq. They should have asked us about the weapons we used. But they asked only political questions.``

The General`s memories of Abu Ghraib were more than intriguing. In December, 2003, he said, a prisoner had a handgun smuggled to him in the cells and tried to kill an American guard. The prisoner was wounded with a shotgun when the Americans fetched reinforcements, and taken off to the camp hospital.

"Several men were tortured with electrodes. One Iraqi man came to me after they had used electricity on his penis - it was so bad that his penis was bleeding``. Eventually, to the General`s amazement, the interrogators began asking him if he had evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib. "The stories of the torture had got out and they said there was a special committee investigating and they had orders to ask all the prisoners to give evidence. They took the details down on paper and said nothing. But the mistreatment continued.``

When the first Fallujah siege was started by the Americans, he says, the resistance surrounded Abu Ghraib. "The Americans were surrounded in the prison. The Americans had to drop food to both the guards and the prisoners by helicopter because the jail was surrounded by the mujahedin.

One of the US guards showed me a picture of his kids and asked us to protect him if the resistance stormed the prison. We all said we would look after him because Muslims protect the weak.``

There were other stories the General told; of the prisoners forced to lie in mud on winter`s nights as punishment, of the prisoner who was so violently beaten that his shoulder was dislocated - when the man slipped in the mud later, the General says, he fell to the ground and his bone broke through his shoulder and he was left in pain all night on the ground.

Not surprisingly, he recalled the November siege of Fallujah with something approaching enthusiasm; how US troops had been forced to retreat to the railway station after they had initially captured it, how US forces found their main supply route captured by the resistance after advancing into the city.

It should be added he spoke angrily against only one other man during our meeting: Saddam Hussein. So whose enemy was he? And why did the Americans treat him like this?

And, if he was so dangerous, why did they release him in May of 2004 without so much as a by-your-leave?

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Bush under fire over human rights

Watchdog says US setting bad example
Richard Norton-Taylor, Julian Borger in Washington and Suzanne Goldenberg in Fort Hood
Friday January 14, 2005

Guardian
America`s human rights abuses have provided a rallying cry for terrorists and set a bad example to regimes seeking to justify their own poor rights records, a leading independent watchdog said yesterday.

The torture and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay have undermined the credibility of the US as a defender of human rights and opponent of terrorism, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says in its annual report.

"The US government is less and less able to push for justice abroad because it is unwilling to see justice done at home," says Kenneth Roth, the group`s executive director.

The report comes as the Bush administration prepares for inauguration next week. The administration has shown little interest in moderating its aggressive approach to its "global war on terror".

Yesterday`s scathing report argues that the US has weakened its own moral authority at a time that authority is most needed, "in the midst of a seeming epidemic of suicide bombings, beheadings, and other attacks on civilians and noncombatants."

"When the United States disregards human rights, it undermines that human rights culture and thus sabotages one of the most important tools for dissuading potential terrorists. Instead, US abuses have provided a new rallying cry for terrorist recruiters, and the pictures from Abu Ghraib have become the recruiting posters for Terrorism, Inc."

The report says that America`s disregard of human rights has encouraged other countries to follow suit:

· Egypt has defended a decision to renew "emergency" laws by referring to US anti-terror legislation

· Malaysia justifies detention without trial by invoking Guantánamo

· Russia cites Abu Ghraib to blame abuse in Chechnya solely on low-ranking soldiers.

But there are few signs in Washington of a change of approach. The White House secretly persuaded Congress to overturn legislation passed last month by a 96-2 Senate vote that would have imposed restrictions on extreme interrogation methods, the New York Times reported yesterday.

Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser nominated to be secretary of state, opposed the measure because "it provides legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled".

The US military is proceeding with trials of supposed Abu Ghraib torturers, arguing that abuse was the work of a small band of rogue soldiers.

Last night, the trial of the alleged ringleader, Specialist Charles Graner, culminated in Fort Hood, Texas. A verdict is expected today.

Official inquiries have largely spared the military top brass and the administration itself, which first approved the loosening of guidelines on interrogation in 2002.

Alberto Gonzales, the White House lawyer who approved the guidelines, and who told the president the Geneva conventions were "obsolete" in the face of the terrorist threat, has been nominated attorney-general.

Human Rights Watch said senior US officials had tried to pin the blame on young soldiers. It said the US should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate abuse and bring to justice all those responsible. But the Pentagon said it was "factually incorrect" to say that senior officials were responsible.

The erosion of human rights has also reached the EU, Human Rights Watch warns. It points out that the British government refuses to rule out using information extracted from torture in court proceedings.

Basic principles of international law were being chipped away in Britain, Steve Crawshaw, the London director of Human Rights Watch, said yesterday. "It was dismaying that it needed a law lords` judgment to rule that detention without trial was not acceptable in a democracy," he told the Guardian. "It is even more dismaying that the British government seems reluctant to concede this."

Human Rights Watch also points to shortcomings in security laws in Iraq proposed by the US. In the vast majority of trials it had observed there, defendants were detained without judicial warrants, and had no prior access to a lawyer.

It points to another kind of abuse - "massive ethnic cleansing" in Darfur, western Sudan. "Continued inaction risks undermining a fundamental principle: that the nations of the world will never let sovereignty stand in the way of their responsibility to protect people from mass atrocities."
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A global gulag to hide the war on terror`s dirty secrets

Bush is now thinking of building jails abroad to hold suspects for life
Jonathan Steele
Friday January 14, 2005

Guardian
The promise of imminent release for four British detainees held at the notorious US prison at Guantánamo Bay is obviously welcome, but it is only a tiny exception in the surge of bad news from the Bush team on the human rights front. The first few days of the new year have produced two shocking exposures already.

One is the revelation that the administration sees the US not just as a self-appointed global policeman, but also as the world`s prison warder. It is thinking of building jails in foreign countries, mainly ones with grim human rights records, to which it can secretly transfer detainees (unconvicted by any court) for the rest of their lives - a kind of global gulag beyond the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any other independent observers or lawyers.

The other horror is the light shone on the views of Alberto Gonzales, the White House nominee to be the chief law officer, the attorney general. At his Senate confirmation hearings last week he was revealed to be a man who not only refuses to rule out torture under any circumstances but also, in his capacity as White House counsel over the past few years, chaired several meetings at which specific interrogation techniques were discussed. As Edward Kennedy pointed out, and Gonzales did not deny, they included the threat of burial alive and water-boarding, under which the detainee is strapped to a board, forcibly pushed under water, wrapped in a wet towel, and made to believe he could drown.

Since its establishment after 9/11, the US camp for foreigners at Guantánamo Bay has become a beacon of unfreedom, a kind of grisly competitor to the Statue of Liberty in the shopfront of authentic American images. The trickle of releases of prisoners from its cages has brought direct testimony of the horrors which go on there. So it is no wonder that the Bush administration would like to find less visible places to hold prisoners, and keep them there for ever so that they cannot tell the world.

The Guantánamo prisoners are held by the department of defence, but under the new scheme most foreign detainees are expected to be in the hands of the CIA, which submits to less congressional scrutiny and offers the Red Cross no access. They include hundreds of people who have been arrested in recent weeks in Falluja and other Iraqi cities.

According to the Washington Post, which broke the story last week, one proposal is to have the US build new prisons in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Officials of those countries would run the prisons, and would have to allow the state department to "monitor human rights compliance".

It is a laughable proposition, since the whole purpose of the exercise is to minimise scrutiny. CIA agents would have the right to question the detainees, with or without the aid of foreign interrogators, as they already do at other off-limits prisons at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, on ships at sea, in Jordan and Egypt, and at Diego Garcia.

The US policy of lending detainees to other countries` jailers and torturers, known as "rendition", began during the "war on drugs" as a way of arresting alleged Latin American narco-barons and softening them up for trial in the US. It has expanded enormously under the "war on terror". As one CIA officer told the Washington Post, "the whole idea has become a corruption of renditions. It`s not rendering to justice. It`s kidnapping."

He could have added that it`s kidnapping for life. A senior US official told the New York Times last week that three-quarters of the 550 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay no longer have any intelligence of value. But they will not be released out of concern that they pose a continuing threat to the US. "You`re basically keeping them off the battlefield, and, unfortunately in the war on terrorism, the battlefield is everywhere," he said.

Since the attack on Falluja, the US holds 325 non-Iraqis in custody, many of them Syrians and Saudis. Questioned by the Senate`s judiciary committee, Gonzales said that the justice depart ment believes that non-Iraqis captured in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva conventions, which prevent prisoners being transferred out of the country in which they are held.

It was revealed last year that Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, had approved the secret holding of "ghost detainees" in Iraq. They were kept off the registers that were shown to the Red Cross and therefore lost the chance of being visited or having other rights. Now many new prisoners will be candidates for a deeper category of invisibility by being sent for detention in secret locations abroad.

While making bland statements during his Senate appearance that he found torture abhorrent, Gonzales gave no clear assurances that its practice would stop. As White House counsel he approved an administration memorandum against torture in August 2002 which was so narrow that it appeared to define it only as treatment that led to "dying under torment". In other words, if a victim survived, he could not have been tortured.

The memo also claimed that torture only occurs when the intent is to cause pain. If pain is intentionally used to gain information or a confession, that is not torture. Thanks to this narrow definition of what is forbidden, US officials have been systematically using inhumane treatment on prisoners - far beyond the few so-called bad apples exposed by the photographs from Abu Ghraib - while saying it did not amount to torture.

A few days before Gonzales`s Senate hearings, the justice department hastily rewrote the memo so that a wider category of techniques are defined as torture, and thereby prohibited. But at the hearings Gonzales refused to give a clear negative answer to the question whether, in his view, American troops or interrogators could legally engage in torture under any circumstances.

One of the glories of the hearings was the appearance of Douglas Johnson, director of the Centre for Victims of Torture. He argued that the new memo fails to give clear guidance on what the appropriate standards for interrogation and detention are. He also pointed out that torture does not yield reliable information and corrupts its perpetrators.

Psychological torture was more damaging than physical torture, he said. Interviews with victims show that depression and recurrent nightmares decades later more often relate to memories of mock executions (of the "water-boarding" type) and scenarios of humiliation than to actual physical abuse.

That these points might have impressed the man Bush wants to have as America`s top law officer is not to be expected. Nor does anyone in Washington expect the Senate to refuse to confirm him for the job. Happy New War on Terror 2005.

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Happy talk

Bush`s inaugural address next week will be full of his administration`s ideological fantasies that now substitute for reality
Sidney Blumenthal
Friday January 14, 2005

Guardian
`Metrics" is one of secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld`s obsessions. In October 2003, he sent a memo to his deputies and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff: "Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror." Rumsfeld demanded precise measurements of progress, including the "ideological". By the "war on terror" he meant Iraq as well as Afghanistan. A study was commissioned by the JCS and conducted by the Institute for Defence Analyses, a military thinktank. In utterly neutral terms, the IDA report detailed a grim picture at odds with the Bush administration`s rosy scenarios. Not only has Rumsfeld suppressed the report, but the Pentagon has yet to acknowledge its existence.

In the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld applied his doctrine of using a light combat force against the advice of the senior military. General Eric Shinseki, commander of the army, was cashiered and publicly ridiculed for suggesting that a larger force would be required. But it was assumed by Rumsfeld and the neocons that there would be no long occupation because democracy would spontaneously flower.

In April 2004 the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College produced a report on the metrics of the Rumsfeld doctrine: Toppling Saddam: Iraq and American Military Transformation. It concluded that the swift victory over Saddam was achieved by overwhelming technological superiority and Iraqi weakness, and therefore using operation Iraqi Freedom as "evidence" for Rumsfeld`s "transformation proposals could be a mistake". The Pentagon has refused to release the study.

"Intellectual terrorism" prevails through the defence establishment, a leading military strategist at one of the war colleges, who deals in calm, measured expertise of a nonpartisan nature, told me. Even the respected defence research institute, the Rand Corporation, is being "cut out of the loop", denied contracts for studies because the "metrics" are at odds with Rumsfeld`s projections.

President Bush clings to good news and happy talk, such as the number of school openings in Iraq. Those with gloomy assessments are not permitted to appear before him. The president orders no meetings on options based on worst-case scenarios.Military strategists and officers are systematically ignored. Suppression of contrary "metrics" is done in his name and spirit. Bush makes his decisions from a self-imposed bunker, a situation room of the mind, where ideological fantasies substitute for reality.

"I think elections will be such a hopeful experience for the Iraqi people ... And I look at the elections as a ... as a ... you know, as a ... as ... as a historical marker for our Iraq policy," Bush said last week. His statement was prompted by Brent Scowcroft, his father`s national security adviser and alter ego. Fired as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Scowcroft aired his views at a lunch sponsored by a Washington thinktank. The Iraq election, he said, has "deep potential for deepening the conflict", acting as an impetus to "civil war". He reflected sadly that being a "realist" has become a "pejorative". "A road map is helpful if you know where you are," he said.

Scowcroft was joined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter`s national security adviser, who spelled out the minimal metrics for winning the Iraq war - 500,000 troops, $500bn, a military draft, and a wartime tax - and then it would take at least 10 years. Unwillingness to pay this price while continuing on the current path would be a sign of "decadence".

Bush speaks of the Iraqi election as though it is the climax of democracy. But by failing to provide for Sunni presence in the new government - proportional representation would easily have accomplished this - it is as ill-conceived a blunder as invading with a light force, disbanding the Iraqi army, attacking Falluja, halting the attack, and finally destroying the city in order to save it, Vietnam-style. The British had proposed local elections, beginning in southern Iraq, but Bush`s Coalition Provisional Authority rejected this. According to former CPA official Larry Diamond: "One British official lamented to me, the `CPA [officials] didn`t want anything to happen that they didn`t control`."

Bush, meanwhile, works on his second inaugural address, to be delivered next week, where his speechwriters can be counted on to produce a bravura speech filled with high-flown patriotism and evangelical codewords, a paean to can-do optimism. "They`re not code words; they`re our culture," his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, explained recently.

This rhetoric summons purity of heart ("written in the human heart"), divine blessing ("God is not neutral"), and the power of faith ("there`s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people").

As Bush draws the sword of righteousness against the forces of darkness, the enemy being evil itself ("evildoers ... axis of evil"), he ascends on messianic imagery. "Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?" he said in his first inaugural, quoting a letter written by a Virginian friend to Thomas Jefferson during the American revolution. "This story goes on," said Bush. "And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm."

That particular verse originates in the book of the prophet Nahum. It contains no "angel", but the Lord, "a jealous and avenging God ... full of wrath ... The Lord is long suffering, and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty; The Lord, in the whirlwind and in the storm is His way, And the clouds are the dust of His feet ... Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and rapine ... Thy crowned are as the locusts, And thy marshals as the swarms of grasshoppers ..."

These metrics continue for several more verses: "There is no assuaging of thy hurt; Thy wound is grievous ..."

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of www.salon.com

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Friday, January 14, 2005

7 Dead, 38 Wounded in Shiite Mosque Bombing
Two Aides of Sistani Killed

Guerrillas parked a car bomb outside a Shiite mosque in the eastern village of Khan Bani Saad on Thursday evening. Then, as Shiites exited the mosque after evening prayers, they detonated it, killing at least 7 and wounding 38. Nine shops nearby were set afire.

Two aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani were killed in separate incidents in Iraq on this week. Sunni guerrillas appear to be behind the attack, the day before yesterday, on Shaikh Mahmud al-Mada`ini in Salman Pak, as he drove home from evening prayers at his mosque in south of Baghdad with his son and four bodyguards. They came up alongside his car and directed machine gun fire at it, killing all 6. Al-Sharaq al-Awsat says al-Mada`ini had earlier faced other attempts on his life.

In Najaf, Shaikh Halim al-Afghani was killed by criminals who had earlier kidnapped his son. This sort of random crime strikes at Iraqis daily in many cities, including the capital, but is seldom reported in the US press.

Guerrillas in Ramadi mounted a spectacular bank robbery, taking advantage of the poor security situation, and carrying off billions of Iraqi dinars ($14 million). Two days before, guerrillas had robbed bank trucks of coin shipments, killing the drives and setting them on fire.

In Baghdad, guerrillas shot up a minivan of the employees of a Turkish construction company in Baghdad, killing all six, and kidnapping their boss, Abdulkader Tam.

Guerrillas killed two Marines in Anbar Province on Thursday.

posted by Juan @ 1/14/2005 06:30:50 AM

Election News: No Ayatollahs, no Israelis

Al-Hayat:

The Iraqi National Accord has lodged a formal complaint with the Iraqi electoral commission against the use by the United Iraqi Alliance of the name and images of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in their campaign posters. Sistani sponsored the negotiations that led to the establishment of the coalition list by 11 Shiite parties and numbers of independents. He has not, however, specifically endorsed this list, and as a spiritual leader would attempt to stay above the political fray. He almost certainly would not, himself, approve of the party using his name and image to get elected.

The basis for the complaint from Allawi`s party is that the electoral law crafted by the Americans disallows the use of religious symbols. Imad Shabib, the party leader of the Iraqi National Accord, also alleged that the United Iraqi Alliance had employed policemen drawn from paramilitary troops of the Shiite Badr Corps to put pressure on voters from the South. Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Badr Corps, denied the allegation. He also defended the UIA`s right to use Sistani`s image, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat. UIA pamphlets distributed to Shiite voters maintain that a vote for any other ticket would scatter Shiite influence and limit the number of seats Shiites hope to take in the new parliament.

Al-Hayat also says that the Iraqi electoral commission announced Thursday that Israelis of Iraqi heritage would not be allowed to vote in the January 30 elections "because we do not recognize Israel." It had been speculated that Israeli Iraqis might be able to vote at expatriate polling stations, presumably in nearby Jordan. The head of the Israeli association of Iraqi Jews, Mordechai Ben Porat, had anyway expressed doubt that any of the 240,000 Iraqi-Israelis--only 29% of which were born in Iraq-- were planning to go to Jordan to vote.

Farid Ayar said, "We welcome any Jews of Iraqi origin in the polling both, no matter what current nationality, on condition that they not be Israelis. The issue is absolutely not one of origin or religion, but simply that we do not maintain relations with Israel."

Ella Shohat`s comments on being Jewish, Arab and Iraqi all at once (and how bewildering Americans find this intersection of multiple identities), are highly enlightening.

Only about half of Iraq`s 15 million eligible voters will likely cast their ballots on election day, according to Farid Ayar of Iraq’s Independent Electoral Commission. Ayar says that such a turnout would not be so bad for Iraq.

Problem: The turnout will be higher in Shiite and Kurdish areas, producing an ethnically lopsided parliament/ constitutional assembly that excludes Sunni Arabs. Ayar`s statement is disingenuous.

posted by Juan @ 1/14/2005 06:20:55 AM

Absolutely?

Sometimes you have to go to the regional newspapers for the punchy editorials. The Pentagon`s announcement that the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction officially ended quietly in late December provokes the Virginia Pilot to observe, "And America is left with a seemingly endless war in Iraq, but without a rationale for it."

Well, not the main rationale. But Bush is still spinning the old fool`s gold with his privileged lips:

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post quotes this exchange from the 20/20 to be aired Friday night:



"Barbara Walters: This was our main reason for going in. So now when we read, `Okay, the search is over,` what do you feel?

"President Bush: Well, like you, I felt like we`d find weapons of mass destruction. Or like many, many here in the United States, many around the world, the United Nations thought he had weapons of mass destruction, and so therefore, one, we need to find out what went wrong in the intelligence gathering. Saddam was dangerous. And . . . the world was safer without him in power.

"Walters: But was it worth it if there were no weapons of mass destruction? Now that we know that that was wrong? Was it worth it?

"Bush: Oh, absolutely."



Bush`s response contains three elements.

1) The US was not alone in being wrong about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. All the other nations did, too.

2) Saddam was dangerous.

3) Absolutely.

When is someone going to call him on this inanity? The Belgians didn`t have intelligence assets inside Iraq that could have given them an independent view of the question. Whatever the world believed, it mostly believed because the United States disseminated the information.

Moreover, it is not true that there were no dissenters. The State Department`s own Intelligence and Research Division dissented. French military intelligence dissented. What Bush is saying is either untrue or meaningless.

As I have pointed out before, Saddam without weapons of mass destruction could not have been "dangerous" to the United States. Just parroting "dangerous" doesn`t create real danger. Danger has to come from an intent and ability to strike the US. Saddam had neither. He wasn`t dangerous to the US. It is absurd that this poor, weak, ramshackle 3rd world state should have been seen as "dangerous" to a superpower. That is just propaganda.

Calling Saddam "dangerous" as an existential element without regard to the evidence falls under the propaganda techniques of name-calling and stirring irrational fear.

As for "Absolutely," it is a weasel word. It is not an argument. It is a species of hand waving. It is cheap.

Bush has figured out, apparently, that some in the American public respond, rather like the apes to which they deny they are related, to posture, grunting and body language rather than to reason and evidence. When I see him smirking and gesturing, I can`t help thinking of the ape General Thade (Tim Roth) in Tim Burton`s remake of the Planet of the Apes, which used scientific findings about primate behavior and hierarchy to inform the acting.

"Absolutely" used in this way is a vocalization that actually functions as an intimidating agonistic display meant to close off further dialogue by the silverback.

What would happen if we turned away from the world of political theater to the real world? We would find a study by the National Intelligence Council which is quite alarming about Iraq and the future.

The National Intelligence Council, the think tank of the CIA, has concluded that Iraq has now succeeded Afghanistan as the training ground for professionalized terrorists.

Much of the terrorism in the Middle East in the 1990s and early zeroes has been carried out by fighters who had assembled to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, got training and became ideologically committed, and then returned to their home countries. The "Afghans" on the streets of Algiers actually wore Afghan clothing (sort of like an American coming back from Scotland and insisting on wearing a kilt), and they joined the vigorous stream of Islamic politics in Algeria. When the generals cancelled the election results of the 1991 parliamentary polls, which the Islamic Salvation Front had won, many Muslim fundamentalists turned radical and got training from the "Afghans." The more radical of them formed the Armed Islamic Group, which joined al-Qaeda in the late 1990s and to which belonged Ahmad Rassam, who tried to blow up Los Angeles Airport for the Millennium Plot. Similar stories could be told about the Afghanistan returnees in Yemen, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and so forth.

So, the likelihood is that Bush`s Iraq misadventure will be responsible for terrorism that is blowing up our grandchildren down the line.

Absolutely.

posted by Juan @ [url1/14/2005 06:15:23 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/absolutely-sometimes-you-have-to-go-to.html[/url]

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Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Worker Bees and Soldier Ants: America’s Army of Fascism

Marching Boots of Mass Psychosis

Manuel Valenzuela

01/13/05 "ICH" -- It is in times of fascism rising that armies of ignorance are once more resuscitated from the bowels of a society bordering on the edge of mass psychosis. The America at the dawn of the twenty-first century is no exception, for an army of fascism is being born inside its womb, its growing power in numbers and ideology granting freedom of action to immoral despots and juntas of warmongering greed addicts. Contrived through the mass manipulation of fear and hatred, xenophobia and ignorance, searing nationalism and blind theological faith, this army represents the greatest threat to the nation, and the world.

From all walks of life diluted brains and weak-minded individuals are answering the call of the beacon of fascism shining bright, from Atlantic to Pacific, from north to south, embracing its dastardly tentacles with the warm acceptance of comfort and submission. Millions of Americans are presently falling prey to a virulent haze gripping the United States, furthered and pursued by a small cabal of corporatist evildoers perched at the upper echelons of governance and power that seek to transform the nation into a black widow’s nest of fascism spiked with the venom of a militarized citizenry acquiescent to imperial hegemony.

Growing daily like a malignant tumor, still entranced by the devastating images of the new Pearl Harbor, which the corporatists in power did nothing to help stop and everything possible for it to succeed, this multitude cannot see in shades of gray nor in the prism of color. Instead, like living inside the television sets of the past, only black and white can they perceive, their antenna only receptive to the microwaves of good and bad, evil and good, friend or foe. Different shades of reality escape them just as much as the reality of what transpires around the world.

This army of fascism is the product of years of methodical ingraining of ignorance and indifference into society by those holding the reigns of power. It is the end result of the re-wired human brain preyed upon and feasted on by television and the corporations that control thought through it. Obedient to the monitor, blind to reality, the army now gathering life takes direct commands from the images, sounds and war cries emanated by television. Acting on instinct, and on the televised propaganda they are conditioned to obey and follow, the army now walking among us neither questions nor searches for answers, preferring to exult the fantasies of fiction over the embarrassments of truth, preferring to dwell in ignorance rather than being liberated by knowledge.

Like the drones they have been bred to be the army of fascism lines up one behind another, marching to the drums of warmongers and trumpets of false prophets exalting hatreds and fears and cries for death and destruction. This monolith lacking the precepts of analytical and logical thinking minds follows the lies and deceptions of governance and the propaganda of corporations, believing every word uttered or image manipulated, absorbing as truth blatant lies and incorporating into their own thought processes the vitriol-filled, hate-induced, xenophobic-spewing, gay-bashing, women-hating, Arab-scapegoating, jingoistic-packed diatribe that litters the airwaves and acts as a conduit for the further recruitment of grunts comprising the army of fascism.

Disguised as national dialogue, this propaganda, disseminated by the minions and lackeys of government and the corporate world, serves the purpose of unleashing inside the ignorant legions of sheep boiling magma of animalistic passion and emotion which, with further manipulation of psychology, erupts like a smoldering volcano, releasing throughout the nation toxic gases of hatred and fiery lava of violent thought.

Thus, the harvesting of ignorance, hate and fear – all molded by the same clay, none mutually exclusive of the others – by those in power produces an army of fascism whose blind thirst for Arab blood and rabid addiction for Muslim destruction fuse to engender in the Establishment the tools necessary to mutate the United States in the direction of fascism and despotic rule, while at the same time increasing their power and control over the same army which blindly follows without knowing and is easily herded to slaughter.

Conditioned War Culture, Dumbed-Down Education

Millions who today march proudly in the army of hate, fear and ignorance have, since birth, been conditioned to violence and indifference through the incessant bombardment by television of those images necessary to transform a once benign citizenry into a violent and militarized war culture, in the process succeeding in shaping apathetic creatures devoid of concern for their fellow man, now desensitized to death, destruction, suffering and ceaseless violence.

From cartoons laced with aggression and conflict to movies saturated with pyrotechnics and bullets to video games blurring the line between reality and fantasy to television shows romanticizing violence the human brain, from cradle to grave, and in a society as addicted to television watching as is America, loses all sense of shock and awe at the very real spectacle of human violence. Glamorized and white-washed, fantasy-riddled violence on television, movies and video games desensitizes the now conditioned human brain to the very real and horrific parameters of our species’ self-destructive ways, making violence accepted and indeed sought, for violent overtures to conflict resolution are all we have been trained to see, hear and believe in.

In the realm of fiction bombs explode yet the shrieks and the misery are never seen. Bullets whiz by yet their effects on human flesh are whitewashed. Missiles rain down from above yet severed limbs and decapitated heads do not exist. The destruction of cities, houses and lives is too inconvenient to cover in the plot. The suffering and the wretchedness of human violence upon its own kind never sees the light of day. Special effects form a cornucopia of digital mastery, glossing over death and maiming, blood and guts, becoming the fiction we see and the reality we fail to understand.

Audiences at home or in the theater fail to ever experience the reality of human violence, unable to feel the pain of injury, the concussions reverberating in air, rubble falling everywhere, explosions creating deafness, bullets penetrating flesh, the last moments of life, the entrails exposed or the limbs blown to bits. We never are confronted with the sounds of war, the smells of death, the taste of violence and the very real destruction wrought by America’s many instruments of human violence. Comfortably we sit in our couches or stadium seating, under cover of roof and air-conditioning, munching on popcorn and soda, all the while becoming ever more desensitized to death, destruction, violence and the horrors of war.

This makes a culture such as that found in America a purveyor of violent solutions to conflict, a populace indifferent to the violence, destruction and death created by its government and unleashed on the savages and inhuman peoples of lands not known or understood, alien to our reality but familiar to our fictions. With a citizenry completely conditioned to accept violence as a solution for conflict, with a people desensitized to the horrors of human violence inflicted on its fellow beings, with tens of millions brainwashed into seeing violence as rose-petalled fiction and not as a malicious reality, the government, military-industrial complex and the cabal of corruption in control of our lives are free to unearth the most wicked forms of human violence upon innocent human life, killing with abandon in a wanton slaughter applauded by a complicit army of fascism whose minds are completely under the control of warmongers and fascists in power.

When you add in the bogey man of the moment, the chosen Muslim Arab enemy for years implanted into our minds by government and corporate propaganda, seen in television, movies and the realm of fictionalized violence, replacing the Indian and the Soviet and the black and the Vietnamese as the enemy required to hijack the thoughts of the average American, needed to induce fear and enslave fogged minds, the brain begins associating negative feelings of hatred onto this scapegoated ethnic and religious group. Fear commences its powers of erosion, stripping rational and analytical thought from the human brain, replacing hatred and thirst for violence against the latest enemy to grace the collective imagination of Americans. Ignorance, fear of the unknown and conditioned fear of dark-skinned enemies combine to form a deadly cocktail of hatred, manipulated into the American mind by government and those whose interests lie in marginalizing Arabs, that furthers the recruitment of the army of fascism as well as the fictional “war on terror.”

Combined with the creation of a completely dumbed down, ignorant, believe-anything, nationalistic-driven, violence-conditioned, fiction-living, theology-brainwashed, fear-induced, schizophrenically-manipulated, paranoid-delusional segment of the American population, the recipe is ripe for those in power to sound the drums of perpetual war for perpetual profit, using their new and ever-growing army of fascism, blind to the tunes of reality, to unveil the erosion of civil rights, freedoms and democracy at home and the mass murder of untold thousands abroad in an immoral attempt at achieving imperial hegemony.

Using the ignorance of the army of fascism to its advantage, this cabal of corruption is giving birth to corporatism, transforming the nation into a conduit for despotic rule in a police-state environment, where the army of fascism is used against itself, for the attainment of a continued form of corporate feudalism, and as a tool in fighting the other half of the population that refuses to accept the master plans of those in control or to bow down to the dictates of tyranny.

An army dumbed down by an anemic educational system whose only purpose is the systematic transformation of little primates into obedient, non-thinking drones loyal to the government that exploits and the corporations that enslave them has become a reality which today we can see in the tens of millions, perhaps half the population of the United States, that gives a thumbs up to mass murder, torture, gulags and the destruction of an entire society by their vote for warmongers, greed addicts and power hungry corrupters of civilization.

Brainwashed from birth to adore the red, white and blue, trained to never question the authority of government or the decisions of politicians, conditioned in the fine arts of nationalistic propaganda, manipulated into loyalty to the state and deceived to the altruistic fictions of American history, children are subjected to an education designed to eradicate free-thinking minds, transforming questioning entities into subservient soldiers devoid of rebellion or resistance to bad governance. Educated to avoid seeking truth, taught to inhale as fact whatever the government states, children are methodically robbed of their natural desire to question the world around them, failing to seek accountability of authority and their innate desire for truth searching.

After years of dumbed down education, in schools that serve to hinder knowledge and evolving intelligence thanks to rotten curriculums and decrepit resources, children become the molded adult drones of the state, unthinking, unknowing and unquestioning. The mockery that is American education, purposefully instituted by those in power, spits out a populace that fails to grasp the world around them, lacking curiosity, creativity and an ounce of knowledge of history, current events, politics, foreign nations, the arts, science, culture, geography and common sense.

An assembly line of ignorance and indifference is created through years of abandon, both educational and parental, that is transforming American society into a culture lacking the precepts of human understanding. The wisdom of older societies is recklessly disregarded, the sophistication of cultures is frowned upon, the lessons of history are arrogantly trampled on, the convergence of diversity spawns fear and the advice of old friends is discarded. To the army of fascism, America does not need advice or assistance or friends or historical lessons. We are the greatest nation that ever lived, unable to do wrong, unable to condemn billions to misery and virtual enslavement, the chalice of altruism, the seeker of good, the defender of freedom, the protector of democracy and the Almighty’s chosen nation. America is an unbeatable superpower, emanating arrogance and cockiness, the most triumphant society that ever existed, free to do with the world and its peoples whatever suits its needs. Unfortunately, after years of brainwashing, the army of fascism believes just about anything, unwilling to even contemplate the minimal idea that all they have ever learned is false, based on propaganda and conditioning of minds, blitzkrieged into their brains for the benefit of the state and the corporate world that owns it.

The army of fascism chooses to live in fantasy, unwilling to discard their tiny bubble protecting them from confronting reality. To them truth is stressful, reality is frightful, ignorance is bliss, and escaping the illusion they watch on Fox News or any other corporate propaganda channel is an exercise they would rather not confront. Their bubble is their paradise, no matter how pathetically delusional it may seem, no matter how obviously false it appears and no matter how much it is eroded by the plethora of truth attacking the fables and fictions sustaining their delicate web of concocted bull manure.

To the tens of millions living inside the rabbit hole, Earth, its lands, nations, cultures and peoples are as alien as the vast expanse of universe, science and nature as hazy as history and knowledge. The reality of what the United States has been since its inception, an Evil Empire laying waste to billions of world citizens and their lives, is never taught to the very citizens now affected by the blowback inherent in perpetuating human malice throughout the globe. Instead, we are told the world hates us for our freedoms and rights, that billions are angered at us because we are such a great nation. The truth, it seems, is always discarded for fiction, and the army of fascism gobbles it up like Thanksgiving turkey, forever wanting to escape knowing painful truths by smearing themselves in euphoric falsity.

Hijacked Fiction, Hypnotized Minds

As if hypnotized by the thunderous sound of its marching boots, the army of fascism, millions of worker bees and soldier ants laboriously furthering the interests of state fascism, surrenders itself to its masters sounding the trumpets of fear and hatred. Ever since 9/11, millions of Americans have experienced a profound shift in their psyche, becoming, over time and thanks to ceaseless corporatist manipulation and propaganda, the mirror image of what they perceive their enemy to be.

They have become, in a sense, what they most fear, the nighttime bogeyman lurking in dark corners and black shadows, emulating the behaviors and psychology of how they are told the enemy behaves, casting a long dry spell of hatred and racism over the lands of America, awakening from horrible nightmares to find themselves afflicted by paranoia and schizophrenia, possessed by hatred and seething anger, unable to listen or see, made deaf and blind to reality and unable to exorcise from their minds the horrible disfigurement to the national character spawned by the ghosts of 9/11. They have, for all intents and purposes, become the enemy they fear most.

It is exactly the manipulation of fear and hatred by those who control, spawned by 9/11 and its post traumatic stresses that has elevated the numbers joining the army of fascism. A plague presently afflicts the United States, born in sin and broken psychology, rendering once capable minds as weak as rotting wood, impregnating in the ignorant among us deep hatreds and angers giving rise to increased levels of xenophobia and a growing search for scapegoats.

The fear prevalent in the army of fascism, tirelessly manipulated and exploited by the Bush administration, birthed by the horrors of 9/11 and the correspondent images no human society has ever had to experience, played live and replayed countless times via multiple camera angels and narrated through various media outlets and personalities, immediately bombarded by anti-Arab propaganda by the corporate media, has given rise to a racist hatred seldom seen in the United States in the latter decades of the twentieth century.

It was 9/11, that sparkplug from which all hatred now derives, that spawned the beginning stages of the army of fascism. It was in the aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers in New York City that the early manifestations of mass change in the minds of vast portions of the populations could be seen. Suddenly, as if hit by a powerful surge of psychosis, millions of Americans became conduits of seething anger, no doubt affected by high doses of post traumatic stress disorder and of feelings of catastrophe, uncertainty and bewilderment.

The world Americans had once known changed in the rapid transgressions of a few horrific hours, popping long-lasting bubbles of invincibility and security that had for years insulated the populace from the carnage, fear and human wickedness that befell the rest of humanity, most of it at the hands of America and its vast legions of mercenaries of imperial control and domination. The new Pearl Harbor had been allowed to come into fruition, for it was the tool needed to mobilize a pacifist populace into war, introducing the fog of mass psychosis onto a suddenly fearful nation, in the greatest psychological warfare operation ever conducted, on the way to neocon and military-industrial complex pre-planned mastery of world hegemony. Along with falling towers, the fall of American rationality and analytical thought was not far behind.

Implanted into the minds of now fragile human brains, the violence witnessed and conditioned into our psyches by endless videotaped repetition and immediate talking head jingoistic tirades was no longer relegated to the giant screens or the television monitors or the video games. It no longer lived in third world countries or was monopolized exclusively by dark-skinned peoples. Violence was suddenly scary real, a shocking energy of carnage, death and destruction imported to once safe shores, crumbling the fabric of a society’s entire psychology. This was not a movie, nor the work of special effects capturing the latest digital technology for our viewing pleasure. This was no longer the fiction we had for too long enjoyed along with popcorn and soda and stadium seating.

Soon, through vast media/government propaganda, manipulation and conditioning, the collective wrath of an entire nation was thrust upon the people’s and lands of the Middle East, for a convenient enemy allowing for pre-planned wars of pillage and conquest had already been chosen. Muslims, long marginalized in movies and the media, became the newest bogey man to grace the long line of chosen American enemies. It was their lands and valuably needed resources, the geo-strategic location of their homes, their global position on the way to imperial hegemony, their threat to Israel that condemned millions of Afghans and Iraqis, and perhaps soon Iranians and Syrians, to the full might of American military evil.

Through careful propaganda, then, the American people were blitzkrieged with the seeds of hatred and ignorance, fed a vast assortment of misrepresentations and lies that linger to this day. Weapons of mass deception were introduced via the airwaves and into televisions and radios, designed to plant the foundations and pretexts for embarking on wars of aggression. With the public in the collective grip of those in power, fragile, fearful, ignorant, insecure, paranoid and schizophrenic, bowing down to the power of our animal instincts, desperately needing feelings of protection and security, ready to accept whatever lie was placed at our knees, enraged at an enemy we were told hated us for our freedoms, suffering from the effects of massive post traumatic stress disorder and willing to place our trust and futures on those we have since birth been brainwashed to obey and follow, the project for a new American century could commence.

A nebula of fear gripped the nation, thoroughly exploited by the right wing, government, media and the military-industrial complex, suddenly transforming a man of questionable courage and apparent mediocrity, with no discernable leadership skills, possessing not an ounce of morals, into a Dear Leader of unquestioned character, strength and leadership. The puppet of the corporatist world had, in the time it takes to read ‘My Pet Goat,’ become an appointed conduit of the Almighty, an heir to greatness, on the way to perpetual war, and perpetual profit and wealth, lest we forget. The questioning of the President and of government was discouraged and threatened. After all, we were either with the President or with the ‘terrorists.’ Dissent was quashed, protest was made extinct, discourse was nonexistent and debate was nowhere to be found. The myth of the Dear Leader firmly entrenched thanks to massive Rovian propaganda campaigns, his re-selection by both the vote of the army of fascism and the corruption of elections was a foregone conclusion.

In time the healing began, and with it returned the rational and analytical thinking minds of hundreds of millions of Americans. As time passed most of the nation began to escape the clouds of 9/11, awakening to the lies and the deceits and the many manipulations that pushed a nation to war, in a sense returning to normalcy and exorcising the demons of lingering stresses and fears. The realization emerged in the minds of millions that pre-emptive wars had been based on nothing but lies, all now proven to be false, all destroyed by reality and rational thought.

Slowly, the fictional war on terror is being discovered for what it is, a charade, a fear-engendering escapade, created to control and command, to breed power and profit, a mirage whose tentacles are used as tools in the pursuit of conquest of land, people and resources. Used like the Cold War, birthing fear into the populace through the use of fantasy bogey men lurking in the shadows, said ready to kill for our freedoms and ready to attack for our way of life, the war on terror is a control mechanism, a way to lead a nation in a certain and most ignoble direction, based on lies and manipulations, needing a concocted enemy to thrive, misdirecting the attention and energy of the people away from real internal problems, away from what is being done to them at home and in their name abroad.

The creation of a few charlatans and messianic Machiavellis in power, the ‘war on terror’ was concocted to consolidate power at home through the erosion of civil liberties, freedoms and democracy and to expand the empire’s hegemony abroad through ruthless devastation and destruction of both land and man, exploiting and oppressing peoples whose homes the Empire needs to continue the global chess match called geopolitical maneuvering. The ‘war on terror’ is a useless game that selected as enemy a most ambiguous entity, unlike the Soviet threat, without borders or faces or uniforms, allowing for its fictions to continue lingering into perpetuity, making the American people acquiescent slaves firmly controlled by fear and insecurity, their rights and freedoms evaporating more each day. It has selected over a billion people as enemies when only a few thousand exist, allowing the military-energy-industrial complex unfettered profit and wealth through war, conquest, ceaseless production, pillage and the robbery of American treasure.

The ‘war on terror’ is one more fiction created by those at the top to retain power, distracting and dividing the nation away from the rape of their ways of life, allowing a warmongering corporatist government the means to expand its power, making 300 million people fight themselves instead of the real enemy at the top, even as their lives are placed in ever more danger thanks to a self-defeating, unwinnable and perpetual conflict. Thankfully, more and more citizens of America are waking up to the façade that is the ‘war on terror,’ joining the rest of humanity in seeing that a corrupt few have exploited the honorable many.

Dangers Real and Perceived

Yet, for about forty percent of the population, the ‘war on terror’ is as real as night and day, a most important war against the hated Arab heathens who share neither religion nor culture nor skin color with noble America. To the army of fascism, Arabs are evildoers extraordinaire, savages and primitives intent on killing all of what America stands for. They are barbarians, a people worshipping false gods and idols, mere subhuman animals willing to kill themselves, the army of Satan and reincarnations of demons past. They are an enemy that must be defeated and exterminated, whatever the cost, whatever the consequences. This belief by the army of fascism, however, is one based on ignorance, the belief of fantasy and a sheer weak-minded capacity to distinguish fact from fiction. When bombarded by a Zionist-first media and scapegoat-needing government, using a massive and methodical propaganda campaign, though, the Fox News and talk radio addicted army of fascism easily succumbs to such manipulations and lies.

While most Americans have recovered their senses in the years after 9/11, the army of fascism still remains trapped inside the clouds of asbestos and debris and smoke and dust, refusing to take the hand of truth and reality, firmly digging themselves inside the trenches of a horror-filled fantasy. Because they wish for its truth, they make it so, retaining the lies and deceits and manipulations they hear, never questioning for an instant the validity of such claim and never seeking their own education of such matters. Trained to always believe what they hear, they incorporate deceptive propaganda as their own, every day hating and fearing more and more, scapegoating an entire culture, religion and race, justifying their hatred and growing racism through the bull manure they hear and see on a daily basis.

The army of fascism remains deeply distraught by the horrors of 9/11, still possessed by its demons and its stresses, unable to exorcise the memories or ghosts of an operation allowed to succeed by the same heroes the army now religiously follows. Their outward bravado hides a deep inner fear, acting as their protective surrogate, for traumatized they remain and brainwashed they have been made to be. Psychologically fragile and mentally intimidated, they cling to the Dear Leader their monitors and radios command them to adore as a father figure in whom they seek protection and security. These millions are not able discern the falsity of the war on terror, nor the reality of what their ‘leader’ truly is, nor the true nature of the wars of conquest against Afghanistan and Iraq.

To the army of fascism, lies become truth just as much as reality becomes falsity. In their inescapable bubble, they see not how the world is but how they want the world to be, refusing to accept truth even as it showers them with unending facts and even as it utterly destroys the fictions they cannot let go of. These Americans remain traumatized and haunted by 9/11, clouding the rational and analytical thought processes they might have once possessed. Every hate and racist filled tirade by their favorite talking head vermin only validates in their minds the necessity to wage ceaseless war upon innocent Arabs and Muslims. Every diatribe they hear confirms their belief in the elimination and mass murder of hundreds of thousands of humans, replacing the goodness they once had with the thirst for malice that now runs through their veins.

They have become cold-blooded manifestations of their Dear Leader, the embodiment of all the psychopathic traits he possesses. They are the exact image of the President of the United States, indifferent, uncultured, unwise, callous, complicit, without love for their fellow human beings. Warm hearts have given way to frozen arteries, their desire to do harm to chosen scapegoats running rampant inside their bodies. They hate because they are told to hate, they wish death and destruction because they follow propaganda, never questioning anything but dissent. They fear because they are ignorant, they do not understand alien ways of life because they know nothing beyond their tiny bubbles, wishing instead to remain captives to the producer and consumer lifestyle they have been conditioned to follow.

They desperately cling to the beliefs that Arabs and Muslims are sub-human creatures and evildoers needing the salvation only America can provide. To them, America is bringing democracy and freedom to those it now occupies, and the noble intentions of the Bush administration are all that matters. The army of fascism refuses to see that tyranny was replaced by tyranny, that corruption has now been increased, that democracy is but a sham excuse to enslave and pillage, that an entire civilization lays in ruins and that 25 million people have had their lives shattered, that their tax dollars are being pilfered by corporate greed, that their sons and daughters are dying for nothing but the profit, wealth and power of the elite, that their rights and freedoms are being eliminated not by Arabs but by the leaders they shower with praise and adulation.

Millions of Americans are being transformed into conduits of hate and racism, citizens thirsting for Arab and Muslim blood and for the destruction of millions of lives. More and more we hear them talk about using nuclear bombs and WMDs to destroy Arabs. We hear them talk about curtailing Arab and Muslim civil rights and liberties in America, with cries of sending an entire race of people to internment and detention camps. We hear them validate war crimes and the death of over 100,000 innocent civilians, extolling the virtues of shooting and bombing Iraqis and Afghans to pieces. To these warmongers and violence seekers, the more Arab blood spilled the better.

To them torture under Saddam is horrific but under the red, white and blue, not to mention under the Star of David, it is encouraged and acceptable, no matter how sadistic and malevolent it becomes, no matter how much it contradicts basic foundations of humanity. Two dozen beheadings are condemned as barbaric yet the use of cluster bombs, missiles, napalm, bunker busters and 2,000 pound bombs that kill thousands and maim and decapitate countless more is seen as a civilized and necessary way to bring freedom and democracy to those we invade and occupy. To the army of fascism, an amalgam of Bush gulags is welcomed, and if death, torture and dehumanization results, so much the better. From Guantanamo, Cuba to Abu Ghraib, to prisons in Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Afghanistan, the army of fascism revels in the imprisonment of innocents and the torture of humans, wishing the keys to cages be thrown away for all eternity. The prisoners are Arab and Muslim, after all.

They approve destroying cities such as Fallujah, Najaf, Mosul and Sadr City in order to save them. Under no circumstances can they ever see the quagmire that is Iraq for what it is, nor the mistakes that have led to disaster and inevitable defeat. The army of fascism sees no problem appointing as Attorney General the man responsible for legalizing torture and endangering American soldiers. They feel comfortable keeping as Secretaries CEOs and executives of the corporate world that fleeces their lives. They look forward to a State Department run by a liar, conniver and unscrupulous cobra responsible for the death of over 100,000 innocent civilians. Ignorantly they allow the dangerous Likud-first neocons to remain pestering like flies in the halls of the White House and War and States Departments, hijacking foreign policy to the tunes of Israel’s delight. They rush to the polls to cast votes for the worst president in the history of the nation, having accomplished nothing but problems for the electorate since stealing the election of 2000, yet providing a treasure trove of favors to the corporate world.

Our Own Worst Enemies

The parameters of life in America were altered in one giant implosion of two towering monoliths, and the resulting psychosis which has ensued has only progressed further down the slope of the surreal. To America’s worker bees and soldier ants, hatred of Muslims and blatant racism of Arabs, combined with searing nationalism and growing ignorance of reality and the world, are fusing together to form a malicious combination of behaviors and psychology that is following a clear pattern of growth that, ever since 9/11, has multiplied in aggression.

Today, America is fast approaching a slippery slope of hatred, with xenophobia and homophobia at the frontlines, threatening to divide the nation and explode the fiery cauldron of diversity, creating a nation on the verge of implosion. Hate now fills the air, racism lingers in the environment, and, with ignorance the sparkplug of this most frightful engine, a new dawn fast approaches, pitting those blinded by hate, fear, ignorance and the clouds of 9/11 against those now free of demons, ghosts and inner turmoil.

Lines are being drawn in the sand, and slowly, yet surely, America is being divided based on the wars of George W. Bush. Hatred, fear, racism, fantasy, blind patriotism and corrosive ignorance stand on one side with the army of fascism. On the other side stands reality, courage, peace, love, diversity, world citizenship and education. The real danger is being played out today, with the army of fascism reporting dissent to the Department of Fatherland Insecurity, thereby placing anti-war voices on “terrorist watch lists,” with protest being confined to “free-speech zones,” with Republican politicians seeking to curtail still more rights, with right-wing Congressmen seeking to define dissent a psychological disease, with the army of fascism acting as national spies, keeping tabs on those not in tune with pro-war, pro-America, pro-Bush dictates.

This army is growing as the mass lunacy that has taken over America continues its reign of terror, invading minds and possessing spirits, catapulting inner turmoil and invasive demons onto the national stage. The army of fascism comprises your neighbors, friends and relatives, your co-workers, elected representatives and teachers. Hijacked by the psychosis of post-9/11, this army knows not what it does, doing the dirty work of the elite and warmongers who are unleashing devastation upon the green lands of Earth. They are captured by the fear exploited every day by those in power, exchanging once held sanity for evolving hatred and brewing racism.

The danger lies in another violent attack upon the nation, whether real or concocted, for the army of fascism will undoubtedly wage war against Arab and Muslim Americans, against those seeking peace, tolerance and justice, and against those not espousing the beliefs of the fascists in government. Another bombing or unconventional attack will result in the complete assault of civil rights, freedoms and habeas corpus, resulting in the complete fascist overhaul of American society, the introduction of a police state and the implementation of repression and subjugation of large segments of the population, no doubt abetted by the growing legions of the army of fascism.

Resurrected from the catacombs of lunacy and human wickedness past, mutating to the dictates of malice and corruption present, becoming the oxygen by which tyrants thrive, the voices by which hate prospers and the muscle by which the worst in the human condition grows, the army of fascism, birthed by brainwashed conditioning and bred in ignorance, unwillingly serves the masters who have created it, becoming its own worst enemy, the force that will self implode upon the evisceration of the freedoms, rights and democracy it took for granted.

Soon, when the forces of corporatism no longer need the army that so blindly follows, the awakening of millions will arrive too late, and from the long slumber of post 9/11 hysteria millions of minds will realize the self-implosion they wrought onto themselves, wishing they had only known, wishing they had been wiser to the propaganda, wishing to wake from the horrible nightmare now confronting their lives. Until then, however, they are helping lead us all directly into the wretched path of despotism of old and fascism of new, pulverizing our relations with the outside world and making extinct the life we once knew to exist.

Worker bees and soldier ants are condemning us all, for their numbers are many, possibly reaching half the citizenry, helping to keep in power the most unscrupulous cabal of human refuse to ever stand perched atop the halls of power. The world entire will have to suffer for the post 9/11 traumatic stress disorder affecting tens of millions of Americans who cannot escape the demons of crashing planes and falling towers, played and replayed countless times on video, in dreams and in the mind, that can now be seen as the sparkplug that launched America into a realm of lunacy, paranoia and incalculable human wickedness.

As the evolution and continued growth of the army of fascism persists, the decline of what America once espoused continues. We are becoming, in the end, our own worst enemies.

Mr. Valenzuela’s new novel is now on sale through Authorhouse.com at Echoes in the Wind Sales Page. A philosophical, educational and spiritual story on humanity and our civilization, as relevant as today’s headlines, this book is almost 600 pages in trade paperback form on sale internationally through secure web page transaction. Additionally, the novel is now available on Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, as well as other online book sellers. If preferred, the novel can also be ordered at any local brick and mortar bookstore worldwide through the book’s ISBN number, 1418489905.

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst, Internet columnist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com. A collection of essays, Beyond the Smoking Mirror: Reflections on America and Humanity, will be published in early 2005. His articles appear regularly in alternative news websites including informationclearinghouse.info . His unique style and powerful writing is read internationally and seeks to expose truths and realities confronting humanity today. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at [e-mail]. A collection of his work can be found visiting his archives and by searching the Internet

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DIE SELBSTENTWERTUNG DER PRINTMEDIEN
Auflagenkrise und Lügengeschichten
In aller Welt schrumpfen die Auflagen der Printmedien. Das liegt einesteils an der neuen digitalen Konkurrenz, aber auch daran, dass viele Zeitungen nicht mehr auf seriösen Journalismus setzen.
Von IGNACIO RAMONET
NICHTS veranschaulicht die Ratlosigkeit der französischen Presse angesichts des alarmierenden Auflagenrückgangs besser als die jüngste Entscheidung der ehemals maoistischen Tageszeitung Libération, für die Übernahme des Unternehmenskapitals durch den Bankier Edouard de Rothschild zu votieren.

Kurz zuvor hatte der Waffenhersteller Serge Dassault bereits die Socpresse-Gruppe erworben, die rund 70 Titel verlegt, darunter Le Figaro, LExpress, LExpansion und viele regionale Tageszeitungen. Ein anderer Rüstungsindustrieller, Arnaud Lagardère, besitzt die Hachette-Gruppe (den weltweit größten Zeitschriftenkonzern mit 245 Titeln in 36 Ländern), die in Frankreich 47 Zeitschriften publiziert, darunter Elle, Parents und Première und zahlreiche Tageszeitungen.

Sollte sich der allgemeine Auflagenrückgang fortsetzen, läuft die unabhängige Presse Gefahr, von einigen wenigen Industriellen beherrscht zu werden (Bouygues, Dassault, Lagardère, Pinault, Arnault, Bolloré und Bertelsmann). Auch die größte unabhängige Zeitungsverlagsgruppe, La Vie-Le Monde, macht in jüngster Zeit eine schwere Krise durch, die den Rücktritt des Le-Monde-Chefredakteurs Edwy Plenel zur Folge hatte. Verlagschef Jean-Marie Colombani verkündete noch vor Jahresfrist angesichts der enormen Defizite seines Hauses, künftig müsse man auf "exakte Recherchen" setzen statt auf die Inszenierung ungeprüfter Informationen.

Inzwischen trifft der allgemeine Auflagenrückgang auch führende Publikationen, und erstmals seit 15 Jahren bleibt davon auch Le Monde diplomatique nicht verschont. Während unsere Auflage seit 1990 stetig zulegte und von 2001 auf 2003 ein Rekordplus von insgesamt über 25 Prozent verzeichnete, müssen wir für 2004 mit einem Auflagenminus von etwa 12 Prozent rechnen. Dagegen hat sich die Zahl der Artikel, die über unsere kostenlose Website www.monde-diplomatique.fr abgefragt werden, mehr als verdoppelt. Auch die meisten großen Tageszeitungen müssen wie schon 2003 einen drastischen Auflagenrückgang hinnehmen: Le Figaro 4,4 Prozent, Libération 6,2 Prozent, Les Echos 6,4 Prozent, Le Monde 7,5 Prozent, La Tribune 12,3 Prozent.

Das Phänomen ist dabei keineswegs auf Frankreich beschränkt. Die International Herald Tribune zum Beispiel verzeichnete 2003 einen Rückgang um 4,16 Prozent, die Financial Times in Großbritannien ein Minus von 6,6 Prozent. In Deutschland sank die Gesamtauflage in den letzten 5 Jahren um 7,7 Prozent, in Dänemark um 9,5, in Österreich um 9,9, in Belgien um 6,9 Prozent und in Japan (das traditionell den größten Zeitungskonsum der Welt hat) um 2,2 Prozent. EU-weit ging der Absatz von Tageszeitungen in den letzten Jahren um täglich eine Million Exemplare zurück, weltweit um durchschnittlich 2 Prozent. Angesichts dessen fragen sich manche Beobachter, ob die Printmedien noch eine Zukunft haben, ob das klassische Medium des Industriezeitalters nicht zum Sterben verdammt ist.

Schon verschwinden einzelne Titel vom Markt. In Ungarn stellte die Schweizer Ringier-Gruppe am 5. November 2004 die Tageszeitung Magyar Hirlap ein, mittlerweile hat die Redaktion die Rechte am Titel erworben. Am 4. November stellte die US-amerikanische Dow-Jones-Gruppe das in Hongkong erscheinende Wirtschaftsmagazin Far Eastern Economic Review ein. In Frankreich gab im Dezember 2004 die Monatszeitschrift Nova Magazine auf. Die Rezession trifft auch die Presseagenturen. Marktführer Reuters hat gerade die Entlassung von 4 500 Beschäftigten angekündigt.

Die externen Gründe der Krise sind bekannt. Da ist zum einen die verheerende Marktoffensive der kostenlosen Tageszeitungen: In Frankreich liegt 20 Minutes mit täglich 2 Millionen Lesern schon weit vor Le Parisien (1,7 Millionen), die ebenfalls kostenlose Métro wird täglich von 1,6 Millionen Menschen gelesen. Die "Kostenlosen" ziehen riesige Werbesummen ab, denn den Werbenden ist es egal, ob der Leser den Werbeträger bezahlt oder nicht. Um sich gegen diese Konkurrenz zu wehren - die inzwischen auch die Wochenzeitungen bedrängt -, bieten manche Tageszeitungen (etwa in Italien, Spanien und Griechenland) gegen einen geringen Aufpreis eine DVD, eine CD, oder Kupons für eine Enzyklopädie. Damit verwässern sie ihre Identität, entwerten den Titel und bringen eine Entwicklung in Gang, deren Ausgang nicht abzuschätzen ist.

Ein zweiter externer Grund ist natürlich der fantastische Siegeszug des Internets. Weltweit gibt es derzeit rund 70 Millionen Websites, über 700 Millionen Menschen surfen im Internet. In den entwickelten Ländern geben immer mehr Menschen die Zeitungslektüre, ja sogar das Fernsehen auf und setzen sich vor den Computerbildschirm. Vor allem ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) verändert die Surfgewohnheiten. In Frankreich besitzen bereits 5,5 Millionen Surfer einen Hochgeschwindigkeitszugang zu Onlinezeitungen, weltweit haben 79 Prozent aller Tageszeitungen eine Onlineausgabe.

Hinzu kommt das Phänomen der Blogs, deren Zahl im zweiten Halbjahr 2004 regelrecht explodiert ist. Die tagebuchähnlichen Aufzeichnungen vermischen bedenkenlos Information und Meinung, überprüfte Tatsachen und Gerüchte, dokumentierte Analysen und fantasievolle Impressionen. Der Hype zeigt, dass viele Leser lieber die bewusst subjektiven und einseitigen Darstellungen der Blogger lesen als die angeblich objektiven Elaborate der großen Tageszeitungen. Der Internetzugang via Allround-Handy wird diese Tendenz weiter verstärken. Das Resultat: Alle Informationsmedien außer dem Internet verlieren Kunden.(1)

Die Auflagenkrise hat aber auch interne, also hausgemachte Gründe, allen voran den Glaubwürdigkeitsverlust der Printmedien. Der geht zum einen auf die eingangs geschilderte Entwicklung zurück, dass immer mehr Tageszeitungen unter die Kontrolle von Unternehmensgruppen geraten, die wirtschaftliche Macht ausüben und sich mit der Staatsgewalt abstimmen. Ein weiterer Grund ist die stetige Zunahme von einseitiger Berichterstattung und mangelnder Objektivität, von Lügen und Manipulationen aller Art oder auch nur von hohlem Geschwätz. Ein goldenes journalistisches Zeitalter hat es zwar nie gegeben, aber in jüngster Zeit machen sich solche Fehlentwicklungen auch bei Qualitätsblättern bemerkbar. Die Jayson-Blair-Affäre in den USA, bei der es um erfundene Geschichten und Plagiate von Internetartikeln ging, hat dem Ruf der New York Times, die Blairs Lügengeschichten zum Teil auf der Titelseite veröffentlichte, erheblich geschadet. Die renommierte Zeitung geriet in eine schwere Krise: Chefredakteur Howell Raines und der geschäftsführende Redakteur Gerald Boyd mussten ihren Hut nehmen, dazu wurde der neue Posten eines Mediators geschaffen.

Noch höhere Wellen schlug einige Monate später ein Skandal bei der auflagenstärksten US-Tageszeitung USA Today. Deren entsetzte Leser mussten erfahren, dass ihr berühmtester Reporter, Jack Kelley, der seit 20 Jahren kreuz und quer über den Globus reiste, 36 Staatschefs interviewt und über zahlreiche Kriege berichtet hatte, ein zwanghafter Fälscher und "Serienlügner" ist. Zwischen 1993 und 2003 hatte Kelly hunderte von Sensationsstorys in die Welt gesetzt. Wie zufällig war er stets zur rechten Zeit am rechten Ort. In einer seiner Reportagen gab er sich als Zeuge eines Anschlags auf eine Pizzeria in Jerusalem aus und schilderte, wie drei Männer am Nebentisch durch die Explosion in die Luft gewirbelt wurden und ihre Köpfe auf die Straße rollten.

Seine größte Lügengeschichte tischte er am 10. März 2000 über Kuba auf. Kelley hatte eine Hotelangestellte namens "Jacqueline" fotografiert und erzählte nun in allen Einzelheiten, wie sie in einem leichten Boot aus Kuba floh und in der Floridastraße auf tragische Weise ertrank. In Wirklichkeit ist die Frau, die Yamilet Fernández heißt, am Leben und hat nie ein vergleichbares Abenteuer erlebt. Blake Morrison, auch er Journalist bei USA Today, hat sie getroffen und konnte nachweisen, dass Kelley die Geschichte frei erfunden hatte.(2) Kelleys Lügenmärchen kosteten die Chefredakteurin Karen Jurgensen, ihren Stellvertreter Brian Gallagher und Nachrichtenchef Hal Ritter ihre Posten.(3)

Mitten im Präsidentschaftswahlkampf des letzten Jahres gab es einen weiteren Verstoß gegen den journalistischen Verhaltenskodex. Dan Rather, Nachrichtensprecher bei CBS und Moderator der renommierten Sendung "Sixty Minutes", räumte ein, ungeprüft gefälschte Dokumente verbreitet zu haben, die belegen sollten, dass sich US-Präsident Bush nur durch Protektion dem Vietnamkrieg entziehen konnte.(4)

Ein weiteres publizistisches Desaster war das Versagen führender US-Medien, allen voran der Fernsehkette Fox News, vor und während des Irakkriegs.(5) Sie glaubten unbesehen die vom Weißen Haus lancierten Lügen und verbreiteten sie in alle Welt. Keine Zeitung hat die damaligen Behauptungen der Bush-Administration überprüft oder auch nur in Zweifel gezogen. Andernfalls hätte Michael Moores Dokumentarstreifen "Fahrenheit 9/11" schwerlich einen solchen Erfolg gehabt, denn was der Film an Informationen bietet, war seit langem zugänglich, wurde von den Medien jedoch totgeschwiegen.

Selbst Washington Post und New York Times ließen sich ins Räderwerk der Propagandamaschinerie einspannen. Der britische Medienexperte John Piler schreibt: "Lange vor der Irakinvasion heulten die beiden Tageszeitungen mit dem Wolf im Weißen Haus. Die New York Times titelte mit Schlagzeilen wie: ,Geheimes Waffenarsenal: Jagd auf Kriegsbakterien`, ,Ein Deserteur beschreibt die Fortschritte der Atombombe im Irak`, ,Ein Iraker über die Sanierung chemischer und atomarer Waffenlager` … Alle diese Artikel erwiesen sich als reine Propaganda. In einer von der Washington Post veröffentlichten hausinternen E-Mail bekannte Judith Miller, Starjournalistin der New York Times, sie habe ihre Informationen hauptsächlich von Ahmed Tschalabi erhalten, einem wegen Unterschlagung rechtskräftig verurteilten Exiliraker, der den in Washington ansässigen und von der CIA finanzierten Irakischen Nationalkongress (INC) leitet. Ein Untersuchungsbericht des US-Kongresses kam später zu dem Schluss, fast alle Informationen Tschalabis und anderer INC-Exiliraker seien wertlos gewesen."(6)

Ein CIA-Beamter namens Robert Baer beschrieb, wie die Fälschungsmaschinerie funktionierte: "Der Irakische Nationalkongress bezog seine Informationen von falschen Deserteuren und leitete sie ans Pentagon weiter. Anschließend gab er dieselben Informationen an Journalisten: ,Wenn Sie uns nicht glauben, rufen Sie doch das Pentagon an.` So schloss sich der Kreis, und die New York Times konnte behaupten, dass sie ihre Infos über Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak aus zwei verschiedenen Quellen habe. Dasselbe Spiel lief bei der Washington Post. Die Journalisten taten nichts, um mehr in Erfahrung zu bringen. Viele wurden zudem von ihren Chefredakteuren angewiesen, die Regierung zu unterstützen. Aus Patriotismus."(7)

Der Chefredakteur der Washington Post, Steve Coll, musste am 25. August 2004 zurücktreten, nachdem sich erwiesen hatte, dass im Vorfeld der Irakinvasion nur wenige Artikel erschienen waren, die der Position der Bush-Administration zuwiderliefen.(8) Auch die New York Times druckte ein "mea culpa". In einem Leitartikel vom 26. Mai 2004 räumte die Zeitung ein, bei der Darstellung der Vorkriegsereignisse ihre journalistische Sorgfaltspflicht verletzt zu haben, und bedauerte die Veröffentlichung von "Fehlinformationen".

Nicht weniger katastrophal ist die Medienberichterstattung mitunter in Frankreich. Das zeigte sich etwa bei den Affären um die Pädophilen von Outreau oder um Marie-L., die in einem Pariser Vorortzug angeblich Opfer eines antisemitischen Übergriffs geworden war. In Spanien suchten die von der Regierung Aznar kontrollierten Medien nach den Anschlägen vom 11. März 2004 mit Falschinformationen für sich Stimmung zu machen. Sie verschwiegen die Verantwortung von al-Qaida und schoben das Attentat der ETA in die Schuhe, um die Wahlaussichten der scheidenden Rechtsregierung zu verbessern.(9)

All diese Affären, aber auch die immer engere Verflechtung der Medien mit wirtschaftlichen und politischen Machtstrukturen, beschädigen die Glaubwürdigkeit der Medien und offenbaren ein beunruhigendes Demokratiedefizit. Der kritische Journalismus wird immer mehr von einem Verlautbarungsjournalismus verdrängt. Man fragt sich fast schon, ob die Idee der freien Presse in unserer Zeit der Globalisierung und der weltumspannenden Medienkonzerne nicht antiquiert ist.

Doch immer mehr Bürger werden sich dessen bewusst. Sie reagieren extrem sensibel auf Medienmanipulationen und scheinen daraus den Schluss zu ziehen, dass wir in unseren übermediatisierten Gesellschaften paradoxerweise im Zustand informationeller Unsicherheit leben. Informationen gibt es zuhauf, jedoch keinerlei Garantie für ihre Verlässlichkeit. Ob sie authentisch sind, ist keineswegs gewiss, nur zu oft folgt irgendein Dementi. Sensationsjournalismus und Spektakel triumphieren zu Lasten seriöser Informationen und Recherchen. Die Inszenierung (Verpackung) von Nachrichten ist wichtiger als die Überprüfung ihres Wahrheitsgehalts.

Anstatt diese Fehlentwicklung zu stoppen, für die auch der Kult der Geschwindigkeit und der Echtzeitberichterstattung verantwortlich ist, huldigen viele Tageszeitungen einer faulen und polizeimäßigen Vorstellung von Investigationsjournalismus. Was man einst als "vierte Gewalt" gewürdigt hat, wird damit vollends diskreditiert.

Angesichts dieser Entwicklung wird Le Monde diplomatique alles tun, um das Informationsangebot weiter zu verbessern. Wir glauben, dass es unsere wichtigste Aufgabe ist, das Vertrauen der Leser nicht zu enttäuschen. Wir werden unseren Grundsätzen und Vorstellungen von zuverlässiger Berichterstattung auch in Zukunft treu bleiben - durch eine mediale Entschleunigung, durch einen Aufklärungsjournalismus, der die Schattenseiten des Zeitgeschehens beleuchtet, durch Berichte über Ereignisse, die nicht im Scheinwerferlicht der Berichterstattung stehen, aber zu einem besseren Verständnis der internationalen Zusammenhänge beitragen, durch möglichst vollständige und gut dokumentierte Dossiers, durch systematische und seriöse Analysen, die der Sache auf den Grund gehen, durch Informationen, die oft totgeschwiegen werden. Mit anderen Worten: Wir sind entschlossen, gegen den Strom der herrschenden Medien zu schwimmen. Wir sind nach wie vor überzeugt, dass von der Qualität der Informationen die Qualität der öffentlichen Debatte abhängt, die letztendlich über den Reichtum der Demokratie entscheidet.

deutsch von Bodo Schulze

Fußnoten:
(1) In den USA sanken die Einschaltzahlen bei den abendlichen Nachrichtensendungen der großen Fernsehketten von 1994 bis 2003 von 36,2 auf 26,3 Millionen Zuschauer.
(2) http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-03-19-2004-03-19-kelley-cu…
(3) Le Monde, 30. April 2004.
(4) Le Monde, 28. September 2004.
(5) Siehe den Dokumentarfilm von Robert Greenwald, "Outfoxed", 2004.
(6) John Pilger, "Fabriquer des citoyens consommateurs, mal informés et bien pensants", Le Monde diplomatique, Oktober 2004.
(7) Zitiert nach dem Dokumentarfilm von Robert Greenwald, "Uncovered", 2003.
(8) The Washington Post, 12. August 2004.
(9) Ein vergleichbarer Vorfall in der deutschen Presselandschaft war die Tom-Kummer-Affäre des SZ-Magazins. Die Interviews und Reportagen des freien Journalisten Kummer hatten sich als komplette Fälschungen herausgestellt.

Le Monde diplomatique Nr. 7564 vom 14.1.2005, 386 Zeilen, IGNACIO RAMONET

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Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, Desolate Falluja

Mehrere Links:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2124

The other day I posted a Dahr Jamail piece entitled, Iraq: The Devastation, but another word has recently come to mind that, I suspect, might apply no less aptly to Iraq and other areas where the Bush administration is exerting its muscle. That word is "desolation."

Let`s forget for a minute the recent Newsweek report that the Pentagon is considering funding 1980s El Salvador-style "death squads" in Iraq, an article which caused enough of a stir to be addressed both by the Secretary of Defense ("somebody has been reading too many spy novels and went off in flights of fancy, which I hope have been put to rest") and by the White House press spokesman; or the urge among administration hardliners to extend a failing war and occupation across a border in the next few weeks with strikes into Syria; or the fact, just revealed in a front-page New York Times piece that the "we don`t torture" administration sent Condoleezza Rice on a special mission to Capitol Hill to oppose the imposition of Congressional restrictions on, and oversight of, what the two Times reporters politely call CIA "extreme interrogation measures." Instead, what stays in my mind is a single incident reported recently that caught for me the desolation the Bush administration is spreading in its wake: a desolation of place, of our military, of our values, of our language.

On January 7, an American plane dropped a 500-pound bomb on a house in a village near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The house, the military announced afterwards, was "not the intended target" in what was called "a cordon and search operation to capture an anti-Iraqi force cell leader." An argument promptly began as to whether, as the military claimed, 5 people had been killed or, as people on the ground claimed, 14 people, including 7 children. (This sort of argument has been a commonplace of such incidents in both Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.) The military also issued an expression of regret -- and it was a phrase in that statement which still hangs desolately in my memory. The military announced that it "deeply regretted the loss of possibly innocent lives." Think of that. A 500-pound bomb hits what they themselves then believed not to be "the intended target" and what they regretted was the loss of "possibly innocent" lives. Was it simply assumed by now that so many Iraqis support the insurgency in areas like Mosul that even in the "wrong" house the odds of "innocence" were slim?

A homespun version of Iraqi desolation came my way recently via an e-mail sent in by an Iraqi exile from the Saddam years who is still in exile. She writes:

"I just finished reading Dahr Jamail`s article about Iraq and thought I might add my personal account of the situation there. Here is what I heard from my family (in Baghdad) in the last few weeks:

"1. As of last week, they have only two hours of electricity for every ten hours of black-out.

"2. Several female hairdressing salons have been bombed and the others are threatened by the fanatics. The result: Most salons are now closed for business.

"3. Male barbers were also given warnings not to do specific hair styles only God knows why!!

"4. One of my sister`s friends has been killed because he failed to stop at an American checkpoint. It was a bit dark and his eyesight wasn`t 100%. In his panic he just rushed past the checkpoint. It is one of the tragedies that are occurring every day and have been since the start of the war. The reason is so simple; no one educated the soldiers that the Iraqi, when faced with such a situation, accelerates instead of stopping. This habit had been instilled in the Iraqi mind during the terrorizing years of [Saddam Hussein`s] dictatorship. The last thing anyone would want was to be caught up at a checkpoint because this could lead to prison and possibly death, regardless of whether he/she was involved in anything suspicious. All that was needed was for someone to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Unfortunately, I learned that the hard way when my husband was arrested at such a checkpoint. He was released one month later after the intelligence forces were satisfied he wasn`t involved in anything suspicious, but in that month he had gone through some horrible experiences, which to this day he refuses to talk about (even to me), and which still haunt his nights."

Of course, there is now nothing more literally desolate in Iraq than the Carthage we`ve created in Falluja about which Michael Schwartz has much more to say. Tom

Falluja
City Without a Future?
By Michael Schwartz

In November, after three weeks of "precision" bombing, 10,000 American soldiers and 2,000 Iraqi national guards marched into Falluja. They had five goals:

First and foremost, free Falluja from the grip of the insurgents and allow its citizens to participate in the January 30 elections;

Second, kill or capture the guerrilla leadership in its "safe haven," particularly Abdul Musab al-Zarqawi, the accused mastermind of the resistance;

Third, "so damage the insurgency" that it would be reduced to "containable levels through 2005";

Fourth, teach Fallujans (and the rest of Iraq) that "harboring" the mujaheddin resistance would provoke the full force of the American military. (On this point, an anonymous Pentagon official told New York Times reporters Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt: "If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, the locals at some point have to make a decision. Do they want to harbor the insurgents and suffer the consequences that come with that, or do they want to get rid of the insurgents and have the benefits of not having them there?");

Fifth, rebuild Falluja, now cleared of guerrillas, as a showcase for the rest of the country to admire and emulate. (As Colonel John R. Ballard, a military planner, told the New York Times "The best place to bring a model town into place is Falluja.``)

Did the attack on Falluja accomplish these ambitious goals?

"Suffering the consequences"

Unfortunately, the only success in the Fallujan campaign so far has been in demonstrating "the consequences" that would accrue to cities that harbored guerrillas. Falluja was gutted. Two months after the invasion, Erik Eckholm of the New York Times described the city as "a desolate world of skeletal buildings, tank-blasted homes, weeping power lines and severed palm trees." At least a quarter of its homes were fully destroyed, and virtually all the others were severely damaged. Blown out windows, wrecked furniture, three-foot blast holes in walls, and disintegrated doors demonstrated that American troops had relentlessly applied what they jokingly called the "FISH" strategy (Fighting in Someone`s House), which involved "throwing a hand grenade into each room before checking it for unfriendlies." Since (in the words of Lt. Gen. Sattler) "each and every house" was searched, very few remained livable.

The civilians who stayed during the fighting found themselves in a kill-anything-that-moves free-fire zone. When the first medical teams arrived in January they collected more than 700 unburied and rotting bodies (reputedly including those of 550 women and children) in only one-third of the city; and these obviously didn`t include the dead already buried during the battle or hidden under the debris. (As Al Jazeera put it, "the smell of corpses inside charred buildings pervades the atmosphere.") If the 2,000 kills claimed by U.S. forces are accurate, that means that no fewer than 3000 people (1% of the city`s estimated pre-campaign population) died; the real figure is undoubtedly far higher.

But what of those who survived? More than 200,000 residents are estimated to have fled the battle, many without even a change of clothes, just as the Iraqi winter set in. The lucky ones crowded into the homes of friends and relatives, sometimes as many as 30 people to a small apartment. The unlucky ones created ad hoc refugee camps virtually anywhere they could squat, mostly without any facilities at all to call on. One family set up a tent in the bumper-car arena of an abandoned amusement park. (At least there was a roof.) Independent journalist Dahr Jamail reported that their daily life consisted of "searching for food, medical attention, warmth and clean water." One refugee told Jamail, "We are living like dogs and the kids do not have enough clothes." Another vividly described the lack of food in terms of the normal post-Ramadan feasting this way: "We did not feel that there is Eid after Ramadan this year because of our situation being so bad. All we have is more fasting." The American occupation forces and the Iraqi Interim Government offered no help to these "invisible" victims, certainly underscoring, whether purposely or not, the "consequences" to be visited on those who harbored guerrillas.

A senior Bush administration official had predicted to a New York Times reporter that Fallujans would respond to the onslaught by saying, "O.K. No más! What do we do about this? How do we work with you, Prime Minister Allawi, to try to stop this kind of warfare."

But instead of saying "No más," the Fallujans have evidently been infuriated, with thousands demonstrating at the gates of the city, demanding that the U.S. leave. Others favored international intervention to stop the assault: "I would like to ask the whole world-why is this? I tell the presidents of the Arab and Muslim countries to wake up! Wake up please! We are being killed, we are refugees from our houses, our children have nothing -- not even shoes to wear! Wake up! Wake up! Stop being traitors! Be human beings and not the dummies of the Americans!"

And the anger extended far beyond Falluja. In Ramadi, 40 year old Abdulla Rahnan concluded, "The Americans want every city in Iraq to be like Fallujah. They want to kill us all -- they are freeing us of our lives!" His friend contributed his own grim observation: "Everyone here hates them because they are making mass graves faster than even Saddam!"

Were the guerrillas at least demobilized by the offensive? In mid-November, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the Marines in Falluja, affirmed the campaign`s success, telling reporters that the attack had "broken the back of the insurgency…. I personally believe, across the country, this is going to make it very hard for them to operate."

He was wrong. Abdul Musab al-Zarqawi (if he was ever in Falluja) left the city long before the attack with virtually all of the other guerrilla leaders. The vast majority of the fighters evacuated with the residents, evidently leaving behind a relatively small force of guerrillas, who used classic hit-and-run tactics to inflict as much harm on the Americans as they could. While many sacrificed their lives, others escaped through tunnels and the rubble, and then returned to attack again and again. After eight weeks of this, one leader who remained taunted the occupation by conducting a cell-phone interview with Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid from inside the city, claiming the fighting "would continue for months."

And while the Americans were tied down in Falluja, the guerrillas mounted a huge offensive throughout the Sunni areas of Iraq. They reversed American offensives in Tal Afar and Samarra; seized the initiative in Mosul and Tikrit (previously showcases for the occupation authorities); challenged American control in many neighborhoods of Baghdad; regularly shelled the American headquarters in the capital`s "Green Zone;" and escalated their attacks against American bases. In November, one in four American supply convoys was ambushed, forcing the military to turn increasingly to airlifts to transport supplies.

In December, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy chief of the U.S. Central command, conceded that the insurgency was "becoming more effective." In early January, the Iraqi intelligence chief announced that four predominantly Sunni provinces (including Baghdad), holding 40% of the Iraqi population, were now considered "unsafe" -- that is, they were the sites of ongoing battles between mujaheddin and American soldiers.

Instead of crushing the insurgency, the attack on Falluja seems only to have increased its depth and scope, while adding to its support.

Clearing Falluja

As the U.S. military destroyed Falluja, they found they could not even fully subdue the resistance inside the city. Though the invading force advanced quickly from one end of Falluja to the other and made early declarations of victory, low-level fighting continued through December and into January.

Both sides claimed the advantage in these ongoing battles. The mujahaddin, armed with satellite telephones and internet connections (and even English-language outlets like Jihad Unspun), issued press releases claiming victory after victory, under headlines like "US Pulls Back From Parts of Fallujah," The American media, in the meantime, declared that the city was quiet -- except for "occasional firefights and sniping."

The underlying reality was a classic, low-level urban guerrilla war in the rubble, with the guerrillas standing and fighting only when they thought they could inflict modest damage, and the U.S. responding with overwhelming force -- tanks, artillery, and bombing runs -- against any building from which they received fire. Whether these encounters were occasional or frequent, whether the Americans or the insurgents regularly prevailed, the result was certainly an ongoing struggle. A January UN dispatch reported that only nine of 27 neighborhoods were safe enough for medical teams to enter; and that reporters were not being permitted in the city "for their own safety." A Los Angeles Times report referred just to "occasional firefights" in the city, but then declared that "only certain parts of Fallouja are considered safe enough for residents to return" and that temporary U.S. bases within the city bore signs with the peculiar but unambiguous warning: "STOP Or U.S. Military Will Shoot Fire."

A sense of the ongoing fighting is reflected in a report from a refugee describing his first and only night back in the city ("Report from Falluja Refugee Camp," Free Speech Radio News, Jan. 6, 2005): "The houses around mine have all been destroyed. Our house was full of smoke. It was a mess. We cleaned up the house and spent the night there. But the bombing started at seven in the evening and lasted until the morning. There were all sorts of bombs. My children could not sleep." Because there was "no real end of the fighting in sight," they chose to leave once again and focus on "day-to-day survival" as refugees.

Since the rubblized terrain that is now Falluja can probably hide guerrillas indefinitely, the fighting might only end with an American withdrawal. In the meantime, with so many front-line troops fighting in, or occupying Falluja, the American military has only been able to mount half-hearted responses to insurgent efforts elsewhere, while remaining vulnerable to IEDs planted along convoy and patrol routes, to the mortaring of bases and of the Green Zone, and to suicide attacks like the one at the army mess hall of in Mosul.

The Meaningless Election?

By January, reality had made a mockery of the pre-attack Bush administration mantra that U.S. troops would make Falluja "safe for the election." A tiny trickle of residents weathered the five-hour wait at U.S. checkpoints to return to an unlivable city still at war. And most of them left again after inspecting their destroyed neighborhoods. At least 90% of Fallujans were sure to be non-voting refugees when the election arrived.

But to say that the attack on Falluja definitively disfranchised Fallujans would be to ignore the much larger reality: that elections cannot be held in most of Sunni Iraq. It was not just that very few voters had registered in either Mosul or Anbar province; nor that the Interim Security Secretary had warned that safety concerns might preclude elections in the four majority-Sunni provinces; nor that there were few functioning voter registration centers (and those were targeted by guerrillas); nor that the whole election commission in Anbar province had resigned, claiming that it was not worth risking their lives when elections were impossible.

The most significant factor was that a large proportion -- likely a majority -- of Fallujans and other Sunnis believed the election to be a cruel charade in which they were being asked to choose which group of quislings would administer American policy. Riverbend, the pseudonymous young Sunni woman whose website has become required reading for those concerned with Iraq, expressed this sentiment elegantly at the beginning of January:

"Sunni Arabs are going to boycott elections. It`s not about religion or fatwas or any of that so much as the principle of holding elections while you are under occupation. People don`t really sense that this is the first stepping stone to democracy, as western media is implying. Many people sense that this is just the final act of a really bad play. It`s the tying of the ribbon on the ‘democracy parcel` we`ve been handed. It`s being stuck with an occupation government that has been labeled `legitimate` through elections."

Without the Sunni vote, a new regime would be visibly unrepresentative, another nail in the coffin of a government whose existence would continue to depend on 150,000 foreign troops.

The False Promise of Reconstruction

Even before the attack, the U.S. promised that a newly liberated Falluja would be spectacularly reconstructed -- "a feat of social and physical engineering… intended to transform a bastion of militant anti-Americanism into a benevolent and functional metropolis." But actions always speak louder than words, and six weeks after declaring victory the only new construction in the city consisted of a series of checkpoints (where soldiers recorded the fingerprints and retina scans of returning residents), and the newly bulldozed main streets (whose use was restricted to U.S. military vehicles). This police-state approach reflected what Charles Hess, the Director of the Iraq Project and Contracting Office and the man in charge of the city`s reconstruction, called a "near term…focus on operational security measures."

But the deepest tragedy lay not in the "near term," but in the near certainty that the promised reconstruction will never take place, simply because the Bush administration is unlikely ever to allocate the massive resources needed for such an undertaking. The monetary commitment cited by U.S. officials escalated from a pre-attack $50 million to an early January estimate of $230 million. But this figure, which Hess claimed to be adequate for the job, is actually a fraction of what would needed to recreate a modestly working city and a minuscule proportion of the total required to create "a benevolent and functional metropolis."

The inadequacy of allocation can be judged by considering infrastructure repairs. Based on the estimated $400 million cost of repairing the less disastrously damaged Sadr City water systems in Baghdad, the repair of Falluja`s sewers and treatment plants would in itself surely exhaust the entire $230 million allocation being discussed. The electrical system, which needed to be "ripped out and rebuilt from scratch," would cost at least as much as the sewers. Rejuvenating the medical system, rebuilding the schools, and clearing and rebuilding the streets, would likely claim another $100 million or more each.

And that`s without even considering housing repair. The Iraqi Interim Government promised families from $2000 to $10,000 for each damaged dwelling. With 12,000 to 20,000 of the 50,000 homes in Falluja effectively demolished, this added up to yet another $200 million promise, with another $100 million needed to meet the government`s promises to shop owners.

And remember that Falluja, the "city of mosques," now has had an unknown but significant number of its 100 or so mosques more or less annihilated, and well over half damaged. Christian Parenti, a knowledgeable independent reporter, estimated that just two of the mosques would require some $80 million in repairs; the full bill might therefore exceed $1 billion.

Total this up and you discover that the promised allocation for the reconstruction of Falluja is at least $2 billion less than would reasonably be needed. And, given the record of reconstruction funds released by the Americans over the last year, even the $230 million is certainly in question.

In other words, the promise of a "benevolent and functional metropolis" could be seen, at best, as a cruel hoax, vitiated only slightly by the fact that Fallujans never believed it.

"We Destroyed Everything"

If the American occupation authorities have their way, Falluja may remain a wasteland until the resistance is subdued. The promises of freedom, elections, and a benevolent metropolis were all empty ones. Even Charles Hess, in charge of reconstruction, admitted in December that "little reconstruction has been done" in either Najaf or Samarra, the predecessor beneficiaries of a similar style of American liberation. And Falluja, seen as more hostile territory than either of the other two cities, may not even have their "luck."

Many of the recently returning refugees heard or saw battles from the checkpoints and retreated without entering the city. Others viewed their damaged or destroyed homes and then left. Still others stayed one night and then chose a homeless odyssey over residence in what was left of their city.

But a few stayed, and they will try to begin the process of rebuilding. And herein lies the greatest tragedy of all. The miracle of the human spirit can (and eventually will) redeem even so desolate a wasteland. But this redemption must wait, because the presence of the U.S. military -- with its retina scans, its prohibition on all non-military vehicles inside city limits, its constant surveillance, its threats of and use of deadly force, its monopoly over all resources and, most of all, its quixotic effort to subdue the resistance -- makes even the beginning of reconstruction impossible.

Derrick Anthony, a 21 year-old Navy Corpsman surveyed the desolate Falluja landscape and commented, "It`s kind of bad we destroyed everything, but at least we gave them a chance for a new start."

He was wrong. Reconstruction will only begin when the Americans leave.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared at Asia Times, and ZNet and in Contexts and Z Magazine. He is a regular contributor to Tomdispatch. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is [e-mail]@optonline.net.

Copyright C2004 Michael Schwartz

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January 14, 2005
Collective Punishment

Links im Text:
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000168.…

It’s not a new tactic here in Iraq. The US military has been doing it for well over a year now. Last January 3rd, in the Al-Dora rural region on the outskirts of Baghdad, where beautiful farms of date palms and orange trees line the banks of the Tigris, I visited a farm where occupation forces had lobbed several mortars.

The military claimed they had been attacked by fighters in the area, while the locals denied any knowledge of harboring resistance fighters.

Standing in a field full of unexploded mortar rounds a farmer explained, “We don’t know why they bomb our house and our fields. We have never resisted the Americans. There are foreign fighters who have passed through here, and I think this is who they want. But why are they bombing us?”

At that time U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told reporters that Operation Iron Grip in this area sends “a very clear message to anybody who thinks that they can run around Baghdad without worrying about the consequences of firing RPG’s, firing mortars. There is a capability in the air that can quickly respond against anybody who would want to harm Iraqi citizens or coalition forces."

I counted 9 small tails of the mortar rounds sticking into the air in this small section of the field.

I asked if the family had requested that the Americans come remove the unexploded ordnance.

Mr. Shakr, with a very troubled look told me, “We asked them the first time and they said ‘OK, we’ll come take care of it.’ But they never came. We asked them the second time and they told us they would not remove them until we gave them a resistance fighter. They told us, ‘If you won’t give us a resistance fighter, we are not coming to remove the bombs.’”

He holds his hands in the air and said, “But we don’t know any resistance fighters!”

Also last winter I also reported on home demolitions in Samarra by the military. The consistent pattern then was that anytime an attack occurred against occupation forces, nearby homes/buildings/fields were then raided or destroyed by the military, along with complimentary electricity cuts for the villages and/or cities.

That pattern appears to remain the same, as I found today in another visit to the al-Dora region of Baghdad.

Seven weeks ago, after having suffered many attacks by the Iraqi resistance in the area, the military began plowing date palm orchards, blasted a gas station with a tank, cut the electricity which is still down, and blocking roads in the rural farming area.

As we drove deep into the rural farming area along a thin, winding road which parallels the Tigris River, a wolf trots across the road. Rounding a bend I saw a large swath of date palms which had been bulldozed to the ground. Large piles of them had been pushed together, doused with fuel, and burned.

“The Americans were attacked from this field, then they returned and started plowing down all the trees,” explains Kareem, a local mechanic, “None of us knows any fighters and we all know they are coming here from other areas to attack the Americans, but we are the people who suffer from this.”

Across the way are other piles of scorched date palms.

Mohammed, a 15 year-old secondary school student stands near his home explaining what he saw. “There is a grave of an old woman they bulldozed,” and then he points to the nearby road, “They destroyed our fences, and now there are wolves attacking our animals, they destroyed much of our farming equipment, and the worst is they cut our electricity.”

“They come by here every night and fire their weapons to frighten us,” he explains while pointing out an MRE on the ground, left from some soldiers who used the bulldozers.

“But we need electricity to run our pumps to irrigate our farms,” added Mohammed, “And now we are carrying water in buckets from the river instead and this is very difficult for us. They say they are going to make things better for us, but they are worse. Saddam was better than this, even though he executed three of my relatives.”

His mother, Um Raed, cannot stop talking about the electricity.

“If there are bombs why do they attack our homes,” she pleads, “Why don’t they follow the people who attack them? Why do they come to our family? All we need now is electricity so we can run our water pumps. I don’t need my house, but we need water. This is our planting season.”

Ihsan, a 17 year-old student, joins the conversation near the bulldozed orchard. “I was beaten by the Americans,” he explains, “They asked me who attacked them and I do not know. My home was raided, our furniture destroyed, and one of my uncles was arrested.”

Um Raed is asking him to talk about the electricity some more, but then adds, “Yesterday at 5:30pm they came here and fired their weapons for 15 minutes randomly before they left.”

I glance at the ground and see the casing of a 50 caliber bullet while she is speaking, “Nobody attacked them. Why are they doing this? We told them to come and search but they didn’t. They just shot their guns and left.”

She holds her arms in the air and pleads, “Please, please, we must have electricity. They destroyed two of our pumps and threw them in the river!”

A 20 year-old farmer sees us talking and walks up to us. “For almost the last 2 months, since they plowed these fields, we have had no electricity. “How can I irrigate my fields without pumps,” asks Khalid, “With no electricity there is no water. They come here every evening and fire their weapons, and now my house has no glass in the windows.”

I glance over at Um Raed’s home, which has bullet pock marks in the wall.

“Every night they come on their patrols and shoot everywhere,” added Khalid.

A 55 year-old blind farmer approaches us with his cane. He listens to the conversation then shares his experiences. “The problem now is no gas for our machines, then they shot our gas station with a tank,” he says while his eyes look over my shoulder, “These trees are hundreds of years old and they cut them. Why?”

“They destroyed so many of our fences,” he adds, “And now we have wolves attacking our animals. We are living on the food ration now, that is all. We only need to stop this hurting.”

While others listening are nodding, he continues on, “Every night I hear them come and shoot. During the beginning, when they searched our houses they didn’t steal. Now they steal from us. They didn’t hurt us at the beginning, but now they are hurting us so much!”

We walk a little ways down the road and Ahmed, a 38 year-old farmer talks with us. He’d been detained during a home raid on August 13th, 2003.

“I don’t know why I was arrested,” he explained of his journey through the military detention system for 10 months, which found him experiencing treatment like having mock executions, being bound and having his head covered for days on end, and being held at a camp near Basra in the scorching summer temperatures.

“At that camp they hung a sign where we stated that said, The Zoo,” he explained. He claims that his home and fields were searched and no weapons were found. His ten month detention included witnessing sexual humiliation of prisoners, and regular beatings.

“I watched black American soldiers put naked Iraqi women in a cell and then enter the cell,” he explains, “I heard the screams as they soldiers raped the women.”

Sheikh Hamed, a well dressed middle aged man approaches and suggests we move off the road in case a patrol comes through and begins shooting again.

After moving off the road he says, “These are our grandfathers’ orchards. Neither the British nor Saddam behaved like this. This is our history. When they cut a tree it is like they are killing one of our family.”

He says three of his cousins were executed by Saddam Hussein’s regime before adding, “We don’t want this freedom of the Americans. They are raiding our homes and terrorizing us at anytime. We are living in terror. They shoot and bomb here everyday. We have sent our families to live elsewhere.”

We are told the road is blocked, so we drive a little further along the Tigris to see four large concrete blocks rising out of a deep hole blasted in the road.

One of the men with us tells us that at the same time the date palm orchards were destroyed the road was blocked by first the military blasting it, then placing smaller concrete barriers.

People grew weary of walking to their homes from the roadblock, so farm tractors were used to pull the blocks and reopen the road. Yesterday the military brought larger barriers and the road is sealed yet again.

An 80 year old man carrying several bags of food gingerly makes his way through the barrier then shuffles on down the road towards his home.

Hamoud Abid, a 50 year-old cheery farmer meets us just past the roadblock and I ask him what the soldiers told him about the roadblock.

“They humiliate us when we talk to them,” he says, “They would not tell us when they will remove these blocks, so we are all walking now.”

He says the soldiers used to come ask him to search his fields and he would allow it, and give them oranges while they searched. “They searched them 10 times and never found anything, of course,” he explains, “But they came last time more recently and caused destruction to my wall. They were starting to knock over my trees when a tread fell off their bulldozer, so they left.”

But just before leaving, they destroyed his front gate and left a block of concrete as a calling card.

We begin to leave and Hamoud, despite this horrendous situation cheerily says, “You should stay. I will grill fish, and you can stay the night in my home.”

We decline and he insists we at least stay for lunch or chai, but we must be going.

As we drive back out the small, winding road two patrols of three Humvees each rumble past us headed towards where we’d just come from. Just after that two helicopters rumble low overhead towards the same area.

I just phoned the military press office in Baghdad and asked them if they can provide me information on why they are blocking roads, firing weapons, plowing down date palm groves, and cutting electricity in the Al-Arab Jubour Village in Al-Dora, as several of the residents there claim.

The spokesman, who won’t give me his name, said he knew nothing about such things, but that there were ongoing security operations in the Al-Dora area.

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 14, 2005 07:19 PM

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"Intelligent Design" wird hier im Forum auch von manchen streng us-amerikanischen Poster vertreten.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 14. Januar 2005, 15:53
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0,1518,336691,00.ht…

Die Achse der Frommen

Lebt denn d`r alte Darwin noch?

Von Jochen Leffers

An US-Schulen tobt ein erbitterter Kulturkampf um die richtige Lehre. Bibeltreue Christen würden Darwins Evolutionskunde am liebsten ganz aus dem Unterricht verbannen und allein die Schöpfungsgeschichte gelten lassen. Durchaus listig und trickreich ringen die "Kreationisten" um Einfluss auf die Schulen.

Diese Woche sind Amerikas fundamentalistische Christen mit dem Herzen in den Klassenzimmern von Dover County. Denn dort wird Schulgeschichte geschrieben. Stellvertretend ficht der kleine Schulbezirk in Pennsylvania einen Kampf aus, der die US-Schulen schon seit geraumer Zeit beschäftigt und noch lange beschäftigen wird: der Kampf gegen die Evolutionslehre von Charles Darwin.

Im School Board von Dover County haben die Darwin-Gegner die Oberhand. Ihr Entschluss: Den knapp 3000 Schülern darf die Evolutionslehre, Fundament der modernen Biologie, nur noch mit Warnhinweisen verabreicht werden. Es handele sich um eine mit "Lücken und Problemen" behaftete Theorie - um "kein Faktum". Seit Anfang des Jahres gilt ein neuer Lehrplan. Nun müssen die Biologielehrer ihren Schülern als alternative Erklärung für die Entstehung der Arten auch das "Intelligent Design"-Konzept nahe bringen, das von einem höheren Wesen ausgeht, ohne explizit auf Gott oder Christentum zu fußen.

Überall in "God`s own Country" kämpfen bibelfromme Christen seit vielen Jahren verstärkt um Einfluss auf die Schulen. Für die Anhänger des so genannten Kreationismus, einer plumperen Variante des "Intelligent Design", lugt beim Unterricht über Urknall und Geophysik, über das Alter der Erde und Kosmologie, Kontinentaldrift und Plattentektonik sogleich der Teufel um die Ecke.

Am Anfang war das Wort

Evolution ist für die Kreationisten die Mutter aller Reizwörter. Nichts soll ihren Kindern den Glauben an die Schöpfungsgeschichte trüben, wie sie im Alten Testament geschrieben steht: "Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde. Und die Erde war wüst und leer", so erzählt es das erste Buch Mose. Und weiter: "Und Gott machte die Tiere auf Erden, ein jegliches nach seiner Art, und das Vieh nach seiner Art und allerlei Gewürm auf Erden nach seiner Art. Und Gott sah, dass es gut war."

Exakt so hat es sich zugetragen, das ist für die Kreationisten Gewissheit, nicht etwa durch Mutation und Selektion - Darwins Lehre hat da keinen Platz und ist in dieser Weltsicht nur eine Hypothese. Oder vielmehr: der falsche Glaube. Womöglich sogar: Gotteslästerung.

Dabei handelt es sich nicht etwa um die Auffassung einer überschaubaren Gruppe christlicher Eiferer, sondern um eine massive Bewegung gegen die vermeintlich gottlose Wissenschaft. Fruchtbaren Boden findet sie vor allem im "Bible Belt" im Süden der USA, wo fundamentaler Protestantismus die Kultur und die Wertvorstellungen prägt.

So fragten Meinungsforscher vom Gallup-Institut im November 2004 nach den Ursprüngen des Lebens. Ein Drittel der US-Bürger sagte, die Evolutionslehre lasse sich wissenschaftlich belegen - ebenso viele verneinten das. 45 Prozent der Erwachsenen glauben, dass Gott den Menschen innerhalb der letzten 10.000 Jahre geschaffen hat. Und weitere 37 Prozent vertraten die Ansicht, dass eine göttliche Initiative am Anfang allen Seins war und die Evolution in Gang setzte. Lediglich zwölf Prozent meinten, die Menschheit entwickelte sich ohne Gottes Hilfe.

Beistand vom Präsidenten

Anderen Umfragen zufolge unterstützt ein beachtlicher Anteil der Bevölkerung die komplette Streichung der Evolutionslehre aus den Schulbüchern und ihre Ersetzung durch die Schöpfungsgeschichte. Diese Maximalforderung durchkreuzten allerdings die Gerichte - juristisch ließ sich die Verbannung Darwins nicht durchsetzen, denn die US-Gesetze sehen eine strikte Trennung von Kirche und Staat vor. Ihre schwerste Schlappe erlebten die Fundamentalchristen 1987: In Louisiana hatten die Kreationisten ihre Lehre zur Wissenschaft erklärt - doch sie diene religiösen, nicht wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und habe an den Schulen nichts zu suchen, urteilte das Oberste Gericht.

Folglich mussten die Kreationisten ihren Kurs ändern - mit dem Versuch, die gleichberechtigte Unterrichtung von Evolutionslehre und biblischer Schöpfungsgeschichte durchzusetzen. Ihr prominentester Fahrensmann: Präsident George W. Bush, der stets vor dem Wind der religiösen Rechten segelt und sich schon im Wahlkampf gegen Al Gore für die Genesis als Lehrstoff stark machte, wie einst Ronald Reagan Anfang der achtziger Jahre.

Für bessere Erfolgsaussichten im Kultur- und Glaubenskampf brauchten die Anhänger einer wörtlichen Bibelauslegung einen den juristischen Sperren angepassten Theorie-Überbau. Und fanden ihn im "Intelligent Design" (ID). Zu den Wortführern zählen der Biologieprofessor Michael Behe aus Pennsylvania sowie Philipp Johnson vom Discovery Institute in Seattle, das vorwiegend durch Spenden christlicher Organisationen finanziert wird.

"Jenes höhere Wesen..."

Die ID-Verfechter argumentieren für ein "theistisches Naturverständnis" und legen doch die Bibel scheinbar zur Seite. Sie streiten nicht ab, dass das Universum Jahrmilliarden alt ist und manche Arten vergehen, andere neu entstehen. Aber nach ihrer Denkrichtung sind die biologischen Organismen und Systeme zu komplex, können daher nicht Schritt für Schritt im Zuge der Evolution entstanden seien. Deshalb vermuten sie dahinter eine übernatürliche Intelligenz, eine Art Bauplan des Lebens - und hüten sich vor allen religiösen Bezügen.

Die Theorie vom "Intelligent Design" erinnert an Heinrich Bölls gute alte Satire "Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen": Von Zweifeln gezwickt besteht ein Kulturpapst darauf, dass jede Erwähnung Gottes aus seinen Rundfunkvorträgen geschnitten und ersetzt wird durch die Formulierung "Jenes höhere Wesen, das wir verehren". Genau 27 Mal. Auch die Vertreter des "ID" vermeiden tunlichst die Erwähnung Gottes und sprechen allenfalls von einem höheren Wesen, einer gestaltenden Hand.

Die der Marsianer werden sie damit kaum meinen. Längst hat sich eine Gegenbewegung zorniger Naturwissenschaftler formiert, die dem Herumrütteln an allen zentralen Erkenntnissen der modernen Forschung Einhalt gebieten wollen. Und ohnedies nicht nachvollziehen können, warum Evolution und Religion sich ausschließen sollen. Für ihr Erkenntnisgebäude braucht etwa die Biologie keinen Gott. Ob es ihn gibt oder nicht, bleibt demnach für die Evolution ohne Belang - die These von der Existenz Gottes lässt sich weder verifizieren noch falsifizieren. Sie ist eben eine Frage des Glaubens.

Wissenschaft indes ist für die aufgebrachten Forscher mehr als nur Ansichtssache. Auch in ihr zeigt sich das evolutionäre Prinzip gleichsam als schöpferisches Element - weil nur die tauglichsten Ideen Jahrzehnte oder Jahrhunderte überdauern. Darum hat Wissenschaft sich stets im Diskurs, in Theorie wie Empirie zu behaupten. Genau davor drücke sich "Intelligent Design" und sei mithin nicht mehr als ein dürftiges akademisches Deckmäntelchen für die Überzeugungen der Bibelfrommen, monieren die Kritiker: ein "Kreationismus light", Wissenschaftsfeindlichkeit unter der Tarnkappe der Wissenschaft. Eine absurde Mogelpackung also. Die "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" spottete gar über die "Talibanisierung des Biologie- und Wissenschaftsunterrichts".

Good old Europe is not convinced

Das Schulwesen der USA ist basisdemokratisch organisiert, die School Boards werden von den Bürgern direkt gewählt. In über 30 der 50 Bundesstaaten wird derzeit gerichtlich um die richtige Lehre an den Schulen gerungen. Auch die religiösen Aktivisten geraten unter Druck. So hat die US-Bürgerrechtsorganisation ACLU ihre Anwälte in Marsch gesetzt, um die Schulen in Dover, wo Bush bei den letzten Wahlen eine satte Zweidrittel-Mehrheit erhielt, vom "Intelligent Design" als Alternativ-Lehrstoff abzubringen. Auf einen juristischen Clinch um Darwins Lehren bereiten sich längst auch andere Schulbezirke vor: Ob Pennsylvania oder Ohio, Michigan oder Missouri - überall flammt der gleiche Konflikt auf.

Die Achse der Frommen reicht bis nach Europa. Dort ist die Strömung des Kreationismus zwar schwächer, aber doch spürbar. So sollte durch Italiens Schulen ein neuer, katholischerer Geist wehen: Im April 2004 versuchte Bildungsministerin Letizia Moratti, aus den Lehrplänen für die Grund- und Mittelstufe das Kapitel Evolutionslehre zu tilgen - denn das halten manche Regierungsvertreter lediglich für eine "linke Theorie". Moratti scheiterte allerdings. Massive Proteste von Nobelpreisträgern und italienischen Bürgern brachten die Geschichte der Arten zurück in die Schulen.

Ähnlich geschah es in Serbien: Auch dort verstand die Bildungsministerin die Bibel als wissenschaftliches Werk und verlangte, das erste Buch Mose auf eine Stufe zu stellen mit den Darwinschen Lehren - denn beides sei gleichermaßen "dogmatisch". Nach großer öffentlicher Empörung machte die Regierung dies im vergangenen September rückgängig. "Darwin lebt noch", so der stellvertretende Bildungsminister.

Deutsche Forscher beschäftigt "Intelligent Design" bis dato eher am Rande. Und Schulpflicht wie die Gestaltung der Lehrpläne sind in Deutschland klar geregelt. Schwer vorstellbar, dass Fundi-Christen Einfluss auf die Lehrpläne an öffentlichen Schulen nehmen könnten - allenfalls an Privatschulen, die aber stets vom Staat genehmigt werden müssen. Indes mehren sich die Fälle von Schulverweigerung aus religiösen Gründen. Mehreren Schulbehörden machen hartnäckige Boykottversuche zu schaffen: etwa bei der urchristlichen Glaubensgemeinschaft "Zwölf Stämme" in Bayern oder bei einer Gruppe von Baptisten in Paderborn, die 15 Kinder nicht mehr zur Schule schicken.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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washingtonpost.com
The Critical Battle for Iraq`s Energy
Attacks by Saboteurs Cripple Infrastructure

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 15, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- The armed men waited until at least 10 tanker trucks were in line outside the huge refinery in the Sunni Triangle city of Baiji, a major source of gasoline for Iraq. Then they made their move: Arriving in a blue Opel sedan, their faces obscured by checkered head scarves and wraparound sunglasses, the insurgents charged into the road and began moving from truck to truck.

The truckers were in no position to resist. One by one, witnesses say, they handed over the paperwork that permitted them to leave the tank farm with a load of gasoline. When the gunmen had a fat sheaf of documents, they simply got back in their sedan and drove away, effectively shutting down one more strand of gasoline distribution in a country where energy has emerged as one of the war`s most critical battlefields.

"I have been waiting here a week," said Hussein Awad, who had driven from Baghdad to fill a truck for the 7th of April service station last week. His beard was several days along and his ankle-length robe was dirty from a week of constant wear. Back in the capital, the gas lines were running three miles long.

"Every day I come here to sit and wait, wishing that those armed men will not show up so I can fill my tanker and go back to Baghdad," Awad said. "But they are here every day."

Frustrated Iraqi and U.S. officials say insurgents in recent months have displayed an impressive capacity to cripple Iraq`s most vital infrastructure.

"What they`re doing is focusing efforts on intelligent attacks on infrastructure, especially oil and electricity," said a senior U.S. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The number of attacks is down, but the effectiveness of the attacks is up significantly."

The consequences have been evident across Iraq.

The biggest hit was on the national treasury. Almost the entire federal budget is generated by exports of crude oil, and, according to the Brookings Institution in Washington, revenue from oil exports in November dropped by nearly $700 million, almost 36 percent, from the previous month. The number of attacks on pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure in November reached 30, almost tripling from October.

According to the State Department, exports rebounded slightly in December, but after attacks on pipelines in the northern and southern oil fields, early January exports skidded below even the November level, to fewer than 1 million barrels a day -- less than half the current capacity.

To ordinary Iraqis, the attacks mean cascading hardships: Either they wait in day-long lines for heavily subsidized, 5 cents-a-gallon gasoline, or they pay black-market prices that run as high as several dollars.

Then the drivers probably return to dark homes. Power outages -- some leaving Baghdad without electricity for more than a day at a time -- accompany the fuel shortages, partly because generators in Iraq burn petroleum.

Insurgents have also attacked Iraq`s power grid directly. A Jan. 7 strike on power lines between Baiji and Tikrit shut down the entire national system, according to an Electricity Ministry report.

A senior Iraqi official said the most effective attacks betrayed insider knowledge.

"When I see where some of these strikes go, it`s obvious they knew exactly where to hit to have a maximum impact," the official said. But it remained unknown whether the technical knowledge came from current employees or officials of Saddam Hussein`s deposed Baath Party government who could be working with insurgents.

U.S. commanders say embittered supporters of the previous government make up most of the insurgency. But religious extremists -- including both Iraqis and foreigners, such as Osama bin Laden -- have called for attacks on Iraq`s infrastructure to weaken the U.S.-supported interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Before the U.S. offensive on Fallujah in November, local insurgents vowed to shift their attacks to oil facilities.

"They say, `You work for the Americans and Ayad Allawi, you don`t work for the people`s interest,` " Khalid Mohammed, 45, said from the cab of a state-owned tanker delivering gasoline to a service station on Baghdad`s south side. "But we work for people. We bring it to the gas station where people can get it."

Mohammed brought his haul from a refinery in nearby Dora; the road to Baiji "is dangerous," he said. "The mujaheddin steal trucks."

In urgent tones, the trucker listed the hazards facing fuel transporters in Iraq: Insurgents had blown up a car bomb inside another refinery in the Sunni Triangle a month earlier, he said. Armed men blocked a road to a loading station in Latifiyah, a town in the "triangle of death" south of Baghdad.

"Many trucks that belong to the government were stolen," Mohammed said. "We`re getting more shortages every day of both trucks and fuel."

This week, Allawi predicted that the situation would begin improving within days. His government was importing as much gas, diesel fuel, kerosene and other refined products as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other neighbors would sell -- and holding little back for reserves, government statistics showed.

Still, the Electricity Ministry reported four more power units shut down this week by fuel shortfalls, and outages increased again.

At a news conference Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers explained that some of the power shortfalls were caused by the Iraqi government`s decision to shut down some units for maintenance. The units had been neglected by Hussein`s government. Scheduled maintenance reduced Iraq`s power capacity from 6,000 megawatts to 5,000, he said. But another 1,400 megawatts were lost to "unscheduled maintenance," or breakdowns, and 600 more to insurgent attacks.

"They don`t want to see a better life," Bostick said. "They don`t like democracy. And the sad thing about it is they`re attacking infrastructure."

But Iraqis said the problem was caused by constant over-promising, and that the interim government was reaping the political backlash for providing, less than three weeks from Iraq`s first election in decades, half as much power as the country could produce.

"For almost two years we have been reading about so many megawatts have been added and so much will be added by next summer and so on," said Hayder Abbas, a college professor who lives in west Baghdad. "But in reality, the situation is exactly the opposite.

"With every setback in the electric power network, we are told it is the gas, or the crude oil or sabotage. But the fact is, electric power supplies are regressing, and the average citizen asks: When will the situation be normal again like in neighboring countries? Is this impossible? Why don`t they tell us that? Then at least we won`t hope for anything better."

Special correspondents Salih Saif Aldin in Baiji and Khalid Saffar in Baghdad contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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The Independent
How a flying carpet took me back in time - until I landed in Baghdad
Saturday, 15th January 2005, by Robert Fisk


The brush fires are already being lit but fear not, Bush and Blair will tell us they knew things would get violent on polling day

tried out the new Beirut-Baghdad air service this week. It’s a sleek little 20-seater with two propellers, a Lebanese-Canadian pilot and a name to take you aback. It’s called "Flying Carpet Airlines". As Commander Queeg said in The Caine Mutiny, I kid thee not. It says "Flying Carpet" on the little blue boarding cards, below the captain’s cabin and on the passenger headrest covers where the aircraft can be seen gliding through the sky on a high-pile carpet.

And it’s an odd little flight, too. You arrive at Beirut’s swish new glass and steel airport where you are told to meet your check-in desk handler in front of the post office in the arrivals lounge. There are a group of disconsolate Americans - "contractors" who’ve been passing the weekend in the fleshpots - and fearful Lebanese businessmen and, well, you’ve guessed it, The Independent’s equally fearful correspondent.

It was a while before I realised that the whole thing was a kind of Iraqi metaphor. From the Beirut arrivals lounge, you pass through the metal detectors in departures, breeze past the spanking new duty free, pick up a cappuccino and then - here we go - head for the special Mecca pilgrimage departure gate. In a box-like room painted all white, you wait for a small blue bus which eventually chugs guiltily off round the side of the airport, past the shell-blasted freight cargo hangars from Beirut’s very own, pleased-to-be-forgotten war, to the steps of the only aircraft in Flying Carpet’s fleet.

Only when I had clambered, half-doubled up, down the tube to my seat did I realise that we were only a few hundred metres from the site of the old US Marine base, suicide-bombed back in 1983 at a cost of 241 American lives. I remember how the air pressure changed in my Beirut apartment when the bomb exploded and how, a couple of days later, I saw Vice President George Bush Snr standing amid the rubble, telling us: "We will not let a bunch of insidious terrorist cowards change the foreign policy of the United States." Ho hum.

Then within months, President Reagan decided to "redeploy" his US Marines to their ships offshore, a manoeuvre that ranked alongside other great military victories such as Napoleon’s redeployment from Moscow and the British redeployment from Dunkirk.

These, of course, were heretical thoughts as we climbed above the snow-frothed Lebanese mountains, crossed the Syrian border and then flew east across the ever-darkening, deep-brown deserts of Syria and Iraq. I opened my morning paper. And there was old George Bush’s cantankerous son, wearing that silly smile of his, telling the world that while there may be a few problems in old "Ayrak", the 30 January elections would go ahead; violence would be defeated; the bad guys would not be able to stop the forward march of democracy. In other words, he wasn’t going to let a bunch of insidious terrorist cowards change the foreign policy of the United States. Ho hum.

Of course, the moment you arrive at the scene of Bush’s great new experiment in democracy - and we are all looking forward to the elections in Baghdad with the same kind of enthusiasm that the people of Dresden showed when the first Lancasters flew down the Elbe - it all looks very different. Baghdad airport is crowded with heavily armed mercenaries and friendly, but equally armed, Gurkhas. And there’s a big poster not far from the terminal with a massive colour photograph of the aftermath of a Baghdad car bombing, complete with the body of a half-naked woman in the lower right-hand corner.

The text beneath this obscenity is in Arabic. "They want to destroy our country - they attack schools. These dogs want to keep our children in ignorance so they can teach them hatred. We need the help of the multinational forces to show them that we will do anything to get our country back and to root out the killers and looters on our roads who bear the full responsibility for these terrible crimes committed against our peaceful Iraqi people. The Iraqi people refuse to be victims because they are a strong community which will never die." Ho hum again.

Because while the Iraqis want security, an increasing number of them are coming to support the "dogs" and ever fewer want the assistance of the "multinational forces" which, in Baghdad and much of the Sunni provinces controlled by the insurgents, means Mr Bush’s very own army. Now of course, opinion polls - an invention of the West, not the East - do show that a majority of Iraqis would like some of Mr Bush’s democracy. Back in the days of the beastly Saddam, they surely wanted even more of it - though, at the time, we were busy supporting Saddam’s regime so that he could root out all the killers in Iran, not to mention the Iraqi communists and Iraqi Shias and Kurds who were trying to destroy him.

Opinion polls would also show that a majority of Iraqis - an even larger majority, I suspect - would like some security from all the killers and looters whom the present-day multinational force doesn’t seem able to catch. And the greatest majority of all Iraqis would, no doubt, like US passports. Indeed, I’ve often thought that the one sure way of closing down Iraq’s war would be to give American citizenship to every Iraqi, in just the same way that the Romans made their conquered peoples citizens of Rome. But since this is not an idea that would commend itself to Mr Bush and his empire-builders, the Iraqis are just going to have to endure democracy in their violent, electricity-free, petrol-less towns and cities.

The Shias, of course, have been waiting impatiently for elections for almost two years. The American proconsul of the time, Paul Bremer, was too frightened to hold them soon after the invasion - when they might have taken place without much violence - in case Iraq turned into a Shia theocracy. The Kurds are also waiting to put their stamp on their emerging statelet in the north.

The problem is that without the participation of the Sunni Muslims, the results of these elections - while they will be free in the sense that Saddam’s were not - will be as unrepresentative of the Iraqi nation as the polls which used to give The Beast 98.86 per cent of the vote. The Americans are now threatening to "top up" the parliament with a few chosen Sunnis of their own. And we all know how representative they’re going to be of the Sunni community which is the heart of the insurgency against American occupation.

All in all, then, a mighty mess to contemplate after the 30 January elections. The brush fires are already being lit but fear not, Bush and Blair will tell us that they always knew things would get violent on polling day - which will make it all right, I suppose - and that, if the violence gets worse, it all goes to show how successful those elections were because they made the killers and looters and "dogs" angry. A bunch of insidious terrorist cowards are not going to change the foreign policy of the United States. Well, we shall see. Meanwhile, I’m checking the flight schedules to see if my magic carpet can take me back to Beirut after 30 January.

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Friday, January 14, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

War News for Friday, January 14, 2005

"There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." - George W. Bush, July 2, 2003.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman critically injured, four guards and a driver severely beaten in mass escape of 38 Abu Ghraib prisoners, of whom 10 were later recaptured. The escape was possible because of a shortage of handcuffs.

Bring ‘em on: Two Marines killed in Al Anbar province. US soldier killed in Mosul. Three officials in Kurdish Democratic Party killed in ambush in Mosul. Four suspected insurgents arrested in Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi police and three civilians killed, 30 others wounded in car bombing in Khan Bani Saad. Director of a Baghdad election center assassinated by gunmen. Democratic Islamic Party presidential candidate survives second assassination attempt.

Bring ‘em on: Seven insurgents shot dead by US snipers while setting up a mortar post near the Abu Sinifa mosque in northern Baghdad. Police officer killed and an Iraqi soldier kidnapped in separate incidents north of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Three Kurdish pershmerga troops killed in fight with insurgents in Mosul. (Scroll down)

Bring ‘em on: US troops battle insurgents in Baghdad’s northern Azamiyah neighborhood and ‘some Iraqis’ were killed. Iraqi of Egyptian origin kidnapped in Kirkuk by gunmen dressed as Iraqi National Guards. Five explosions rocked the Green Zone, no damage reports available. (All incidents cited a bottom of article)

Bring ‘em on: One Egyptian and four Kurds abducted in separate incidents in and around Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: US troops burn down commercial shops in the al-Radwaniya district west of Baghdad after coming under attack from the area. US military vehicle damaged by IED in al-Dawra district south of Baghdad.

*******

A statement on “Bring ‘em on’ by alert reader Lie Detector, from yesterday’s comments:

"Sometimes, words have consequences you don`t intend them to mean. `Bring `em on` is the classic example, when I was really trying to rally the troops and make it clear to them that I fully understood, you know, what a great job they were doing. And those words had an unintended consequence. It kind of, some interpreted it to be defiance in the face of danger. That certainly wasn`t the case." - G.W. Bush, January 13, 2005

THE BOY EMPORER`S MEMORY MUST BE REALLY BAD, OR HE HAS PAINTED HIMSELF INTO A CORNER AND IS TRYING TO FIND A WAY OUT BY REWRITING HISTORY (AGAIN). READ AND LISTEN FOR YOURSELF TO THE FULL QUOTE AND SEE IF YOU CAN HEAR ANY HINT AT RALLYING THE TROOPS OR PRAISING THEM FOR THE "GREAT JOB THEY WERE DOING."

[url(CLICK TO LISTEN)]http://tinyurl.com/4sjh5 - "Uhh ... Anybody who wants to harm American troops will be found, and brought to justice. Uhh ... There are some who feel like that uhh, if they attack us, that we may decide to leave prematurely. They don`t understand what they`re talking about if that`s the case. Let me finish.

There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.

Of course we want other countries to help us. Great Britain is there; Poland is there; Ukraine is there, you mentioned. Anybody who wants to help, we`ll welcome the help. But we got plenty tough force there right now to make sure the situation is secure. We always welcome help. We are always glad to include others in, but make no mistake about it, and the enemy shouldn`t make any mistake about it. We will deal with them harshly if they continue to try to bring harm to the Iraqi people. I also said yesterday an important point: That those who blow up the electricity lines really aren`t hurting America; they are hurting the Iraq citizens; their own fellow citizens are being hurt, but we will deal with them harshly as well."[/url]

- George W. Bush, July 2, 2003, referring to attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.


LIE DETECTOR

Thanks, Lie Detector. Couldn’t have said it better myself. (I did fix the date and de-bolded the comment. Sorry, LD, it was making my ears ring.)

********

Six people killed, eight injured when in head-on collision between a minibus and a US tank near Muqdadiyah.

Training ground: Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director`s think tank.

Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."

100 yards: The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq issued a list of crimes it hoped to squelch so the country can have a safe and fair vote for a new national assembly on Jan. 30, a spokesman said Thursday. The crimes include bribing electoral workers, forcing people to vote a certain way and bringing a weapon within 100 yards of a polling station.

But many Iraqis say they are afraid to go within 100 yards of a polling station. The violence has terrified Sunni Muslims, who dominate the areas hit hardest by the insurgency and by the U.S.-led response to it. Many say they will stay home from the polls for their safety.

Oil for food: For months, the US Congress has been investigating activities that violated the United Nations oil-for-food programme and helped Saddam Hussein build secret funds to acquire arms and buy influence.

But a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, an Italian business daily, shows that a tanker seen at Iraq`s Khor al-Amaya terminal by a UN inspector was involved in the single largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food programme - and that the operation was conducted with the knowledge of the US government.

Special to Yankeedoodle: The Army, stretched thin by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, is dipping into one of its last resources for wartime duty: retirees on a military pension.

At least 320 retirees signed up last year under this program. Probably more than 500 will go back on active duty this year, says Lt. Col. Karla Brischke, an Army personnel manager. Ages range from mid-40s to late 60s and possibly older, and each has at least 20 years of military service.

"It doesn`t mean that we`re scraping the bottom of the barrel," says Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army personnel department.

Hey, Yankee, here’s your chance for a little supplemental income…;-)


Special to the rest of us: The Selective Service System is looking for men and women to serve as members of local boards that are currently in a standby mode. A prospective member must be a United States citizen, at least 18 years old, registered with the Selective Service (if male), not employed in law enforcement, not an active or retired Armed Forces member and not convicted in any criminal offense.


Dissent Part One: Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, an architect of the U.S. war with Iraq in 1991, is advising the Bush administration to consider a phased withdrawal of some of the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Otherwise, Baker says, the United States risks being suspected of having an "imperial design" in the region.

Oh my god, we wouldn’t want that to happen!


Dissent Part Two: Scowcroft, a retired lieutenant general who served as national security adviser to the former president, is not nearly as sanguine as the incumbent president on the Jan. 30 National Assembly elections in Iraq.

The elections "won`t be a promising transformation, and it has great potential for deepening the conflict. We may be seeing incipient civil war at this time," Scowcroft told a recent gathering sponsored by the New America Foundation. Anxiety among President Bush`s Republican base about the elections and overall U.S. policy toward Iraq seems to be rising. Larry Diamond, who served as a senior adviser for the now-disbanded, U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, sees the same danger as Scowcroft.

Dissent Part Three: Sixteen House Democrats led by Rep. Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma called on President Bush on Wednesday to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, just as some administration supporters are starting to question the wisdom of staying the course in the war.

The anti-war Democrats` letter was sent as more voices are being raised across the political spectrum in Washington discussing how the United States can begin to remove its 150,000 troops from a country where almost 1,400 Americans have been killed.

Commentary

Opinion: Amid the daily turbulence and chaos plaguing Iraq as the country`s date with electoral democracy looms, a set of disturbing trends is becoming clear. Not only do the Iraqi interim Government and senior US officials concede that elections will be imperfect, and that security cannot be guaranteed on polling day across a quarter of the nation, but the vote itself appears to be dragging Iraq closer to civil war.

Opinion: Bush is nearing his Tet moment. After the Jan. 30 elections, he will have three options. Persevere in a no-win war with 150,000 U.S. troops bleeding indefinitely, until America turns on him, his policy, and his party. Send in tens of thousands of fresh U.S. troops to crush the insurgency, as we undertake a years-long program of training Iraqis to defend their own democracy. Third, find an honorable exit, and leave Iraq to the Iraqis.

Opinion: It took no less a sage than President Bush to put the firing of four high-level CBS News employees in perspective: "CBS said they would act. They did. And I hope their actions are such that this doesn`t happen again." This from the man who fired not a single person in his entire administration for getting nearly everything wrong about Iraq and taking the nation to war for reasons that did not exist or were downright specious. Lucky for Bush he`s only the president of the United States and not the head of CBS.

Opinion: The drumbeat to focus responsibility for the torture and other vicious abuses of noncitizen prisoners in American custody has begun. But it has not yet stirred Congress. Not only is the Republican leadership silent, but where is the outrage from the minority leaders—Harry Reid in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House?

As reported by Frank Davies in the December 27 Miami Herald, retired rear admiral Don Guter, former navy judge advocate general, says it plain: "That branch [Congress] has really abdicated its responsibility to set rules and oversee what`s happening [to the detainees], and we are paying a price for it."

Opinion: Characterized as a possible suicide by cop, the story of Andres Raya made national news because it was captured on the surveillance tape of a local liquor store. It is symbolic of the untold story of war. In the coming years, thousands of similar stories will unfold in towns and cities across America. They will not make the national news wires. They will not be featured on television newscasts. They will not usually be so dramatic: Stories of domestic abuse, alcohol or drug related rage, homelessness and crime statistics. They will only be reported as local interest stories, buried in the back pages where few will notice – like the fallen soldiers themselves.

Commentary: I’d like to put out an urgent call to Republicans to make sure their sons and daughters volunteer for active military service. Uncle Sam needs you. National Guard and Army Reserve recruitment is falling short by some 50%, and it’s getting tougher and tougher for the Marines, the Army and the other services to get the kind of recruit they want. Wait a minute -- the Marines and the Army ought to be flooded with volunteers!

Some 59,000,000 Americans voted for George Bush and the Republicans. That includes the majority of the people in Tennessee. So why are we short of recruits to fight in Iraq?

I’ll volunteer to drive busloads of young Republican volunteers to their first military basic training session after they enlist. And there should be a huge number of volunteers; I don’t think Republicans are cowardly blowhards like most Democrats. Otherwise, I’m sorry to say, I’m going to tell my Congressman Lincoln Davis that we need a military draft in this country. The reason is simple: we need to hold people accountable for what they do, and it’s time for Republicans to go face combat and support their Commander in Chief. You voted for it. Now go get in it.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Funerals held for two Louisiana National Guardsmen killed in Iraq.

Local story: Services held at Hawaii Marine base for nine Marines and one Navy corpsman killed in Fallujah.

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To paraphrase Lord Byron`s lament about the Parthenon: Quod non fecerunt Baathi, hoc fecerunt Americani Polonique.

BabylonCultural vandalism

Leader
Saturday January 15, 2005

Guardian
The damage wrought by the construction of an American military base in the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon must rank as one of the most reckless acts of cultural vandalism in recent memory. And all the more so because it was unnecessary and avoidable.

The camp did not have to be established in the city - where the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world, once stood - but given that it was, the US authorities were very aware of the warnings of archaeologists of the historic importance of the site. Yet, as a report by Dr John Curtis of the British Museum makes clear, they seem to have ignored the warnings.

Dr Curtis claimed that in the early days after the war a military presence served a valuable purpose in preventing the site from being looted. But that, he said, did not stop "substantial" damage being done to the site afterwards not just to individual buildings such as the Ishtar Gate, "one of the most famous monuments from antiquity", but also on an estimated 300,000 square metres which had been flattened and covered in gravel, mostly imported from elsewhere.

This was done to provide helicopter landing places and parking lots for heavy vehicles that should not have been allowed there in the first place. He describes this as "extremely unfortunate" from an archaeological point of view since it means previously undisturbed archaeological deposits will now be "irrevocably contaminated", seriously compromising the status of future information on the large areas that have not been excavated (including, possibly, the remains of the gardens themselves). The damage was compounded by bringing in sand and earth from elsewhere some of which may have been archaeological deposits in their own right.

The general situation in Iraq is, of course, overwhelmingly a human and political tragedy but that does not exempt the US authorities, who were in charge until they handed over to Polish soldiers, from the consequences of this act of cultural barbarism carried out in their name by Kellog, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Haliburton, the company formerly run by US vice president Dick Cheney.

Babylon is one of the most important archeological sites in the world, situated in an area that has rightly been called the cradle of civilisation to which the origins of so many activities from poetry to engineering can be traced. As Dr Curtis reminds us, Babylon itself was ruled by two of the most famous kings of antiquity - Hammurabi (1792 to 1750 BC) who introduced the world`s first law code and Nebuchadnezzar (604 to 562 BC) who built the famed gardens, probably for his wife.

Babylon is one of the world`s treasures as well as Iraq`s. The coalition forces, who officially hand the site back to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture today, have ignored both of these moral responsibilities. For Iraq it is also a major potential source of tourism which could play a big part in the eventual reconstruction of the economy. During Saddam`s reign of terror what archaeological restorations as there were were mainly done in his image (with his name also inscribed on many of the bricks).

Saddam also built a palace of his own nearby. The job of the archaeologists has been made immeasurably more difficult by the avoidable and philistinian actions of the coalition forces who at the very least ought to pay for the damage they have inflicted.

No one knows exactly how many more historical treasures lie beneath Babylon. That will not be known until a major excavation is undertaken probably as an international effort. Meanwhile, the aggravated ruins of the city of stand as a metaphor for the war itself which has left modern Iraq as well as ancient Babylon in a much worse state than they were before the saviours arrived. The task of reconstruction cannot happen too quickly.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Mehr zu dem Thema:
[urlBABYLON WRECKED BY WAR ]http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1391042,00.html[/url]
[urlMONTHS OF WAR THAT RUINED CENTURIES OF HISTORY]http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1391085,00.html[/url]
[urlAMERICAN GRAFITTI]http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1391038,00.html[/url]

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ANALYSIS:
The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis
Bush’s sickness is our own.
by Paul Levy

George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times we live in. It’s an illness that has been with us since time immemorial. Because it’s an illness that`s in the soul of all of humanity, it pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which makes it especially hard to diagnose.

Bush`s malady is quite different from schizophrenia, for example, in which all the different parts of the personality are fragmented and not connected to each other, resulting in a state of internal chaos. As compared to the disorder of the schizophrenic, Bush can sound quite coherent and can appear like such a "regular," normal guy, which makes the syndrome he is suffering from very hard to recognize. This is because the healthy parts of his personality have been co-opted by the pathological aspect, which drafts them into its service. Because of the way the personality self-organizes an outer display of coherence around a pathogenic core, I would like to name Bush`s illness ‘malignant egophrenic (as compared to schizophrenic) disease,’ or ‘ME disorder,’ for short. If ME disorder goes unrecognized and is not contained, it can be very destructive, particularly if the person is in a position of power.

In much the same way that a child`s psychology cannot be understood without looking at the family system he or she is a part of, George Bush does not exist in isolation.We can view Bush and his entire Administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, etc), as well as the corporate, military industrial complex that they are co-dependently enmeshed with, the media that they control, the voters that support them, and ourselves as well, as interconnected parts of a whole system, or a "field." Instead of relating to any part of this field as an isolated entity, it’s important to contemplate the entire interdependent field as the ‘medium’ though which malignant egophrenia manifests and propagates itself. ME disease is a field phenomenon, and needs to be contemplated as such. Bush`s sickness is our own.

THE DISEASE IS NON-LOCAL
Being a field phenomenon, malignant egophrenia is non-local in nature, which means that it is not bound by the limitations of time or space. Being non-local, this disease pervades and underlies the entire field and can therefore manifest anywhere, through anyone and at any moment. The disease`s non-local nature makes the question of who has the disease irrelevant, as we all have it in potential. It is more a question of whether or not we are aware of our susceptibility to fall prey to the disease. This awareness itself serves as an immunization that protects us from the pernicious effects of the illness, thereby allowing us to be of genuine help to others.

Bush, like all of us, is both a manifestation of this deeper field and simultaneously an agent effecting this field. He’s become so fully taken over by the disease, all the while not suspecting a thing, that he’s become a "carrier" for this deadly disease, thus infecting the field around him. He’s become a portal through which the field around him "warps" in such a way as to feed and support his pathogenic process. A non-local, reciprocally co-arising and interdependent field of unconscious denial and cover-up gets constellated around Bush to enable and protect his pathology. People who support Bush are actually complicit with and enabling Bush’s madness in a co-dependent, self-reinforcing feedback loop that is ‘closed,’ which is to say it is insular and not open to any feedback from the ‘real’ world.

Bush supporters are not merely disinterested in seeing that they are in denial of reality; on the contrary, they actively don’t want to look at this, which is to say they resist self-reflection at all costs. Bush and his supporters perversely interpret any feedback from the real world which reflects back their unconsciousness as itself evidence that proves the rightness of their viewpoint. All of Bush’s supporters mutually reinforce each other’s unconscious resistance to such a degree that a collective, interdependent field of impenetrability gets collectively conjured up by them that literally resists consciousness.

People who don`t recognize Bush`s illness and support him are unconsciously colluding with and enabling in the co-creation of the pathological field that is incarnating itself into the human family. People who support Bush become unwitting agents through which this non-local disease feeds and replicates itself. By supporting Bush they are collaborating with and becoming parts of the greater, interconnected and self-organizing field of the disease.

ANALAGOUS TO GERMANS IN THE TIME OF HITLER
The situation is very analogous to when seemingly good, normal, loving Germans supported Hitler, believing he was a good leader trying to help them. The German people didn`t realize that the virulent pathogen malignant egophrenia had taken possession of Hitler and was incarnating itself through him. By not seeing this and supporting Hitler, they became agents used by this non-local, deadly disease to propagate itself. This was a collective psychosis, and this is what is taking place in our country right now.

This is exactly what C. G. Jung, one of the greatest psychologists of the twentieth century, was warning us about when he said "The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche."

THE LIE
It is not that the threat of terrorism is not real, but that Bush`s policies in dealing with terrorism are actually fueling the fire. The way Bush is fighting terrorism is actually the very act which is invoking and creating more of it in the first place. It is as if he is fighting against his own shadow, which is a battle that can never be won. Bush is so dissociated from the darkness within himself that he splits off from it and tries to destroy it. Bush’s inner process, because of the position of power he finds himself in, is getting dreamed up and played out on the world stage.ME disease is unique in that it collapses the boundary between inner and outer. Egophrenia is an inner disease of the soul that expresses itself via the medium of the outside world. We could even say that the inner core of egophrenia actually in-forms and gives shape to the outer universe so as to express itself.

By creating more of the very thing he is fighting against, Bush is enacting the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul. In Bush’s case, it is the repetition compulsion gone awry, to daemonic proportions, getting acted out on the world stage. To quote noted psychologist Rollo May, the daemonic is "any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person [or whole nation].....the daemonic can be either creative or destructive [i.e, demonic].....violence is the daemonic gone awry."

The daemonic aspect of the disease develops a certain autonomy and literally possesses the person or group, as it is self-generating, self-perpetuating and self-organizing in nature, like a closed and negative feedback loop. The person who is taken over doesn`t suspect a thing, as the field secretly conspires and colludes with and enables their psychosis. For example, Bush, in his delusion, imagines he is divinely guided. His supporters want to believe this to feed their own adolescent fantasies of wanting to have a divinely inspired leader to take care of and protect them. Because of this need they invest, so to speak, in Bush’s delusion, which just confirms to Bush all the more that he indeed is God’s instrument. Bush and his followers are co-dependently and reciprocally feeding and supporting each other’s unconscious narcissistic needs in a truly pathological, and ultimately self-destructive co-dependent relationship.

At the root of Bush`s pathology is a deep dissociation. Like the terrorists, he has split-off from his own darker half, projecting the shadow ‘out there,’ and then tries to destroy this dis-owned shadow. By projecting the shadow onto each other, Bush and the terrorists are each seeing their own shadow reflected in the other. They see each other as criminals, as the incarnation of evil. By projecting the shadow like this, they locate the evil ‘out there,’ which insures that they don`t have to recognize the evil within themselves. It`s interesting to note that the inner meaning of the word `mirror` is ’shadow holder.’ Ironically, by fighting against their own shadow in this way, they become possessed by the very thing they are trying to destroy, thereby perpetuating a never-ending cycle of violence. To quote Jung, "The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided [not in touch with both the light AND dark parts of themselves] and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves."

Jung simply refers to projecting the shadow as “the lie." It’s interesting to note that one of the inner meanings of the word Devil is ‘the liar.’ Projecting the shadow, to quote Jung, "deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil." Jung stresses the importance of consciously developing what he calls our "imagination for evil," which is to consciously recognize our potential for evil. This recognition means embracing and integrating our dark side into our wholeness, which is made up of both light and dark. If we have no imagination for evil, to quote Jung, "evil has us in its grip.......for only the fool can permanently disregard the conditions of his own nature. In fact, this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil."

By projecting the shadow, Bush is unwittingly being a conduit for the deepest, archetypal evil to possess him from behind, beneath his conscious awareness, and to act itself out through him. At the same time, ironically enough, he identifies with the light and imagines that he is divinely inspired. To quote Jung, a person in a position of power who has become dissociated like Bush “even runs the grave risk of believing he has a Messianic mission, and forces tyrannous doctrines upon his fellow-beings.” He then believes that any action he desires is justified in the name of God, as he can rationalize it as being God`s will. Unable to self-reflect, he is convinced of the rightness of his viewpoint, which he considers non-negotiable. This is a very dangerous situation, as Bush has become unconsciously identified with and possessed by the hero, or savior archetype. This figure is religious in nature, as it derives from the transpersonal, archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious. Being inflated with the hero archetype, he (archetypically) wants to save the world from evil and to liberate the planet.

This is the height of irony since, in reality, Bush is acting as an unwitting conduit for evil by instigating wars and taking away people`s freedoms. This incongruity brings into bold relief the severe schizoid split that characterizes Bush`s condition. His inflation blinds him to the real consequences of his actions and is one of the easier-to-recognize aspects of his pathology. Being inflated due to an unconscious identification with an archetype is, in essence, an expression of having forfeited one`s humanity, a state in which humility becomes impossible.

Bush has fallen into a state that is the embodiment of arrogance. Succumbing to the temptation of power, Bush has become corrupt, which is the inevitable consequence when one prefers power over truth. He has fallen into a vicious cycle where he has become addicted to power. Bush and his regime are compulsively driven to do everything and anything they can to hold onto the position of power they find themselves in. Not only do they not see the depraved nature of the situation they have fallen into, they don`t want to see it. Being in the role of having power, there is a counter-incentive to self-reflect, which just reinforces the strength of the pathogen.

The inner name of ME disease is ‘Mad Emperor’ disease, as it is what happens when a person in a position of power falls prey to and become seduced by that power. As Al Gore points out, people who are after dominance and power “satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens--sooner or later--to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.”

At the root of Bush’s process is an unwillingness and seeming inability to experience his own sense of sin, guilt and shame, as if he is afraid of being exposed, of being found out. He’s clearly unable to feel any remorse and experience his own weakness and vulnerability, his own sense of failure. This threatens his narcissism too much. One aspect of Bush’s pathology is ‘malignant narcissism,’ as he reacts sadistically to others who mirror back his guilt and don’t support and enable his narcissism.

This inability to experience his shame and guilt sets in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of denial, cover-up and projecting the shadow, all of which are based on a lie. Bush then falls into an endless loop of hiding from his own lie, which is to say, from himself. This process allows Bush to become a conduit for egophrenia to take him over and incarnate its malignant aspect through him.

Jung comments on this resistance to self-reflection and endless cycle of self- deception by saying "Hysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to shirk the duty of confronting themselves. They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists."

Falling victim to one`s own deception as Bush has can have a very mesmerizing and gripping effect on others, as he appears so convinced of what he is saying and is able to project this conviction. To quote Jung, "Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident.....things only become dangerous when the pathological liar is taken seriously by a wider public. Like Faust, he is bound to make a pact with the devil and thus slips off the straight path.” Bush has the seductive coherence of someone who is fanatically identified, like the typical fundamentalist, with only one side of an inherently two-sided polarity. Thomas Merton, commenting on the case of the obviously demented Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, points out "One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane."

A key feature of malignant egophrenia is that it is very hard to recognize when someone is a carrier, because the person can seem so normal and even endearing. The person afflicted can be very ‘charming’ and have a certain type of charisma that can entrance those who don`t see through their subterfuge. Concerned about nothing other than himself, a person stricken with egophrenia is in reality indifferent to other people’s suffering, all the while professing his compassion, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Just like Hitler struck a chord deep in the German unconscious, Bush is touching something very deep in the American psyche. Bush is acting out on the world stage an under-developed psychological process that deals simplistically with issues such as good and evil. It’s as if he hasn`t grown out of and fully differentiated from the realm of mythic, archetypal fantasy that is typical of early adolescence. This immature aspect of Bush`s process speaks to and resonates with those voters who support him, as it is a reflection of their own under-developed inner process.

Whereas Hitler’s evil was more overt in its cruelty and sadism, Bush’s dark side is much more hidden and disguised, which makes it particularly dangerous. People who voted for Bush are somehow blind to what is very obvious to others. It’s as if they’ve become hypnotized and fallen under the spell that Bush is casting. Why would people vote for someone stricken with malignant egophrenia? People who support Bush are suggestible and susceptible to the same malady that Bush is embodying, as if they have a predisposition for it (based on their own trauma, dissociated psyche and tendency to project the shadow). Supporting Bush is a sign that a person not only doesn`t see the deadly illness that is incarnating itself through Bush, but is an expression that this disease has taken up residence in their being and is using them to do its bidding.

A COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
It is a very dangerous situation we are in--because of the position of power Bush and the religious right find themselves in, they can literally dream up and create the very apocalypse that they are imagining is prophesized, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a perversely self-reinforcing feedback-loop, the more death and destruction happens, the more this confirms to them the truth that their deluded end-time scenario is actually happening as prophesized. In a diabolical self-validating vicious cycle, Bush and the religious right are ignoring the role they are playing in creating exactly what they are using as evidence to prove the rightness of their viewpoint. ME disease is a world where up is down, as its flawless illogic is convoluted and inverted at its core.

Malignant egophrenia is crazy-making. It induces a very hard-to-recognize form of insanity. When we fall prey to egophrenia, we are unable to recognize that we are taken over, as we become bewitched by our own projections, accusing other people of doing what we ourselves are doing. For example, Bush is talking about himself when he accuses Saddam Hussein of being “a man who has defied the world,” and “a man who has made the United Nations look foolish.” Part of the disease is that when we point at it and call it by its true name--as being a form of insanity called ignorance--people who are stricken with the disease will see us as the ones who are crazy. Unless we recognize the insidious nature of this disease, there is a crazy-making field around it that will make us a part of itself. Collective psychosis is like that.

There is only one reason why the mainstream psychiatric community is not studying this contagious psychosis as it spreads through Bush, his regime, and the surrounding field. They are not studying this disease because they haven`t yet recognized that the disease even exists. To the extent that any of us are unaware that this non-local pathogen pervades the field we become hooked by it through our own unconscious blind-spot. By not recognizing the nature of the disease, the mental health community becomes its unwitting agents, helping the disease to propagate. What clearer sign do we need of a collective psychosis than when our mental health system itself, whose job it is to monitor such phenomena, not only doesn`t recognize that there is a collective psychosis running rampant in our society, but are themselves infected with it?

The DSM-IV, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, is continually expanding and including new diagnoses as we deepen our understanding of and map the contours of the human psyche. The problem is that the DSM-IV is an expression of an ‘old paradigm’ way of thinking in that it looks at mental illness as it exists in individuals, regarding the individual as an object existing separate from the field around them. This is based on an illusion, for the individual is embedded in the greater field (family system, society, and planetary culture) and is an expression of this multi-textured field. The individual and the field around them interpenetrate and condition each other so fully that they can`t even be regarded as two separate aspects that have become joined together, but rather must be seen as inseparable parts of a greater whole. Egophrenia expresses itself non-locally throughout the entire field. Consequently, instead of being viewed through the lens of the fragmented, separate self, it requires a more holistic vision that recognizes the existence of the interdependently co-arising field. It’s not a question of integrating ME disease into the existing DSM-IV, but instead of radically expanding, up-leveling and re-visioning our understanding of the nature of illness itself.

It is profoundly important that the mental health community at large recognize this age-old disease with which we are all afflicted. Doing this changes this community from being part of the problem to part of the solution. The disease literally feeds on our unawareness of it. The recognition of the disease is itself the beginning of the cure. By recognizing the nature of this collective psychosis, we snap out of being part of it. Malignant egophrenia, unrecognized and misdiagnosed until now, has wreaked havoc all throughout human history, and is at the very root of our current world crisis. To the extent we are unaware of the nature of this collective psychosis, it has us in its grips and will unconsciously get acted out through us in a destructive manner. The choice is truly ours.

One of the signatures of ME disease is that it hooks people through their unconscious blind-spot, so when people are afflicted by this deadly disease they are truly asleep to what is getting acted out through them. Bush himself is being manipulated, used and victimized, like a puppet on a string, by a deeper matrix of cover-up and deceit that has been perpetrated by him and his very regime, and has now taken on an autonomous life of its own. This disease, if it gets out of control, means self-destruction for both victim and perpetrator. There are no winners. The entire interconnected web that supports Bush can be recognized to be tentacles of this virulent, non-local pathogen that, to the extent that it is not seen, is potentially gaining more and more sovereignty. Like a sci-fi movie, we have dreamed up a higher-dimensional Frankenstein monster that has taken on a life of its own and truly threatens all of us.

THE IMPORTANCE OF NAMING THE DISEASE
Malignant egophrenia is both an expression of and at the root of the extreme polarization and dissociation in both the human psyche and the world process at large. The disease is archetypal in nature, which is to say that it has eternally re-created itself and played itself out over the course of history. We can even say that it’s the ‘bug’ in the system that has in-formed and given shape to all of the conflict and disharmony of human relationship. ME disease is as old as the human species. However, we’re now at the point in our evolution where we can finally recognize it, see it, give it a name and diagnose it.

Malignant egophrenia is truly diabolical in nature and is what the ancient, indigenous cultures would call a demon. Jung warned us that a difficult task lay ahead of us after the mass insanity of the second World War. He points out that after the ‘demons’ abandoned the German people, these negative energies weren`t banished. To quote Jung, "the demons will seek a new victim. And that won`t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey." Projecting the shadow literally opens the door for malignant egophrenia to take up residence in our being.

What the ancient people called `demons,` Jung calls `autonomous complexes,` which are split-off parts of the psyche that can possess a person and seemingly develop an independent will and quasi-life of their own. These autonomous complexes can`t stand to be seen in much the same way a vampire can`t stand the light. Malignant egophrenia will shape-shift and do everything in its power to resist being seen. It’s elusive, mercurial and very much a trickster.The disease obfuscates itself, creating any number of distractions to hide behind, and will even react violently to being seen, for being seen takes away its omnipotence and autonomy.

When we see a demon we know its name. Naming it is exorcistic, as it dis-spells the demon`s power over us. To name something is to symbolize it. The word ‘symbolic,’ which meansthat which unites,` is the antidote and antonym to the word ‘diabolic,’ which means that which divides and separates. George Bush claimed to be "a uniter, not a divider." However, he has only united one thing--the entire world against us. To see this diabolical aspect of what is coming through Bush, namely, that he is an instrument that is creating separation, is itself to be seeing with symbolic awareness.

Naming the disease, we are able to (alchemically) contain it, so that it can`t possess us from behind and act itself out through us unconsciously. Once the disease is named, it’s anchored to consciousness so that it can`t vaporize back into the unconscious. This de-potentiates the disease, beginning the process of re-integrating it back into the profound unity of the psyche. The energy that was bound up in the compulsion to endlessly re-create the disease becomes liberated and available for creative expression. The prescription for this disease is simply for enough of us who see it to connect with each other in lucid awareness so that it can be contained, metabolized and healed. We can put our collective realization together and dream a much more grace-filled universe into incarnation. This is an evolutionary impulse from the universe in which we are invited to participate.

Encoded in the disease is its own medicine. Hidden in the daemonic is our guiding spirit, our true genius and inner voice. This is why Jung calls the daemonic the "not yet made real creative." The fact that such a dark shadow is emerging in our world is an expression that light is nearby, as shadows are themselves an expression of light. Demons are actually blessings in drag. Lucifer is truly the bringer of light.

A MODERN DAY PLAGUE OF EGYPT
Malignant egophrenia is manifesting itself, both literally and symbolically, hidden yet visible for all who have eyes to see, simultaneously veiling and revealing itself. Symbolically encoded in egophrenia`s literal manifestation is the key to its re-solution. Symbols are the language of dreams. A symbol brings together and reconciles two contraries into a greater whole. A symbol reflects and effects a change in and of consciousness itself. A symbol is both the expression of as well as the doorway into a more transcendent, higher-dimensional part of ourselves.

People don`t see egophrenia because they don`t recognize the symbolic dimension of existence, but rather are absorbed in the literal dimension of reality. It is very convincing to (only) take things literally and see these literal facts as "the (one) truth," as events in this world are literally happening. They`re as real as real can be. This can be very entrancing, particularly with the evidence right in front of our face. People are dying. Seeing symbolically doesn`t negate the literal dimension but instead complements and completes it, as both are true simultaneously. The literal and symbolic dimensions of reality interpenetrate each other so fully that they can`t be seen as two separate things that are joined together, but rather are interdependent parts of a greater whole. The birth of symbolic awareness not only more fully completes our picture of the nature of the universe we live in, but gives us access to the way to actually deal with this deadly disease. Egophrenia is truly initiatory, as it is a wake-up call to symbolic awareness, which is a higher dimension of our being. All that is needed for malignant egophrenia to reveal its blessing is for us to recognize its revelatory function.

Jung says, "Everything could be left undisturbed did not the new way demand to be discovered, and did it not visit humanity with all the plagues of Egypt until it finally is discovered." Malignant egophrenia is a modern-day plague of Egypt. If we don`t see what it is symbolically revealing to us, malignant egophrenia will destroy us. It`s a gesture from the universe, beckoning us, demanding us to integrate it and thereby receive its blessing. By prompting, pressuring and challenging us to come to terms with it and receive its gifts, malignant egophrenia has the potential to awaken us, thereby furthering the evolution of the species.

The fact that malignant egophrenia is manifesting in fully visible form in our world right now is an expression that this particular energy is available for assimilation in a way un-imaginable until now. When an unconscious content is ready to be integrated, it always gets dreamed up into fully materialized form. This is the dimension in which the energy bound up in the infinitely regressing feedback loop of the disease can be accessed and redeemed.

This quantum leap in consciousness that is being offered us by egophrenia is fully imaginable into actualization in this very moment. If we can make use of its lessons, ME disease becomes a portal into a more whole and integrated part of our being, both individually and collectively. Egophrenia is introducing and initiating us into the dreamlike nature of reality, where this universe is like a mass shared dream that we are all collaboratively dreaming up into full-bodied materialization together. This is to have the realization that we are interconnected and not separate from one another, as if we are parts of and contained in a greater being. We wouldn’t be able to have this expansion of consciousness without egophrenia, so therefore egophrenia is a ‘potential’ blessing in a very convincing disguise that it`s not.

Being a non-local field phenomenon, the malignant egophrenia epidemic is something all six billion of us are collaboratively creating and dreaming up together. Bush is an embodied, mirrored reflection of a part of ourselves, just like we, reciprocally, are a reflection of a part of him. His disease is our disease. Bush and his regime are a living, full-bodied reflection of our collective shadow, as we are of theirs. We have all dreamed them up to play out these archetypal roles, in full living color, so that we can see and integrate these parts of ourselves. Embracing these parts of ourselves that we see so clearly reflected in Bush and Co. is the first step towards healing the situation. This is because it dispells the polarization and separation, which is the root factor preventing reconciliation. Bush and Co. are playing out roles that exist deep inside the collective psyche of all of humanity. If Bush and Co. weren’t around, there would be someone else sent by ‘central casting’ to pick up and play out these very same archetypal roles. Compassion spontaneously arises when we truly recognize these fear-ridden parts of ourselves.

GENUINE COMPASSION AS ACTIVISM
The malignant egophrenia epidemic is happening right in front of us. It is self-evident for all who have eyes to see. If we don`t look at what’s happening, if we turn away, ignore it, and contract against it, we are lying to ourselves. Then we’re colluding with and unknowingly feeding the disease. Our looking away is a form of blindness. Our looking away is a form of ignorance. Our looking away, our contraction, is itself the disease. Our resulting complacency and inaction is, in fact, an expression of our lack of compassion. To quote Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. "One who passively accepts evil [allowing it to happen] is as much involved in it as the one who perpetrates it."

There is a great danger when we see evil, though. To quote Jung, "It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our hearts.....the sight of evil kindles evil in the soul." Malignant egophrenia forces upon us the responsibility to come to terms with the evil inside our own hearts. If we solidify Bush as being evil and react with righteous indignation, we are guilty of the very same thing we’re accusing Bush of (i.e, projecting the shadow). We then become a conduit for the very evil we’re reacting to. Who among us has not been guilty of being a channel for ME disease at one time or another? If, when we see this virulent pathogen, we contract against it and react in any way, be it in judgment, hatred, anger or revulsion, we’re helping to perpetuate the diabolical polarization that is the signature of the disease. Our reacting in this way, which is typical of many political activists, is itself an expression that we ourselves have the disease, or to say it more clearly, the disease has us.

This disease literally has the potential to humble us. We may think--not us, we could never catch this disease. However, this very arrogance opens us up to being hooked by the pathogen. We may think--let`s step out of our arrogance, for who are we to know anything? Let`s be an enlightened bodhisattva and not judge what Bush is doing, for who are we to judge? Or let`s be an enlightened psychiatrist and not diagnose, name or pathologize Bush in any way, for we don`t want to cast any spells. However, to have these attitudes is to fall under the seductive spell of the bug, causing us to disconnect from and give away our power. In this way, we forsake one of our greatest spiritual treasures, the act of discernment. Being a spiritual warrior embraces and includes the most extreme discernment, which is the ability to differentiate and is a function of seeing clearly. Discernment is different than when we are unconsciously caught in judgement, which is a reaction to and contraction against something. Wielding the wisdom of discernment is an expression of having genuine compassion.

Compassion is sometimes fierce, though. Sometimes it says "no," and sets a boundary. Genuine compassion is not always smiley-faced, otherwise known as "idiot compassion," which just enables and reinforces asleepness. Genuine compassion is not passive. It propels us to act for the benefit of all beings. True compassion demands us to be willing to consciously step into our power, mediated through the heart, and to find the courage to speak our true voice: The malignant egophrenia epidemic has induced a form of criminal insanity in the entire Bush regime that we are all complicit in by allowing it to happen.

With Bush as president it’s as if we’re in a car going over the speed limit being driven by a drunk adolescent who has fallen asleep at the wheel. It’s our responsibility to recognize the extreme danger of our situation and come together to do something about it, whatever that might be. If not, if we continue to passively and helplessly watch what is playing out in front of our very eyes, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. To quote Abraham Lincoln, "We--even we here--hold the power, and bear the responsibility." Now is the time to join together and creatively express our true voice. As the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. says "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Our only limitation is in our own imagination.

Malignant egophrenia is a true ‘reconciling symbol,’ in that it unites the opposites. Malignant egophrenia is both a deadly disease and the highest blessing co-joined in one phenomenon. Is it a wave or a particle? It is a true ‘coincidentia oppositorum,’ a conjunction of opposites, an expression of divinity. The question is, do we recognize what is being symbolically shown to us by egophrenia, or not?

The inner meaning of the word apocalypse is ‘something hidden being revealed.’ Will these apocalyptic end times we are in be an initiation into a more expansive part of our being? Or will it destroy our species? The choice is truly ours. All that is needed is for enough of us to recognize what is being revealed, and to creatively act out of this realization.

Paul Levy, a healer in private practice, is profiled in the book Saints and Madmen: Psychiatry Opens its Doors to Religion. Steeped in and inspired by the work of Swiss-German psychoanalyst C. G. Jung, Levy is an innovator in the field of dreaming. He has had over forty articles published on consciousness, dreaming and spirituality, and has lectured about his work at various universities. A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over 20 years, he has studied with some of the great masters of Tibet and Burma. Inspired by the Bush Administration, Levy describes himself as "a spiritually-informed political activist." He is currently writing a book about his work.
Visit his website at awakeninthedream.com or write him at [e-mail]. © Copyright 2005 Paul Levy.

Copyright © 2005 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

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The Bush Zone (with Apologies to Rod Serling)
By John Cory
t r u t h o u t | Perspective/Satire

Friday 14 January 2005

There is a fifth realm beyond known reality. It is a realm as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground of haze and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies at the pit of man`s fears. This is the realm of the unimaginable. It is an area we call "The Bush Zone."

Meet Mr. and Mrs. America, faithful believers in the one true nation. They arise each morning and stand before the mirror reciting their daily mantra: "It`s a grand old flag! Leader of the free world! We`re no. 1!" Their iconic reflection smiles back, a warm and homemade apple pie image of the best of everything, the best medical care, the most powerful military, and the best political system of any country in the world. The mirror never lies.

But this morning, Mr. And Mrs. America, discover a warped mirror that casts a disturbing and twisted funhouse reflection of their former selves. Daily slogans are powerless against this distorted likeness, and all that they once held sacred now ripples across the glass in a deformed and misshapen wave of elongated ugliness. Mr. And Mrs. America just stepped through the looking glass and into the Bush Zone.

Submitted for your consideration: citizens of the wealthiest country in the world seek salvation via the free-market system. They organize bake sales and eBay auctions to raise money for medical therapy not covered by their profit-driven corporate HMOs, only to discover that some of that money is also needed to purchase body armor the Pentagon failed to provide to their sons and daughters in Iraq. War is never cheap, but always profitable in the Bush Zone.

Further submitted for your consideration: a President insists on free elections in his combat arena despite the risk to life and limb for Iraqis, even as his own political party strains the boundaries of legality and decency to suppress the vote of Americans at home. Democracy is only for the righteous few required to guide the many along the sacred path of destiny and empire in the Bush Zone.

This is Alberto Gonzales, lawyer on his way up, salt of the earth, minority makes good story. He is, as you have perceived, a purveyor of partisan loyalty, one of a breed who substitutes smiles for substance, venom for value, and noise for nobility. His skill is the ability to turn the objectionable into the tolerable, the illegal into legal, and define it all with the phonetics of patriotism. Mr. Gonzales sits before his inquisitors, speaking in tongues while saying nothing. He has no fear because he knows Democrats are willing ghosts without power in the Bush Zone.

Picture of a campaign paid for by $600 million dollars of private funds, a cacophonous symphony of slander, mendacious media, and clanging garbage cans of innuendo and falsehood. The prize? A lavish gala held at the picturesque white house residence of the owners of America. Attendance is by invitation only.

The Bush Zone hosts a cast of characters, who like children`s fertile imaginations, have no attachment to reality. A surreal traveling Medicine Show comprised of peddlers of faith and fear, sellers of superstition, martyrs and moguls who line their pockets with the lives of the innocent and faithful, all united to market the elixirs of corporate conformity and passivity, for the price of one thin nickel plus your soul. No waiting.

Picture of a Nation gazing into a warped mirror, its reflection, a blemished garden of atrophied freedoms, the acne of cowered silence, and once bright eyes dulled by corporate greed and the focus group political entertainment of talk television. In a little while, the face in the mirror will be permanently etched into the glass unless the Nation can avert its eyes from the hypnotic glare and focus on its people, principles and Constitution.

There is a way out for all of us, albeit through a locked door.

You unlock this door with the key of democracy. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of peace and prosperity, a dimension of free speech and civil rights, a dimension of tolerance and enlightenment. You`re moving out of the land of haze and shadow, and into the wondrous journey of the people, by the people and for the people.

You`ve just stepped out of - the Bush Zone.

That`s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the real America!

© Copyright 2005 by TruthOut.org

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Issue 121 - January 13 2005
“It`s not even Election Day yet, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign is already down by almost a million votes.” – [urlGreg Palast,]http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=389&row=1[/url] November 1, 2004

On January 6, 2005 the United States Congress certified the results of the election that took place last November 2nd and declared that George W. Bush had been duly elected president. They certified a lot more than an election outcome. It is now official. This nation has become the world’s most powerful banana republic. Perhaps the Bush family will have presidents for life, just like the Duvaliers in Haiti.

America is governed by one party rule, the press does not dare provoke that one party, the opposition party is afraid to oppose, the wealthy are getting wealthier by using the national treasury as their private piggy bank, civil liberties are under assault, workers think themselves lucky to earn starvation wages at Wal-Mart, and the man nominated to become the chief law enforcement official in the land has put in writing that torture is not such a bad thing after all.

Of course a defining issue for any banana republic is a non-existent or corrupt electoral system. For the second presidential election in a row thousands of Americans were denied their right to vote or voted without the certainty of knowing that their ballots would be counted.

It is very disturbing indeed when urban legend becomes fact. Every black American with internet access has received a hyperbolic mass email declaring that they will soon lose their voting rights. The email tells us that we will lose our right to vote in 2007 unless the Voting Rights Act is extended.

Whoever started that email should get busy and send us an update. We have lost our right to vote because of arcane rules about provisional ballots being cast in the proper precinct. We have lost our right to vote in the state of Ohio when voting machines sit in storage on Election Day and thousands go home without voting because they could not or would not stand on line for hours. We have lost the right to vote when the state of Florida can falsely claim that thousands of law abiding citizens are felons and thus keep them from getting anywhere near a voting booth.

The denial of voting rights has become acceptable. The chicken hearted opposition are more afraid of looking like sore losers than they are of actually being winners. They could be liberated by the knowledge that they have nothing left to lose and go down fighting. They obviously don’t agree, preferring to labor in the shadows and pretend that they have done a great thing because they go through the motions of asking Alberto Gonzales to disavow torture but then admit they will vote to confirm him.

The losing leadership doesn’t even have the decency to shut up. Terry McAuliffe continues to brag that he is as good a corporate bag man as his Republican counterparts. Credit must be given where it is due. At least the Republican political whores know how to win elections. McAuliffe is both a political whore and a political loser.

John Kerry has done McAuliffe one better. It is probably fitting that he cut and ran so that he didn’t have to suffer in person on January 6th. He ran from Congress and didn’t stop running until he got to Iraq to visit the troops. Before he took off he publicly stated that he would not join in opposing the Ohio electors and gave us another reason to shake our heads in dismay:

“I will not be taking part in a formal protest of the Ohio Electors. Despite widespread reports of irregularities, questionable practices by some election officials and instances of lawful voters being denied the right to vote, our legal teams on the ground have found no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.”

How do you both acknowledge irregularities and “questionable practices” and also conclude that the outcome was correct? In general one should not agree with Republican talking points, but the term flip flopper does come to mind at moments like these.

It certainly must be true that God has a sense of humor because Kerry also planned to observe an election in Palestine. Hopefully the Palestinians don’t have to deal with Ken Blackwell or provisional ballots. If they do they certainly won’t be able to count on Kerry to put up a fight for them.

As usual it is black America that fights for justice when no one else is willing to do so. Congressman John Conyers took the lead in investigating the Ohio vote theft. His colleague Stephanie Tubbs Jones took to the floor of Congress and formally announced opposition to the certification of Ohio’s electoral votes.

The rest of the Democrats made a timid showing on the day they should have fearlessly gone into the breach. Senator Barbara Boxer had the decency to join with her House colleagues and protest the Ohio vote theft. She was the only Senator who took a stand and spoke up for justice.

A banana republic can change if its citizens are willing to fight. The Democratic party certainly can’t be counted on to defend social security, our right to vote or our civil liberties. If the rank and file continue to support worthless Democrats we can look forward to inaugurating Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jeb Bush four years from now, assuming that we still have elections at all.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City. She can be reached via e-Mail at [e-mail]. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley`s writings at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Saturday, January 15, 2005

Muqtada: "Outside Powers Should Not Interfere in Elections"
Pachachi: Expatriate Iraqis must Vote

Al-Sharq al-Awsat: Shaikh Nasir al-Sa`idi, the Friday prayers leader of al-Muhsin Mosque in Sadr City, read out a sermon written by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that called on "neighbors and non-neighbors of Iraq" to refrain from interfering the in the internal affairs of Iraq, especially in the elections." He called on Iraqis not to remain silent in the face of the theft of their petroleum, leaving them, he said, with no electricity, with no clean air because of the constant rounds of the tanks and armored vehicles, and no security because of the Occupying Power. He called on George W. Bush by name to avoid interfering in Iraqi affairs. He said, "That is not your specialty. Your specialty is wars and terrorism." Sa`idi denied that any Sadrists were running for parliament.

I presume that Muqtada thinks there is a danger of Iraq`s Sunni Arab neighbors interfering in the election, or that the US will stage-manage it. His worries are the opposite of those expressed forcefully and voluntarily to the Washington Post last month by King Abdullah II, that Iran might interfere in the elections.

In Najaf, Shaikh Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji (a representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) reiterated that the elections had to be held on schedule, and expressed his confidence that Sunni Arabs in Iraq would come out to vote, despite the efforts of "what they call Zarqawi" to ensure otherwise. [It actually seems highly unlikely that many Sunni Arabs will vote, outside perhaps West Baghdad.]

At the Sunni Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad, Shaikh Mahmud al-Sumayd`i demanded a postponement of the elections. He said, "Everyone looks forward to the day when all Iraqis come out to vote, for elections are an Iraqi matter." He added, "But the elections cannot be held on the basis of the marginalization of one community."

Adnan Pachachi, the elderly leader of the Independent Democrats, was in Amman to address the Iraqi expatriate community. Some 200 came to hear him urge them to vote. He told them that a massive voter turnout was the only way to put an end to the foreign presence in Iraq. He said Iraq needed the vote, since it was passing through the most dangerous phase in its history, and urged them all to go to the polls. He warned that the guerrilla insurgency in Iraq aimed at establishing a Taliban-like state.

Pachachi had earlier urged postponement of the elections, but he now seems behind them. His campaign trip to Jordan was aimed at getting as many as possible of the some 200,000 Iraqis in that country to come out and vote (preferably for the Independent Democratic Coalition that Pachachi heads). I was in Amman recently and posters are plastered everywhere calling on Iraqi expatriates to vote on January 30.
Most Iraqi expatriates in the US and the West are Shiites, but Jordan may have substantial numbers of Sunni Arabs since it is close to Anbar, Salahuddin and other provinces that are in turmoil, where Sunnis predominate. Jordanians are 90% Sunni and the other 10% is largely Christian.

posted by Juan @ 1/15/2005 06:34:25 AM

Polling Sites, Soldiers, Electoral Workers Targeted

Guerrillas bombed a polling site in Sharqat north of Baghdad, destroying it but causing no casualties.

In Baghdad, a policemen, two Iraqi soldiers and a civilian were killed in separate incidents.

In Mosul, guerrillas detonated a car bomb as a US convoy went by, but no word on whether they did any damage. Other Sunni Arab guerrillas killed 5 Kurdish fighters or Peshmerga and wounded three others. The guerrillas in Mosul resent the Kurds for being willing to fight alongside the US in Fallujah and elsewhere against other Iraqis.

West of Baghdad, guerrillas shot another election official, the eighth to have been murdered in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, in the US soldier Charles Graner was found guilty of torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. The conviction afforded al-Jazeera the opportunity to do a retrospective of the torture scandal.

Graner is small potatoes, and it seems clear that the torture policies came from much higher up, but this is probably as far as the investigation will go. If Congress had been in the hands of the Democrats, you might have had serious hearings on all this (not that everyone in Congress wasn`t appalled). But we in the US now live in what is virtually a one-party state, and such states don`t investigate themselves.

The most disturbing aspect of the Graner trial was his defense attorney`s attempt to compare the torture techniques used on the prisoners with the pyramids that US cheerleaders form for their routines. It was a callous thing to say, and the Arab world knew it.

posted by Juan @ [url1/15/2005 06:30:22 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/polling-sites-soldiers-electoral.html[/url]

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Latest Fatality: Jan 14, 2005
Jan.05: 38

Weitere Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/


Saturday, January 15, 2005
War News for Saturday, January 15, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Fifteen ING soldiers missing after insurgent ambush near Baghdadi.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi civilian killed, one wounded in ING ambush near Balad.

Bring ‘em on: US convoy ambushed by roadside bomb in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Two oil pipelines ablaze near Beiji.

Bring ‘em on: Car bomb at Tikrit police headquarters kills six, wounds 12.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents execute four Iraqis employed by US contractor near Kut.

Bring ‘em on: Election commissioner assassinated near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Green Zone mortared, police patrol ambushed in Baghdad.

Abu Ghraib. “The Army reservist accused of being the ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal was found guilty on all charges by a military jury here Friday night, a year to the day after the Pentagon began an investigation into photographs showing Iraqi detainees bound and brutalized or forced into sexually humiliating positions.” "Ringleader," my ass. No Spec. 4 has the authority or opportunity to organize a crime like Abu Ghraib unless the chain-of-command sanctioned such activity. The real ringleaders are Rummy, Abu Gonzales, and Lieutenant AWOL, and they’re hiding behind the uniforms of these soldiers.

More good progress. “The U.S. will maintain about 150,000 troops in Iraq at least through June and probably longer because of slow progress in training Iraqi forces, the top U.S. commander of combat operations in Iraq said today.”

Oil war. “The biggest hit was on the national treasury. Almost the entire federal budget is generated by exports of crude oil, and, according to the Brookings Institution in Washington, revenue from oil exports in November dropped by nearly $700 million, almost 36 percent, from the previous month. The number of attacks on pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure in November reached 30, almost tripling from October.”

Contractor casualties. “No organization keeps an official list of dead contractors, according to Stan Soloway of the Professional Services Council, a trade group whose members include military contractors. He said the group represents 30,000 contractors in Iraq, with the total number of contractors there two to three times that. Soloway estimated that 200 to 250 contractors had been killed in Iraq since March 2003. An unofficial tally based on news reports and maintained by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a private research group, puts the number at 202, including 72 Americans.”

Alabama National Guard. “The turmoil in Iraq is keeping an increasing number of Alabamians from joining the Army National Guard, and it will take several years before recruitment and retention numbers will bounce back for the nation`s biggest per-capita Guard, Maj. Gen. Mark Bowen said Friday.”

Commentary

Editorial: “The failure to ensure that all Iraqis can vote will raise fundamental questions about the legitimacy of the resulting government. There will be no ‘triumph of democracy’ in Iraq if substantial portions of the electorate cannot participate. Even worse, the disenfranchisement of a large portion of Iraqi citizens -- along ethnic lines -- is a virtual guarantee of conflict and perhaps even civil war. If that occurs, the nightmare that was long feared may be realized: Iraq`s Muslim community splits, and the country`s Kurds seize the opportunity to realize their long-held dream of a Kurdish state. That would invite intervention by neighboring powers -- in particular Turkey and Iran -- and the U.S. dream of a remade Middle East would at last come true, but not as expected.”

Analysis: “Not only do the Iraqi interim Government and senior US officials concede that elections will be imperfect, and that security cannot be guaranteed on polling day across a quarter of the nation, but the vote itself appears to be dragging Iraq closer to civil war. Everything in the Iraqi theatre since the US occupation 20 months ago has been incremental: trends have developed slowly from the fog of continuous tensions, and so it is with the present drift towards inter-communal conflict and effective partition of the country.”

Analysis: “Why can`t we win? Because we charged in with false premises and bogus assumptions. Because for every insurgent we kill, two or three more join the cause. Because even our advertised victories -- like Fallujah, where we apparently had to destroy the city in order to save it, or Samarra or Ramadi -- only turned the entire Sunni population against the United States and its Iraqi allies.” An article by Joseph Galloway well worth reading.

Analysis: “The credibility of Iraq`s January 30 poll is so flagrantly in doubt, it is no wonder that there is pressure both from within the US administration and prominent Iraqi politicians for a postponement. The danger is that the election won`t simply lack credibility, but could actually intensify Iraq`s crisis by fuelling sectarian divisions. The combination of the effective truce with Sadr`s Mahdi army while the US military concentrates its fire on the Sunni-based resistance, lack of Shia support for Fallujans during November`s onslaught and the commitment to the elections by the governing Shia parties has strained relations to the limit. There are increasing fears among Iraqis that the US is deliberately fostering sectarian tension to divide and rule - or even open the way to the de facto partition of the country. When the New York Times`s Thomas Friedman argues that ‘we have to have a proper election in Iraq so we can have a proper civil war’ and Charles Krauthammer suggests in the Washington Post that we should ‘see Iraqi factionalisation as a useful tool’, it`s hardly surprising such ideas flourish.” Thanks to alert reader Cloned Poster for the link.

Opinion: “The March 2003 invasion was a gross misjudgment with enormous consequences for this country and other nations. That fact alone ought to cause at least a twinge of conscience or a sense of contrition among next week`s celebrants. Instead we are going to be treated to extravagant galas and a high old time in Washington, as if the wreckage in Iraq and the smashed hopes of families are media-induced distractions hardly worth the concern of the nation`s politically victorious. Thursday is not a day for party-poopers or the vanquished. The folks who`ll be taking over the town won the big prize, even if their big stars miscalculated and goofed up on the war. That`s because in Washington, winning is all that matters.”

Opinion: “We should all be relieved by Gonzales`s testimony under oath that ‘torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration.’ Even so, after being duped once in my official capacity, I find it difficult to fully credit this assurance when, in the same testimony, Gonzales, who supervised the 2002 memorandum, also said he did not ‘have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached’ in that memo concerning torture. We were not merely briefed. Our committee was shown what seemed to be a system based on non-abusive deprivations and rewards. As detainees became more cooperative, their treatment was adjusted accordingly, with incrementally improved rewards and detention in better facilities. Unlike torture, this model was more likely to produce reliable intelligence. It seemed to make good sense.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: South Dakota soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Texas Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Arizona soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Texas Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Two Indiana Guardsmen wounded in Iraq.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:28 AM

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POLITICS-U.S.:
Neo-Conservatives At Sea

Analysis by Jim Lobe

Jubilant over President George W. Bush`s re-election victory just two months ago, neo-conservatives who played a leading role in shaping the radical trajectory of U.S. foreign policy after the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks appear increasingly divided on key issues and uncertain of their position in Bush`s second term.

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (IPS) - All are on board for the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq, and military strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities to prevent Teheran from getting a bomb. But they cannot seem to forge a consensus on U.S. military strategy in Iraq, whether to demand greater military spending than the Bush administration appears comfortable with, or whether to back a policy of engagement with Iran prior to a military strike.

They are also worried about key appointments to second-term foreign policy positions, particularly that of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick to serve as Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice`s deputy, as well as other appointments to senior posts in the State Department.

But the biggest blow to their unity and sense of purpose to date has been the deep split that has developed within their ranks following the death of Palestinian leader and "arch-fiend", Yassir Arafat.

The emergence of a "moderate" successor in Palestinian Authority (PA) president-elect Mahmoud Abbas, coupled with his initial embrace by both the Bush administration and a realigned Israeli government seemingly determined to carry out its plan to disengage from Gaza by the end of this year, has drawn harsh criticism from hard-line neo-conservatives.

These include Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Centre for Security Policy (CSP) chief Frank Gaffney, who fear that both Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, are moving down a "slippery slope" that will put Israel`s security in serious jeopardy.

They doubtless saw a ray of light in the announcement Friday by Sharon cutting all ties with the PA until it "take(s) the necessary steps to curb and stop terrorism", in retaliation for the killing of six Israelis and wounding of five others by Palestinian militants at a checkpoint Thursday.

The split in neo-con ranks, of course, mirrors that which has taken place between the less-ideological elements in Israel`s Likud Party, such as Sharon and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and its more-extreme elements who have long opposed any Israeli retreat from the occupied territories for theological or nationalistic reasons.

Because Israel`s security is so central to the neo-conservative worldview, the split between the hard-line neo-conservatives, who are closely aligned with Likud`s extremists, and their more pragmatic brethren, such as Rice`s top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams, who lean more to Sharon and even Olmert, deeply threatens its unity and ideological coherence.

These developments are surprising in many ways given the jubilation of the neo-conservatives over Bush`s election victory and subsequent decision to drop Secretary of State Colin Powell in his second term.

Within days, prominent neo-cons, such as Danielle Pletka, a Middle East specialist at Neo-Con Central, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and their fellow-travelers, such as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, were being touted for top spots at the State Department and the National Security Council.

Meanwhile, hard-liners like Gaffney and AEI`s Michael Ledeen and David Frum were drawing up lists of new candidates for "regime change", including Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, and even Venezuela.

Since then, a number of unanticipated developments appear to have deflated their confidence. Indeed, by early this week, Frum, a former Bush speechwriter who co-authored a book last year with AEI`s Richard Perle, the hub of Washington`s neo-con network, was positively sullen over news of the latest appointments and recent statements on Iran and Syria by Bush himself.

The clearest of these developments, of course, was the continued deterioration of the U.S. position in Iraq despite the leveling of Fallujah in late November, which neo-conservatives of all hues had confidently declared would mark a turning point in the war.

The prediction just last week by Gen. Brent Scowcroft (ret.), national security adviser to Bush`s father and former President Gerald Ford, that Iraq was headed toward "incipient civil war", regardless of how the Jan. 30 elections turn out marked the final break of a long-time Bush loyalist and mainstream Republican with the neo-conservative foreign policy. But it also served as a dramatic reminder about how disastrously wrong the pre-war predictions by the neo-cons have turned out to be.

Scowcroft`s statement, which came in a session in which another venerable foreign-policy graybeard, Zbigniew Brzezinski, offered an even more pessimistic forecast of imperial decline, quickly became the talk of the town -- an exclamation point for the Establishment`s accumulating horror over the lack of light at the end of the Iraqi tunnel.

While prominent neo-cons pooh-poohed the old guard for agreeing with "the left", their crouch has become ever more defensive and sullen.

With the insurgency as vigorous as ever, many neo-conservatives began rubbing salt in old wounds, reviving complaints that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had failed to deploy a large enough force, either during the invasion or now, with elections pending. Others revived arguments that the fatal mistake was in not relying more heavily on Iraqis themselves, both now and at the time of the invasion.

Indeed, Rumsfeld has now become another major point of contention among neo-conservatives with some, like the Weekly Standard`s William Kristol and Frederick Kagan, claiming that he should have been fired long ago for bungling the occupation, and others, such as Perle and military historian Victor Davis Hanson, rushing to his defense.

Meanwhile, Gaffney, who has defended Rumsfeld, offered the unkindest cut of all this week in the Washington Times, calling proposed administration cuts in missile defence and other big-money military programs to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "Kerry-like" -- a reference to the defeated Democratic contender for the presidency -- and far short of what is needed to maintain U.S. global supremacy, which lies at the heart of the hawks` strategic vision.

Another nasty fight over Iran policy also blossomed in the neo-conservative-dominated Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), which, while united in accepting the necessity of ultimately "taking out" Teheran`s presumed nuclear-weapons programme, found themselves deeply divided over whether to first "engage" Teheran by fully backing European initiatives or to move straight to the regime-change"-by-any-means-necessary-possible" option.

The result, an unwieldy compromise made possible by the intervention of former Secretary of State George Shultz, did little to heal the breach.

Meanwhile, neo-conservative hopes that Rice would either "straighten out" or permanently marginalise the State Department so as not to obstruct the hawks` second-term agenda, as Powell and his team tried to do during the first term, have largely been dashed with the appointment of Zoellick -- a protege of both Scowcroft and former Secretary of State James Baker -- and the likelihood that NATO Amb. Nick Burns, another Atlantic-oriented realist, will take the number three post.

Worse for the neo-cons are reports that the regional assistant secretaries of state, including the Near East bureau which neo-conservatives had hoped would go to Pletka or someone of her ilk, will be dominated by career diplomats.

Bolton, whom the hawks had hoped would be named Rice`s deputy, will not be promoted to any strategic position outside of Vice President Dick Cheney`s office, which already is overflowing with neo-conservatives.

"Unsupported by a clear-eyed deputy like Bolton," wrote a worried Frum last week, "there is a very real risk that the department will run her, rather than the other way around." (END/2005)


Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

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Dahr Jamail`s Iraq Dispatches
January 15, 2005
The Tsunami of Iraq

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000169.…

The morgues at the hospitals of Baghdad are filling to capacity. At Yarmouk Hospital in central Baghdad, the three freezers reek of decaying bodies, despite the temperature.

The smell rushes out at us as the doors are opened. I’ve smelled the burning bodies on the funeral pires in Nepal…but this is different. This smell…how do I describe it? But it never leaves me, long after we leave the hospital later.

The smell rushes out at us as the doors are opened. I’ve smelled the burning bodies on the funeral pires in Nepal…but this is different. This smell…how do I describe it? But it never leaves me, long after we leave the hospital later.

Many of the bodies are from Fallujah, obviously picked off the streets-parts of which are eaten by dogs. The bodies from Fallujah have the typical oddly discolored skin, along with other abnormalities.

I walk out of the first freezer straight into a metal pole. Two of the people with me, including Abu Talat, make sure I’m ok as I stand there stunned…I didn’t even feel the pole, just that it stopped me from proceeding to the next freezer.

Bodies are piled into the freezers and most are uncovered, but not all. The hardest visuals to get out of my head are those of the eyes.

The doctor with us says that most of the bodies have been shot…and are not from Fallujah. The violence against Iraqis continues unabated…worsening by the day.

I do my job…taking photo after photo of the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Many of the bodies are so old they are shrinking into themselves.

After the last cooler, we start to walk away. I am spitting, trying to get the smell to leave me…Abu Talat is staring off into distance. After I gag, the hospital worker who accompanied us to the coolers walks towards me with a small vial of scent, and begins rolling it across my upper lip.

“Shukran jazeelan (thank you very much),” I tell him, then he proceeds to do the same for Abu Talat, then we walk on.

We talk with the doctor more as we shuffle along. “The morgues in all the hospitals are filling with bodies everyday, most of them shot by soldiers,” she says, “But also from crime and accidents. So many dead civilians.”

We walk, well, kind of shuffle out of the hospital, towards the car.

“That is the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” I say to Abu Talat.

We get in the car and just drive.

“I don’t know what to do,” I tell him, “What do you want to do?”

He holds his hands up, expressing that he doesn’t know either. “Let’s just drive,” I say.

“Ok, I’m just trying to drive,” he replies.

I decide to go buy some supplies…grasping towards normalcy as I catch whiffs of the decaying bodies despite the nice smelling scent that was rubbed across my upper lip.

We buy some lunch only because it’s lunch time and we’re supposed to be hungry, then drive the rest of the way to the hotel.

My head is spinning, as is Abu Talat’s. “I am traumatized,” I tell him. “Yes, my head is spinning also,” he replies before adding, “I want to take a shower.”

“I wish I could shower from the inside,” I tell him.

“From the outside it’s very easy,” he says quietly, “But how do we clean from the inside?”

We go to my room and I begin writing. The food sits in its bag on the couch…Abu Talat says, “In Islam, if we touch a dead body, even if we just see one, we should shower,” he says while walking into the bathroom.

He pauses as he catches me staring out the window at nothing, “Hey, don’t think about it. I know it is hard.” I slowly look up at him as he adds, “It is harder on me, because I am Iraqi. My heart is shredding.”

He walks into the bathroom of my hotel room to take a shower, as I go back to writing this.

Nobody knows who these dead people are. The coolers are full. Others are full too, in the other hospitals.

He finishes and begins to pray as I start my shower, trying to wash the bodies away. It helps, some.

But it’s the eyes that got me. And they won’t go away.

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 15, 2005 12:36 PM

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Dahr Jamail`s Iraq Dispatches
Die Bilder aus der Leichenhalle von Baghdad

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumNa…

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Baghdad Burning

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Saturday, January 15, 2005


The Phantom Weapons...
The phone hasn`t been working for almost a week now. We just got the line back today. For the last six days, I`d pick up the phone and hear... silence. Nothing. This vast nothingness would be followed by a few futile `hellos` and a forceful punching of some random numbers with my index finger. It isn`t always like this, of course. On some days, you can pick up the telephone and hear a bunch of other people screaming "allooo? Allooo?" E. once struck up a conversation with a complete stranger over the phone because they were both waiting for a line. E. wanted to call our uncle and the woman was trying to call her grandson.

The dial-tone came about an hour ago (I`ve been checking since morning) and I`m taking advantage of it.

The electricity situation isn`t very much better. We`re getting two hours of electricity (almost continuous) and then eight hours of no electricity (continuous). We still can`t get the generators going for very long because of the fuel shortage. Kerosene is really becoming a problem now. I guess we weren`t taking it very seriously at first because, it really is probably the first time Iraq has seen a kerosene shortage and it is still difficult to believe. They say in 1991 when there was a gasoline shortage which lasted for the duration of the war and some time after, kerosene was always plentiful. This isn`t the situation now. We`re buying it for obscene prices and it`s really only useful for the lamps and the heaters.

It feels like just about everyone who can is going to leave the country before the elections. They say the borders between Syria and Jordan might be closed a week before elections so people are rushing to get packed and get out. Many families are simply waiting for their school-age children to finish mid-year finals or college exams so they can leave.

This was an interesting piece of news a couple of days ago:

The United States has ended its physical search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, which was cited by the first administration of President George W Bush as the main reason for invading the country, the White House has said.

Why does this not surprise me? Does it surprise anyone? I always had the feeling that the only people who actually believed this war was about weapons of mass destruction were either paranoid Americans or deluded expatriate Iraqis- or a combination of both. I wonder now, after hundreds and hundreds of Americans actually died on Iraqi soil and over a hundred-thousand Iraqis are dead, how Americans view the current situation. I have another question- the article mentions a "Duelfer Report" stating the weapons never existed and all the intelligence was wrong. This report was supposedly published in October 2004. The question is this: was this report made public before the elections? Did Americans actually vote for Bush with this knowledge?

Over here, it`s not really "news" in the sense that it`s not new. We`ve been expecting a statement like this for the last two years. While we were aware the whole WMD farce was just a badly produced black comedy, it`s still upsetting to hear Bush`s declaration that he was wrong. It`s upsetting because it just confirms the worst: right-wing Americans don`t care about justifying this war. They don`t care about right or wrong or innocents dead and more to die. They were somewhat ahead of the game. When they saw their idiotic president wasn`t going to find weapons anywhere in Iraq, they decided it would be about mass graves. It wasn`t long before the very people who came to `liberate` a sovereign country soon began burying more Iraqis in mass graves. The smart weapons began to stupidly kill `possibly innocent` civilians (they are only `definitely innocent` if they are working with the current Iraqi security forces or American troops). It went once more from protecting poor Iraqis from themselves to protecting Americans from `terrorists`. Zarqawi very conveniently entered the picture.

Zarqawi is so much better than WMD. He`s small, compact and mobile. He can travel from Falloojeh to Baghdad to Najaf to Mosul… whichever province or city really needs to be oppressed. Also, conveniently, he looks like the typical Iraqi male- dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, medium build. I wonder how long it will take the average American to figure out that he`s about as substantial as our previously alleged WMD.

Now we`re being `officially` told that the weapons never existed. After Iraq has been devastated, we`re told it`s a mistake. You look around Baghdad and it is heart-breaking. The streets are ravaged, the sky is a bizarre grayish-bluish color- a combination of smoke from fires and weapons and smog from cars and generators. There is an endless wall that seems to suddenly emerge in certain areas to protect the Green Zoners... There is common look to the people on the streets- under the masks of fear, anger and suspicion, there`s also a haunting look of uncertainty and indecision. Where is the country going? How long will it take for things to even have some vague semblance of normality? When will we ever feel safe?

A question poses it self at this point- why don`t they let the scientists go if the weapons don`t exist? Why do they have Iraqi scientists like Huda Ammash, Rihab Taha and Amir Al Saadi still in prison? Perhaps they are waiting for those scientists to conveniently die in prison? That way- they won`t be able to talk about the various torture techniques and interrogation tactics...

I hope Americans feel good about taking their war on terror to foreign soil. For bringing the terrorists to Iraq- Chalabi, Allawi, Zarqawi, the Hakeems… How is our current situation going to secure America? How is a complete generation that is growing up in fear and chaos going to view Americans ten years from now? Does anyone ask that? After September 11, because of what a few fanatics did, Americans decided to become infected with a collective case of xenophobia… Yet after all Iraqis have been through under the occupation, we`re expected to be tolerant and grateful. Why? Because we get more wheat in our diets?

Terror isn`t just worrying about a plane hitting a skyscraper…terrorism is being caught in traffic and hearing the crack of an AK-47 a few meters away because the National Guard want to let an American humvee or Iraqi official through. Terror is watching your house being raided and knowing that the silliest thing might get you dragged away to Abu Ghraib where soldiers can torture, beat and kill. Terror is that first moment after a series of machine-gun shots, when you lift your head frantically to make sure your loved ones are still in one piece. Terror is trying to pick the shards of glass resulting from a nearby explosion out of the living-room couch and trying not to imagine what would have happened if a person had been sitting there.

The weapons never existed. It`s like having a loved one sentenced to death for a crime they didn`t commit- having your country burned and bombed beyond recognition, almost. Then, after two years of grieving for the lost people, and mourning the lost sovereignty, we`re told we were innocent of harboring those weapons. We were never a threat to America...

Congratulations Bush- we are a threat now.

- posted by river @ 10:53 PM

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Ein schönes Beispiel wie US-Medien arbeiten. Da gibt es zwei Meldungen, einmal, dass es nun endgültig ist, dass es keine WMD im Irak gibt und dass vor der Wahl ein Fernsehsender eine Meldung gebracht hat vor den Wahlen, die nicht als richtig bestätigt werden konnte. Wie wurde in den US-Medien darauf reagiert?


CBS vs. WMD
From Salon.com, January 14, 2005
By Eric Boehlert

http://www.freepress.net/news/6219

Monday saw the long-awaited verdict for "60 Minutes Wednesday" and its famous on-air star Dan Rather, who was part of the airing of a poorly sourced report about President Bush`s service in the Texas Air National Guard. Then on Wednesday came word that the exhaustive search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had come to an official and quiet close, without any proof to support Bush`s claim of an ominous stockpile. Both reports painted unpleasant portraits of the central parties involved and raised serious questions about their professional judgment. Which one garnered more press coverage? The one about the guy who reads the news on TV.

In fact, the difference wasn`t even close. Monday`s independent inquiry regarding last September`s ill-fated "60 Minutes Wednesday" exposé exploded all across the media landscape. Based on column inches and the number of hours of TV chatter it garnered, the CBS story could rank second only to the South Asian tsunami as the biggest news story of the young year. That`s a bit peculiar considering that much of the report on CBS dwells on the minutia of internal journalistic guidelines, as well as the do`s and don`ts of hiring forensic experts to verify documents. But not only did the so-called Memogate story appear on Page A1 Tuesday up and down the media-obsessed East Coast (the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today), but it made it to the front page in Middle America, too — in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Houston Chronicle and St. Paul Pioneer Press.

But the extent of print coverage was restrained compared with that of television news teams, and specifically the 24-hour news channels, which could not stop talking about the Rather report. Between Monday morning and noon Thursday, Fox News anchors, reporters and guests mentioned CBS on the air 294 times, according to the monitoring service TVEyes. While it`s possible some of those CBS mentions were unrelated to the networks` infamous National Guard story, a vast majority of them clearly were.

Fox`s degree of obsession isn`t surprising given its rightward slant, but it turns out that MSNBC was even more CBS-crazed this week, tallying 401 mentions in fewer than four whole days of broadcasting. (A big chunk of those came courtesy of radio man Don Imus, whose morning show is carried on MSNBC, and who talked about CBS hour after hour, day after day.) Meanwhile, CNN and CNN Headline News chalked up 170 mentions combined, while on the AM/FM dial, National Public Radio talked about CBS 70 times.

How does all this compare with the story the Washington Post broke on Wednesday that weapons inspectors had officially given up looking for the elusive weapons of mass destruction, the supposed rationale for the Iraq war? Only CNN gave that story the same kind of attention it gave to CBS, according to TVEyes. At Bush-friendly Fox News, there were just 54 WMD mentions (compared with its 294 regarding CBS). MSNBC talked about WMD 74 times, while NPR brought up the subject 36 times — half as often as it did the Rather report.

Among CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and NPR, Rather`s name was uttered 461 times on-air this week, compared with 20 times for Charles Duelfer. He led the fruitless WMD hunt, which the Pentagon will only say cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe if Rather`s name had been attached to the weapons report, things would have worked out differently.

On newsstands, the WMD story received an equally chilly reception. A check of the country`s major dailies Thursday showed that only the Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, Arkansas Democrat Gazette and Daytona Beach News-Journal opted to run the story on A1. "We saw it as the final chapter in an important ongoing story, particularly since it [WMD] was the reason for going into Iraq," says Troy Moore, senior managing editor at the Daytona Beach News-Journal. "For us it was a pretty easy decision."

Other editors disagreed, arguing that Wednesday`s WMD revelation simply did not qualify as big news. "The feeling was that after all these years, the fact they didn`t find any weapons of mass destruction, the ending of the search, needed to be recorded, but we didn`t think it was Page 1," says Ron Royhab, executive editor of the Toledo Blade. (The chaotic fallout from local storms dominated the Blade`s front page on Thursday.)

Some suggest Wednesday`s WMD search revelation did not significantly advance the story from last fall, when findings from Duelfer`s interim report were made public (i.e., the WMD never existed). "We gave abundant play to the Duelfer report last September and October, breaking news of its conclusions when it was still in draft form, writing several front-page stories when it was finalized and generally treating it as a comprehensive document," said New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, via an e-mail. "The fact that the investigators decided to let that report stand as their, if not necessarily the, final word felt to us like news of the `Francisco Franco Is Still Dead` variety."

That may be true, but by comparison the findings from the CBS report hardly came as a shock either, yet they were treated as extraordinarily important. Just as it was clear last fall that Duelfer`s team was unlikely to find any evidence of a WMD arsenal in Iraq, it was equally obvious last September that "60 Minutes Wednesday" had made serious mistakes in its reporting and that executives were likely to pay with their jobs. (Four did this week.)

"In both cases, the stories were telegraphed long ago and proved to be a bit anticlimactic for readers," says Paul Anger, editor of the Des Moines Register, which kept both the CBS inquiry and the WMD story off its front page this week.

It`s worth noting that the New York Times not only kept the WMD story off Page 1 Thursday but ran just a 140-word news brief deep inside the newspaper about the end of the WMD hunt. (The Times` editorial page, however, weighed in with a fuller, 515-word take on the announcement: "The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq may have been one of the greatest nonevents of the early 21st century.") There`s an age-old rule of journalism that says never hype a competitor`s scoop, but Keller denies that the fact that the Washington Post had the story on Wednesday (on Page 1) affected how the Times played it on Thursday.

The Times` restraint certainly undercuts a wider accusation, which surrounds the CBS debacle, that the mainstream media has a liberal bias and is out to get the Bush White House. "You could make the argument that the Times leans to the left," says Royhab in Toledo. "And you would think they might put [the WMD story] on Page 1 as a major administration failure."

Instead the Times, like so many others this week, chose to dwell on the scandal story about a newsroom, not the war room.

This article is from Salon.com. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their website and register an account to view all their articles on the web. Support quality journalism.

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January 14, 2005
Q&A: Infiltration of Iraqi Forces

From the Council on Foreign Relations, January 14, 2005

What`s the extent of insurgent infiltration of Iraq`s security forces?

Widespread, many experts say. Insurgents frequently appear to have inside information about the movements and routines of Iraqi and U.S. troops that they use to mount deadly attacks, such as the December 21 suicide bombing of a U.S. military base in Mosul, which killed 22. Though the Pentagon does not provide specific numbers, news reports indicate that dozens of Iraqi police and military personnel, including some high-ranking commanders, have been dismissed on suspicion they provided information or other assistance to insurgents. "Subversion of the government and armed forces is the bread and butter of an insurgency," Bruce Hoffman, a RAND Corporation counterinsurgency expert, recently told the Associated Press.

Who are the infiltrators?

There are three broad categories, and individuals in each have different motivations, experts say:

* Hard-core fighters. These are insurgent fighters who pass limited background checks and are inducted into security forces or given jobs on U.S. bases. In some areas--such as towns in the Sunni triangle, the heart of the insurgency--up to one-fifth of recruits may be insurgents, says U.S. Army Special Forces Major James A. Gavrilis, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who trained Iraqi security forces in 2003 and 2004. In less violence-prone areas where the population is cooperating with the political transition--such as Shiite areas in southern Iraq--this number is likely much lower, maybe only 1 percent, Gavrilis says.
* Sympathizers. These security personnel do not personally take up arms against Americans or the Iraqi government, but they may provide some information or assistance to insurgents. There are likely many more sympathizers than insurgents in Iraq`s forces, experts say. They may be motivated by payments from the insurgency--which is reportedly financed by funds under the control of Saddam Hussein loyalists--hatred of the U.S. occupation, or tribal or ethnic ties. Many Iraqi police and soldiers return home each day after work, where they may come into contact with family members and neighbors linked to the insurgency who demand help, says retired three-star Marine General Bernard Trainor, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The Generals` War: The Inside Story of the Persian Gulf War."
* Coerced and intimidated security forces. These police officers and soldiers may genuinely want to work with the new Iraqi government but share information with insurgents out of fear. More than 2,000 Iraqis serving in the security forces have been killed in insurgent attacks since May 2003.

Is it possible to measure the level of infiltration?

Not with precision, experts say. Last October, Aqil al-Saffar, as aide to interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, said that as many as 5 percent of the Iraqi government`s troops were insurgents or sympathizers, The New York Times reported. Some experts suggest the number may be higher. "Penetration of Iraqi security and military forces may be the rule, not the exception," Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Security International Studies, said in a January report. Some U.S. commanders agree. "The police and military forces all have insurgents in them. You don`t have a pure force," Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Sinclair of the 1st Infantry Division told the Associated Press. However, focusing on the size of the infiltration misses the point, Gavrilis says. "I don`t think the [overall] level of penetration is as much as most people think it is, because you don`t really need a lot to do a lot of damage."

How do insurgents make it into the forces?

All recruits are vetted. It`s the "first line of defense," Trainor says. But many experts say the vetting of new Iraqi forces has been inadequate and rushed. Many files on individuals from Saddam Hussein`s regime are scattered, destroyed, or contain unverifiable or outdated information of limited use to current commanders. Iraqis lack sufficient personnel to conduct in-depth background checks on the thousands of new soldiers and police officers who join security forces each month. "This is part of the downside of the fact that the most important goal has been to create as large a force as possible as quickly as possible," says retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international affairs at Boston University.

How are Iraqi security forces vetted?

Through a mixture of background checks, interviews, physical fitness tests, and observation of their performance on the job, experts say. Iraqi officers ask recruits basic questions about their loyalties, such as whether they support the Iraqi government. All recruits also have to provide at least one reference from someone in their town or village whom commanders judge trustworthy, General Babaker Shawkat Zebari, the chief of staff of the Iraqi army, told the Chicago Tribune. Iraqi military intelligence--which is being trained by U.S. intelligence services--then seeks to verify these references and examine the recruits` background. Finally, names are checked against CIA and other U.S. databases to make sure no one with a recent prison record--or is a so-called high-value target from Saddam Hussein`s regime--can make it onto the force.

Is the U.S. military involved in the process?

Since the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis in June 2004, Iraqi officials have become largely responsible for vetting their own forces, U.S. commanders say. "We don`t do a systematic vetting process on Iraqi security forces, their government does that," Lieutenant Colonel Dan Wilson, deputy for current operations for the 1st Marine Division, told the Associated Press after the Mosul bombing. Even before last June, however, U.S. commanders often relied on trusted Iraqi counterparts to vet forces, because they were familiar with the country and better able to judge recruits` backgrounds. Checks for low-level police and other security jobs were at times quite cursory. In December 2003, The Washington Post reported that vetting of local police at one Baghdad station consisted of a two-minute interview in which an Iraqi commander "sized up" the candidates with a few questions about their backgrounds and political opinions.

Is vetting uniform across Iraq`s security forces?

No. It is generally believed to be considerably more comprehensive in Iraq`s small, professional army--which now has some 4,100 men--than in the police, where turnover rates and recruit numbers are much higher. There are now 53,000 trained police, but the number has varied widely: in March 2004, the force had 70,000 men, and in October 2004, there were 84,950 officers on duty, according to U.S. totals. Iraqi officials say they are still conducting background checks on police officers hired before June 2004. "We have a lot of trouble getting information; we still have 50,000 [Iraqi police] who haven`t been checked out," Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim told reporters December 26. "And it`s not just a question of loyalty or background; we don`t even know whether they`re working."

Who conducts background checks on Iraqi civilians working at U.S. bases?

U.S. forces, with the help of the Iraqi military, officials say. Investigators screen truck drivers, mess hall workers, and other employees and check them against a U.S.-compiled database of criminals and former regime members, Army Captain Darren Luke, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told The Boston Globe. Iraqis are then issued identity cards, which they must show at least once when entering a base, and are subject to comprehensive searches for explosives and other materials. Still, U.S. military commanders say they believe their bases are infiltrated; insurgents carrying base ID cards are occasionally captured.

Was the Mosul base suicide bomber a member of the Iraqi security forces?

An investigation is ongoing, but it appears he was not, according to Iraqi officials and news reports of the U.S.-led probe`s preliminary findings. He was wearing an Iraqi National Guard uniform, investigators agree, but could have bought it illegally at the market in Mosul, where they are readily available. The suicide bomber "was not a member of the national guards because all of our men stationed in the base have been accounted for," Zebari, the army chief of staff, told the Associated Press. On the other hand, the Islamist group that claimed responsibility for the bombing, Ansar al-Sunna, clearly had knowledge of the schedule on the base, indicating the bomber had some inside information.

What other examples indicate likely infiltration of the forces?

Among them:

* The carefully planned roadside massacre of 50 unarmed Iraqi cadets headed home on leave October 23.
* The September arrest in Dyala province of a senior Iraqi National Guard commander, Lieutenant General Talib al-Lahibi, for links to the insurgency.
* The October arrest of Iraqi National Guard battalion commander Colonel Daham Abd, for allegedly providing ammunition, money, and information to Kirkuk insurgents.
* Numerous other attacks on Iraqi security forces, especially those that occur while large numbers of them are gathered for a ceremony or other events and are particularly vulnerable.

How can vetting be improved?

By slowing the hiring process and increasing the length of training of forces, many experts say. Observing the police and soldiers at work--and whether they are willing to risk their lives in combat situations--is perhaps the clearest way to test recruits` loyalty, Gavrilis says. Iraqis also need assistance in developing an effective counterintelligence agency within the police and military that can help root out disloyal forces, Trainor says. In addition, a professional Iraqi officer corps will help ensure loyalty. Building such a system from scratch can take years, experts say. There has been more emphasis placed on training and vetting since June 2004, when the military appointed Army Lieutenant General David H. Petraeus to head the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq, the unit in charge of training Iraqi security forces. But experts say procedures still appear to be inadequate. After the Mosul attacks, U.S. officials announced that a military assessment team led by Army Brigadier General Richard P. Formica would reassess security and vetting procedures, both on bases and within the Iraqi forces.

How does the infiltration weaken the forces?

The most immediate effect is that it allows insurgents to get information about troop movements and plans. It also sows distrust between U.S. forces and Iraqi troops, Trainor says. And the presence of insurgent infiltrators undermines trust and cohesion--essential elements for any effective security force. "The U.S. military can do a great job training the Iraqis, but if there is this rot on the inside that is eating away at the attitude of the forces, I`m not sure training will be enough," Bacevich says. "It`s an enormously difficult and potentially fatal problem."

Could the infiltration be part of a wider insurgent strategy?

Yes. As in Vietnam, where there was widespread Vietcong subversion of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese army, some experts say the Iraqi infiltration may be part of a guerrilla strategy to seize power after the January 30 elections. "Many in the Iraqi security forces are simply biding their time right now; they are in league with the insurgents but are not showing their hand," says Kenneth Katzman, senior Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service. "There is a core hoping to get integrated into the post-election force with the intention of staging a coup d`etat." Many insurgents sympathize with Saddam Hussein`s Baath party, Katzman says, "and the Baath Party strategy has always been to get control of the security forces." Some experts predict Iraqi Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the Iraqi population and are expected to win power in the elections, will purge the forces and replace many Sunni officers with Shiites. Others say that if the U.S. military remains engaged in Iraq, it will limit purges and attempt to ensure the Iraqi army remains an ethnically and religiously balanced force that won`t tyrannize Iraqi minorities.

-- by Sharon Otterman, staff writer, cfr.org

Copyright 2005

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"The Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal. Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an `aphrodisiac` chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other."
-- from New Scientist story

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January 16, 2005
OP-CHART
14 Days in Iraq
By ADRIANA LINS de ALBUQUERQUE and ALICIA CHENG

n the first two weeks of January, at least 202 people died as a result of the insurgency in Iraq. The killings have been indiscriminate. The dead include Iraqi officials, police officers, civilians and, of course, Iraqi, American and coalition soldiers. The attacks shown here took place across the country, but there is a clear concentration in the so-called Sunni Triangle, which stretches from Tikrit in the north to Baghdad in the east and to Falluja and Ramadi in the west.

While the daily toll is noted by the news media in headlines and video clips, many Americans have a hard time incorporating these individual pieces of information into a coherent image over time. This map, based on Pentagon data and news reports, shows the number killed and wounded since Jan. 1. Because of the limits placed on reporters and the military`s need to inform families, there may have been additional casualties during this period that are not noted here. The map also does not include Iraqi civilians accidentally killed by coalition forces. Still, it is our attempt to visually depict the human cost of a fortnight in an embattled land.

Adriana Lins de Albuquerque is a senior research assistant at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Alicia Cheng is a graphic designer at mgmt. design in Brooklyn.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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DER SPIEGEL 3/2005 - 17. Januar 2005
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,336935,00.html

USA

Aufstand der Militärs

Von Siegesmund von Ilsemann und Georg Mascolo

Immer unverhohlener kritisieren US-Militärs ihren Einsatz im Irak. Von Pentagon-Chef Donald Rumsfeld verlangen sie mehr Personal für einen Sieg über die Aufständischen. Weil auch zunehmend mehr Reservisten und Nationalgardisten nach Bagdad müssen, sinken die Rekrutierungszahlen.

Für Darrell Anderson ist der Krieg vorbei. Vor einer Woche hat sich der 22-jährige GI aus Lexington im US-Bundesstaat Kentucky über die grüne Grenze nach Kanada geschlichen. Seine Kameraden aus der in Hessen stationierten 1. US-Panzerdivision werden zu ihrem zweiten Irak-Einsatz ohne ihn ausrücken.

Sieben Monate hat Anderson vergangenes Jahr im Zweistromland verbracht, seine Einheit bewachte Polizeistationen in Bagdad - ein Himmelfahrtskommando. Bei einem Überfall der Aufständischen wurde er von Granatsplittern verletzt, wofür ihm das "Purple Heart", eine Verwundetenauszeichnung der US-Armee, verliehen wurde und er zu Weihnachten Heimaturlaub erhielt. Aber statt sich bei seiner Einheit zurückzumelden, floh Anderson nach Toronto.

Jetzt ist er ein Deserteur, wird per Haftbefehl gesucht und in seiner Heimat mit einer mehrjährigen Haftstrafe bedroht. "In diesen Krieg kann ich nicht mehr zurück", rechtfertigt Anderson seine Flucht, "ich will keine Unschuldigen töten." Er berichtet über den Entscheidungsdruck im Kriegsalltag. Einmal, als sich ein Wagen allzu dicht ihrem Bagdader Kontrollposten näherte, gab sein Vorgesetzter Schießbefehl, obwohl Anderson in dem Auto nur einen Mann mit Kindern ausmachen konnte. Der Soldat weigerte sich. "Beim nächsten Mal schießt du", raunzte ihn sein Zugführer an.

Ein anderes Mal verhinderte nur die Ladehemmung seines Schnellfeuergewehrs, dass Anderson durchdrehte. "Ich hielt einen schwerverletzten Kameraden in meinen Armen, überall war Blut, und um uns herum jubelten die Iraker", erinnert er sich. "Ich war so wütend, dass ich einfach nur jemanden töten wollte."

In Kanada hat Anderson jetzt einen Asylantrag gestellt. Sein Anwalt Jeffry House ist selbst einmal vor einem Krieg hierher geflohen - wie etwa 50 000 andere junge US-Bürger entging er im Nachbarland dem Dienst in Vietnam. Nun haben die Irak-Deserteure die Erinnerung an den mehr als 30 Jahre zurückliegenden Exodus geweckt. House sagt: "Ich bekomme jeden Tag Anrufe von zwei Soldaten, die einen Ausweg suchen."

Bei dieser Suche sind desertierende US-Rekruten - bislang ein eher verschwindend kleines Häufchen - nicht allein: Drei Monate nach seiner Wiederwahl und unmittelbar vor den triumphal angelegten Feiern zum Beginn seiner zweiten Amtszeit kommt US-Präsident George W. Bush um eine Neubewertung des Einsatzes seiner Soldaten im Irak nicht länger herum. Er sieht sich massiven Zweifeln der eigenen Militärs gegenüber, die immer offener darauf hinweisen, dass sie den Krieg gegen die Aufständischen mit unzureichenden Mitteln führen müssen. Seine Truppen im Irak, warnte jetzt Generalleutnant James Helmly, der Chef der Heeresreserve, "verkommen zu einer gebrochenen Streitmacht".

Ein Aufstand der Profis: Während die täglichen Bombenattentate im Irak und die - bis Freitag - 1361 toten US-Soldaten bei der Bevölkerung noch keinen erkennbaren Stimmungsumschwung hervorgerufen haben, während Präsident Bush vorige Woche noch einmal bekräftigte, dass die Welt ohne Saddam Hussein sicherer geworden sei, scheinen seine Soldaten und Offiziere zunehmend vom Gegenteil überzeugt zu sein: Politisch und strategisch, personell und finanziell sind Amerikas Streitkräfte, denen keine andere Macht der Erde gewachsen ist, ganz unvorhergesehen auf schwer überwindbare Hürden gestoßen.

Die Kritik am Pentagon-Chef nimmt zu, seine Ablösung wird angesichts des zermürbenden, verlustreichen Alltags im Irak hinter vorgehaltener Hand sogar von Parteifreunden gefordert, strategisches Umdenken angemahnt. Denn unter Rumsfelds Führung geriet das US-Militär in seine derzeit prekäre Lage. Über 150 Milliarden Dollar hat der Irak-Krieg bislang gekostet; Monat für Monat muss das Pentagon für den Einsatz im Zweistromland 4,5 Milliarden aufbringen.

Und ein Ende ist vorerst nicht abzusehen. Er rechne damit, dass noch in seiner Amtszeit von weiteren vier Jahren die Amerikaner aus dem Irak abziehen würden, versuchte Rumsfeld den frustrierten Untergebenen Hoffnung zu machen. Die Erwartung, die Wahl am 30. Januar wer-de die Wende bringen, teilen allerdings allenfalls die Optimisten im engsten Präsidentenzirkel.

General a. D. Brent Scowcroft, Sicherheitsberater des Präsidentenvaters und früheren Amtsinhabers George Bush senior, sieht in dem Datum lediglich "ein großes Potential zur Ausweitung des Konflikts". Auch der Kommandeur der US-Bodentruppen im Irak, Generalleutnant Thomas Metz, gab vergangene Woche unumwunden zu, in weiten Teilen von 4 der 18 irakischen Provinzen sei an reguläre Wahlen nicht mehr zu denken. Da in dieser Region ein Viertel der irakischen Bevölkerung lebt, stellt sich die Frage, wie aussagekräftig dieser von immer gewaltsameren Anschlägen bedrohte Urnengang überhaupt noch sein kann.

Obwohl die insgesamt 125.000 Mann der irakischen Sicherheitskräfte nicht im Entferntesten in der Lage sind, Ruhe im eigenen Land zu garantieren, hat in Washington eine Rückzugsdebatte begonnen. Viele Kongressabgeordnete hatten sich während des Weihnachtsurlaubs in ihren Wahlkreisen den Fragen der Bürger stellen müssen - die wenigstens einen Hinweis darauf erhalten möchten, ob ein Ende des blutigen Abenteuers Irak abzusehen ist. Der scheidende Außenminister Colin Powell bekannte vergangene Woche, er hoffe, noch dieses Jahr werde der Abzug beginnen.

Zu prüfen, wie und wie schnell Amerika sich ohne Gesichtsverlust vom irakischen Kriegsschauplatz absetzen kann, wird eine der Aufgaben sein, die der frühere Vier-Sterne-General Gary Luck bei seiner Mission in Mesopotamien zu erfüllen hat. Binnen Wochen soll er dem Pentagon-Chef eine ungefilterte Lageeinschätzung und eine Revision der gesamten Irak-Strategie abliefern. "Ganz offensichtlich funktioniert die gegenwärtige Strategie der Amerikaner nicht", resümiert der hochangesehene frühere britische Blauhelm-Kommandeur in Bosnien, General a. D. Sir Michael Rose, die Lage der Supermacht.

Eigentlich hätten die Streitkräfte schon im September 2003 zu Hause sein sollen, so sahen es die ursprünglichen Pentagon-Pläne vor. Danach sollte lediglich eine kleine Schutztruppe die Sicherheit im Nachkriegs-Irak gewährleisten. Doch bislang haben nur die Verbündeten ihre Truppen abgezogen, vorige Woche kündigte auch die Ukraine an, ihr Irak-Corps heimzuholen.

Dass die Abzugsdebatte nun auch in den USA immer vernehmlicher geführt wird, liegt hauptsächlich daran, dass in und um Bagdad längst nicht mehr ausschließlich Amerikas Berufsstreitkräfte stationiert sind. 40 Prozent der 150.000 amerikanischen Soldaten gehören zur Armee-Reserve und zur Nationalgarde. Die Mitglieder dieser Teilzeitstreitkräfte, die normalerweise allenfalls am Wochenende und bei jährlichen Wehrübungen Dienst tun, führen längst ein mehr oder weniger erfolgreiches Berufsleben. Aus dem werden sie nun für den Einsatz im Irak herausgerissen - eine Verpflichtung, mit der kaum einer dieser Hilfskrieger gerechnet hat.

Jetzt fällt es den Garden immer schwerer, Nachwuchs zu rekrutieren. "Es sind die Mütter, die ihre Kinder vor dem Krieg warnen", klagt Sergeant Kevin Hudgins, der in Tennessee Rekruten anwirbt. "Früher haben die Kids gedacht, dies sei ein einfacher Weg, an Geld fürs College heranzukommen", sagt der Veteran Curtis Mills, der bei seinem Irak-Einsatz schwer verletzt wurde. 30 Prozent hinter den Rekrutierungszielen liegt die Nationalgarde derzeit zurück. Ein Bonussystem soll nun helfen, die Reihen aufzufüllen. Wer sich einschreibt, erhält bis zu 10.000 Dollar.

Vor allem bei den früher eher belächelten Wochenendkriegern wächst die Empörung. Zwar sollen Gardisten und Reservisten die Kampftruppe zumeist nur unterstützen, doch ihre Jobs als Mechaniker, Fahrer oder Koch sind ebenfalls gefährlich, wie das Selbstmordattentat auf eine Armeekantine nahe der irakischen Stadt Mossul vorigen Monat bewies.

20 Milliarden Dollar verlangt Garde-Kommandeur Steven Blum vom Pentagon vor allem für die Neuausrüstung seiner bisweilen nur zweitklassig ausgestatteten Truppen. "Ich hätte mich in einem Volvo sicherer gefühlt als in unserem Humvee", klagt Richard Murphy, der 15 Monate im Irak dienen musste. In Alabama schraubten Veteranen und Schüler selbstgebastelte Panzerungen an die Jeeps, als die örtliche Truppe den Marschbefehl erhielt.

Auch der Patriotismus der regulären Streitkräfte wird in diesen Monaten auf eine harte Probe gestellt: Mit allerlei Tricks verlängert das Pentagon inzwischen die Dienstzeit um bis zu ein Jahr. Eine neue Regelung verbietet beispielsweise das Ausscheiden aus jeder Einheit, die innerhalb der nächsten drei Monate nach Afghanistan oder in den Irak ziehen soll.

Die Vorschläge, die gegenwärtig zur Verbesserung der Sicherheitslage im Irak diskutiert werden, tragen ebenfalls Anzeichen schierer Verzweiflung. Erstmals erhalten die Soldaten jetzt eine Ausbildungsvorschrift für den Kampf gegen Aufständische. Bislang verfügten nur die Kommandotruppen und die Marineinfanterie über ein solches Handbuch. Das Reglement der Ledernacken stammt allerdings aus dem Jahr 1940 und enthält Abschnitte über den "Umgang mit Tieren", Mauleseln etwa, und "gemischt-rassischen" Gesellschaften, die "mangels eines festen Charakters" meist "unregierbar" seien.

Hektisch werden längst gescheiterte Modelle hervorgeholt: Da sollen US-Militärberater als Aufseher und Rückgrat bei den Einheiten der neuen irakischen Armee installiert werden, die in dem wohlverdienten Ruf stehen zu fliehen, sobald sie unter Beschuss geraten. Genau das gleiche Rezept hat vor mehr als 40 Jahren das Debakel in Vietnam nicht aufhalten können. Darüber hinaus wird auch die Gründung von Todesschwadronen diskutiert, welche die Aufständischen in ihren Rückzugsräumen notfalls auch jenseits der irakischen Grenzen aufspüren und ausschalten sollen - eine Strategie, die in den lateinamerikanischen Bürgerkriegen der siebziger Jahre gründlich diskreditiert wurde.

Vor allem die Militärs selbst sind es, die aufgrund dieser Erfahrungen ein Umdenken in Washington fordern. Niemals seit dem Vietnam-Debakel musste die zivile Pentagon-Führung mit so viel Kritik aus den eigenen Reihen fertig werden. General a. D. Barry McCaffrey fürchtet sogar: "Der Armee fliegen in den nächsten 24 Monaten die Räder weg." General Peter Schoomaker, derzeit Stabschef des Heeres, warnte den Kongress bereits vor drastischen Konsequenzen: "Möglicherweise müssen wir die regulären Streitkräfte aufstocken" - was Rumsfeld schon aus Budgetgründen auf jeden Fall vermeiden will.

Um auf längere Zeit eine Sicherungstruppe von 150.000 Mann im Irak zu halten, benötigen die USA in Wahrheit dreimal so viele Soldaten. Ein Drittel, so rechnen Militärplaner, müsste sich auf den Einsatz vorbereiten, ein Drittel wäre vor Ort stationiert, ein weiteres Drittel wäre mit der Nachbereitung beschäftigt oder würde Urlaub machen.

450.000 Soldaten müssten also jederzeit für den Irak zur Verfügung stehen, dabei dienen im gesamten US-Heer, das den Löwenanteil dieser Streitmacht zu stellen hätte, derzeit lediglich etwa 500.000 Mann. Vor allem wegen solchen Personalbedarfs opponieren die US-Militärs gegen das Lieblingsprojekt des Pentagon-Chefs - den Umbau der US-Streitkräfte zu einer vergleichsweise kleinen, aber hochbeweglichen Hightech-Kommandotruppe für Blitzeinsätze rund um die Welt. Dieses Konzept habe, argumentieren sie, zwar den Blitzsieg über Bagdad, nicht aber den Frieden im Irak gewährleisten können.

Doch es ist gerade der Wunsch der Militärs nach mehr Soldaten, der eine Diskussion um die Wiedereinführung der Wehrpflicht entfesseln könnte - die aber kein Washingtoner Politiker, gleich welcher Couleur, wirklich führen möchte. Und erst die Drohung mit dem allgemeinen Militärdienst würde die Abwanderung nach Kanada anheizen, die bislang eine nur selten ernst gemeinte Option amerikanischer Irak-Kriegsgegner war. Doch schon die wenigen Deserteure von heute bringen Kanadas Regierung in eine peinliche Klemme.

Bislang hat Premierminister Paul Martin auf die Asylgesuche von US-Soldaten nur ausweichend reagiert: "Wir sind ein Einwandererland, ich werde niemanden diskriminieren", erklärte er. Doch obwohl der Irak-Krieg in Kanada so unpopulär ist wie US-Präsident Bush selbst, weiß Martin, dass die Gewährung von Asyl für GIs aus dem Süden ein offener Affront gegenüber Washington wäre.

© DER SPIEGEL 3/2005

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Afghans depending on poppies
Largest opium harvest in country`s history
- Peter Eichstaedt
Sunday, January 16, 2005

The poppies were not hard to find. It was spring last year in the ancient city of Balkh in northern Afghanistan as I bounced down the road in a beat-up taxi with Najeeb, a bearded and sandal-clad driver. We turned a corner and stopped at a poppy field ripe for the harvest.

The poppies were chest high, with bright pink flowers topping the faded green pods, well-tended and protected inside mud-brick walls. Within minutes, a young boy appeared asking what we wanted. I asked who owned the land. The name was familiar: the local police chief.

Those poppies were part of what the United Nations now calls the largest opium harvest in Afghanistan`s history. Afghanistan produces an estimated 75 percent of the world`s opium, the gummy sap of the poppy from which heroin is made.

Recently elected President Hamid Karzai, who faces the monumental task of rebuilding this war-ravaged country, has declared that drugs are now Afghanistan`s greatest threat. And, as ill-conceived as it is, a ramped-up war on drugs appears to have begun with the reported destruction of dozens of heroin processing labs and an aerial herbicidal attack on poppy fields in the eastern provinces in November. The United States and Great Britain deny any involvement.

More than three years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghans relish their new-found freedoms. In Kabul`s smoky kabob shops, wall-mounted televisions blare formerly forbidden Bollywood music videos. Buses, vans, taxis and black- windowed SUVs clog the streets, creating massive traffic snarls.

Afghanistan`s economy is recovering, not only because of bumper poppy crops, but also the billions of dollars pouring in from thousands of foreign aid organizations. Legions of Afghans are employed by aid programs and the highly prized jobs pay several hundred dollars a month, which provide food and shelter for their extended families.

Kabul`s teeming downtown bazaar is flush with foreign goods from China, the Middle East and Europe. Corner grocery stores carry American and European products ranging from dried breakfast cereals to European shampoos and soaps.

But at its core, Afghanistan is an impoverished, poorly educated and ancient society where traditions rooted in fundamentalist Islam hold far more sway than western notions of individual freedom and equality.

The country is bereft of any meaningful infrastructure. Most water comes from public, hand-pumped wells, and power is sporadic. Hand- and donkey-drawn carts are common transport. Goats and sheep meander Kabul`s neighborhoods, grazing on garbage piles that smolder on street corners. Knots of raggedy, shoeless street children sift through the discards, gleaning glass, aluminum cans and hard plastics -- anything that can be sold for a pittance.

Open, reeking sewers line the streets. Butchers slaughter cows and sheep at the street side, and lacking refrigeration, they hang fly-covered carcasses at the edge of the dusty streets.

The crushing poverty in Afghanistan, the world`s third-poorest country, explains why most Afghan farmers have no qualms about growing poppies, a plant that thrives in the country`s high, dry climate.

Last fall I returned to Balkh as poppy farmers prepared their fields for this spring`s harvest. "Some mullahs say it`s OK to grow (poppies)," said Nabijan, an elderly farmer as he tilled his field with his sons. "But don`t use it yourself."

His 25-year-old neighbor, Ajab Khan, paused while building a mud-walled addition to his one-room house to say that his land was good for poppies and little else. "I have been and will continue to grow poppies," he said. "I need the money to build my house."

Farmers earn about 10 times more per acre for poppies than either cotton or wheat, the two other crops most grown in the region.

As Khan washed the mud off his hands, he waved in the direction of Balkh. "They sell it in the bazaar," he said of the raw opium harvest. "It`s beside the district governor`s house. The police take a tax."

"They`re all thieves," added his father, Ali Khan.

"All the people here grow poppies much more than wheat," Ajab Khan said. That the U.S. government hopes to entice farmers away from growing poppies to growing wheat by providing farmers with a strain of high-producing wheat seeds, had little appeal to Khan or his father.

"I would grow cotton, but I don`t have the money to pay for a pump for the water," Ali Khan said. "Poppies are good money for us."

But the real profits go to the local militia and police commanders, he said. "The commanders know the smugglers,`` who are the ones who carry the opium across the borders to Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and beyond.

What would Ajab do if the United States or the Afghan government came to destroy his poppy crop? He shrugged. "We are obliged to accept it. But it will affect us badly. If it is taken away from us, it hurts us."

As history has shown, the ones who suffer the most are at the bottom. In eastern Afghanistan, the drug-dealing warlords who often double as police and government officials, regularly purchase poppy crops before they`re planted, much like a futures market. This enables farmers to care for their families through the winters, but if they can`t or don`t produce, they pay the ultimate price.

While poppy eradication plays well with the makers of American foreign policy and global anti-drug efforts, the economic and social effects of poppy eradication in Afghanistan will be devastating. Left with no reasonable alternative, there is little reason why the able-bodied and poverty-stricken farmers will not once again pick up their guns.

A frontal assault on poppy production ignores the basic reality of Afghanistan`s agrarian society and its economic and political reality. Only two things support the Afghan economy: poppy production and foreign aid. Remove either one of these legs, and Afghanistan, which is barely beginning to crawl, will surely collapse.

Peter Eichstaedt is a journalist and author who recently spent eight months in Afghanistan.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv…
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle |

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Latest Fatality: Jan 15, 2005
Jan.05: 39

Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Sunday, January 16, 2005
War News for Sunday, January 16, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed fighting in Babil province.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqi soldiers killed in two attacks near Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi civilians wounded in ambush of US troops near Kut.

Bring ‘em on: Thirteen Iraqis killed by insurgents near Latifiyah.

Bring ‘em on: US patrol ambushed in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, four wounded in attack on checkpoint in Kirkuk.

US helicopter makes “emergency landing” near Mosul.

Coalition of the Wobbly. “Portugal will withdraw its paramilitary force from Iraq on February 12, after extending its stay to help provide security for the January 30 elections, a government spokesman said today.”

Graphics. “While the daily toll is noted by the news media in headlines and video clips, many Americans have a hard time incorporating these individual pieces of information into a coherent image over time. This map, based on Pentagon data and news reports, shows the number killed and wounded since Jan. 1. Because of the limits placed on reporters and the military`s need to inform families, there may have been additional casualties during this period that are not noted here. The map also does not include Iraqi civilians accidentally killed by coalition forces. Still, it is our attempt to visually depict the human cost of a fortnight in an embattled land.”

Election update. “With only two weeks to go to before the vote, scheduled for Jan. 30, guerrillas have stepped up their attacks and driven most candidates deep indoors, and on Saturday, the authorities said they would restrict traffic and set up cordons around polling places on election day. A result, in large swaths of the country, is a campaign in the shadows, where candidates are often too terrified to say their names. Instead of holding rallies, they meet voters in secret, if they meet them at all. Instead of canvassing for votes, they fend off death threats.”

Candidates. “The Americans found Wijdan al-Khuzai`s body on Dec. 24, on the airport highway, a grim stretch rife with insurgents. Ms. Khuzai had been shot five times, once in the face. Her shoulder blades had been broken, and her hands had been cuffed behind her back so tightly that her wrists bled. ‘The police said she had been tortured,’ said her brother, Haider Jamal al-Khuzai. Ms. Khuzai`s fate is indicative of the risk borne by nearly all the 7,400 candidates in this country, where the prospect of democratic elections has inspired insurgents to embark on a new wave of intimidation. The violence has sent most of the candidates into hiding. Few have publicly identified themselves.”

A father’s grief. “Every bit of Arredondo`s skin is coated with antibiotic cream. His left palm has glass in it from when three Marines informed him that Alex was dead and he began smashing the windows of their van. His lower legs, which received the worst of the burns from when he splashed gasoline in the van and ignited it, are stained the color of cranberries. His hair, cut off in the hospital, is only now starting to grow back. His fingernails, ruined when he used his hands to claw holes in Alex`s grave for flowers, are all gone.”

Case closed. “The jail term meted out to Army Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr. for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison may prove to be the stiffest criminal punishment that emerges from the entire scandal, according to experts on military justice. To some, the low-level Army reservist may look like the fall guy in a debacle that embarrassed the United States throughout the world and tainted the image of American forces in Iraq. Yet analysts said that for now, at least, it was doubtful that higher-level officials would be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal wrongdoing at the Iraqi prison where Graner ran a notorious, late-night guard shift.”

Commentary

Editorial: “Mr. Gonzales stated for the record at his hearing that he opposes torture. Yet he made no effort to separate himself from legal judgments that narrowed torture`s definition so much as to authorize such methods as waterboarding for use by the CIA abroad. Despite the revision of a Justice Department memo on torture, he and the administration he represents continue to regard those practices as legal and continue to condone slightly milder abuse, such as prolonged sensory deprivation and the use of dogs, for Guantanamo. As Mr. Gonzales confirmed at his hearing, U.S. obligations under an anti-torture convention mean that the methods at Guantanamo must be allowable under the Fifth, Eighth and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution. According to the logic of the attorney general nominee, federal authorities could deprive American citizens of sleep, isolate them in cold cells while bombarding them with unpleasant noises and interrogate them 20 hours a day while the prisoners were naked and hooded, all without violating the Constitution. Senators who vote to ratify Mr. Gonzales`s nomination will bear the responsibility of ratifying such views as legitimate.”

Editorial: “Another day in the life of Iraq. Thursday was a typical day - unfortunately. What did this day bring? Yes, it brought more death, destruction and grieving. What specifically? It brought the assassination of two aides to the leading Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which is particularly disturbing since this signals a deliberate attempt to deepen an emerging Sunni-Shiite division. This typical day also brought the kidnapping of a Turkish businessman (not the first) and the murder of seven of his Iraqi employees. U.S. forces have, once again, intensified their military operations against the insurgency. It is an ongoing tale of woe without end. This, in fact, is one of the great concerns, one of the great worries shrouding the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq: that this conflict is one that will drag on and on for years and will have a destabilizing effect throughout the region, indefinitely. This, surely, is the message of Thursday`s ‘typical day’ in the life of Iraq. And this, just as surely, is a slap in the face of the legacy, the folly, of U.S. President George W. Bush, on the eve of Iraq`s crucial elections.”

Opinion: “The facts on the ground indicate that the violence will continue past the upcoming elections on Jan. 30, no matter what the result. This worsening state of affairs has prompted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to announce a bottom-up review of US policy. This review is long overdue. Two years into America`s occupation of Iraq, it is high time to rethink our goals and ask whether our current strategy is helping to achieve those goals.”

Opinion: “Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the ‘Rambo’ exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman`s death by friendly fire - it`s assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is ‘not aware’ of any other such case and that he hasn`t ‘heard’ whether the administration`s senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has ‘no doubt’ that there are ‘others’ like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that ‘this happens all the time.’ So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that ‘third-rate burglary’ during the Nixon administration. If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of ‘Crossfire,’ it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which ‘others’ Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: North Dakota soldier wounded in Iraq.



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Das englische Original vom 10.01.:
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000164.…

In Bagdad nichts Neues
von Dahr Jamail
ZNet 10.01.2005
Das Flugzeug landet im normalen sprialförmigen Anflug. Es ist ein grauer Tag in Bagdad... das gleiche Wetter wie bei meinem Abflug vor wenigen Wochen. Auch die Horde “globaler” Söldner, die den Flughafen bevölkern, ist dieselbe geblieben... Aus Angst vor Bomben darf man sein Gepäck nicht auf die Flughafen-Toilette mitnehmen. Nicht vergessen, dieser Flughafen ist die größte US-Militärbasis im Irak. Ich stehe am vorderen Checkpoint und habe das übliche “Vergnügen”, auf meinen Abholer warten zu dürfen. Abu Talat war wie immer früh dran... Aber er steckt in einer nervenaufreibenden Autoschlange und muß warten, bis die Spürhunde sein Auto nach Sprengstoff durchsucht haben. Ich stehe auf dem kleinen Parkplatz des Checkpoints - auch kein reines Vergnügen. Jeder beobachtet hier jeden. Ist der andere ein Kidnapper? Steckt in dem Auto da drüben eine Autobombe? Daß jetzt - nicht weit entfernt - sporadisches Gewehrfeuer aufflammt, macht die Sache nicht gerade besser.

Endlich darf Abu Talat passieren. Mein Freund Khalil und ich werden durchgewunken. Ein Lichtblick an diesem Tag ist das Wiedersehen mit meinem guten Freund und Übersetzer Abu Talat bzw. mein neugewonnener Freund Khalil. Wir sitzen im Wagen, und ich sage zu den beiden: “Ich weiß, es klingt vielleicht verrückt in dieser furchtbaren Situation...” - wir fahren an einer kilometerlangen Fahrzeugschlange vorbei, die für Benzin ansteht, vor den Zapfsäulen Leute mit Benzinkanistern in der Hand -, “... aber ich habe Bagdad vermißt und bin froh wieder hier zu sein”. Khalil lacht: “Jeder sagt das über dieses Fleckchen Erde”. Er nimmt uns mit in sein Haus. Wir genießen ein tolles irakisches Mittagessen - mit irakischem Chai natürlich - und unterhalten uns prächtig. Der Strom geht an und aus. In weiten Teilen Bagdads gibt es im Durchschnitt nur 4 Stunden am Tag Elektrizität. Davon abgesehen genießen wir die kurze Normalitäts-Pause unter Freunden - in der gefährlichsten Hauptstadt der Welt. Damit endet die Normalität.

Heute ist im Süden Bagdads eine Autobombe explodiert - ein Selbstmordattentat. Ziel war eine Polizeistation. Es gab 8 Tote, 3 davon irakische Polizisten. 10 Menschen erlitten Verletzungen. Im Dora-Distrikt, im Süden Bagdads, fallen der Bagdader Vize-Polizeichef, Brigadier Amer Ali Nayef und sein Sohn, Leutnant Khalid Amer, einem Attentat zum Opfer. Ihr Auto war auf dem Weg zur Arbeit unter Beschuß geraten. Amer Ali Nayef ist innerhalb von kaum einer Woche der zweite hochrangige irakische Offizielle, der einem Attentat zum Opfer fällt. Erst am Dienstag hatten Bewaffnete den Gouverneur von Bagdad, Ali al-Haidari und 6 seiner Leibwächter ermordet. Ein Augenzeuge berichtet detailiert über das Attentat auf den Gouverneur - aber die Nachrichten brachten es nicht: Der Konvoi sei einem gut koordinierten Angriff zum Opfer gefallen. Die Kämpfer hatten sich in zwei Gruppen geteilt. Einige standen hinter Zigarettenständen (Zigarettenstände säumen die Straßen Bagdads) und warteten, bis der Gouverneur vorbeifuhr. Hinzu kamen andere Bewaffnete, die auf den Dächern der nahen Geschäfte postiert waren... Dann erfolgte der Angriff auf den Konvoi. Das Fahrzeug des Gouverneurs war zunächst entkommen... aber ein Fahrzeug mit Bewaffneten habe die Verfolgung aufgenommen und die Sache zu Ende gebracht. Die einzigen Zivilisten, die eschossen wurden, gingen auf das Konto ungezielt um sich schießender Gouverneurs-Wächter.

In Falludscha geht die Zerstörung weiter. Ich habe mehrere Quellen in der Stadt. Zwei davon - sie wohnen in unterschiedlichen Vierteln Falludschas -, berichten, das Militär sei dazu übergegangen, Wohnhäuser anzuzünden. Offensichtlich stößt das Militär auf Sprengfallen. Also werden im Innern der Häuser Möbel zusammengestapelt, dann wird das Ganze mit Benzin getränkt und angesteckt. Dennoch kam auch heute in Falludscha wieder ein Marine zu Tode.

In Bagdad wurde heute erneut ein Kampffahrzeug der Marke ‘Bradley’ zerstört... Inzwischen benutzt der Widerstand bei seinen Attacken größere Bomben. 2 Soldaten starben bei dem Angriff, 4 weitere wurden verletzt. Der letzte Angriff auf einen Bradley mit einem dieser großen Sprengsätze ist noch nicht so lange her. Dabei starben 6 Soldaten. Wie üblich heulen überall in Bagdad die Sirenen. Und überall in der Stadt ist sporadisches Gewehrfeuer zu hören - auch das ist normal. Die Briten schicken weitere 400 Soldaten. Was die bevorstehenden Wahlen betrifft, so wurden in Bagdad ein paar nette Schilder aufgestellt, die die Leute zum wählen ermutigen sollen. Mehrere meiner irakischen Freunde gehen von einer Wahlbeteiligung von rund 20 Prozent aus. Wer könnte es den Leuten verübeln? Der Widerstand kündigt an, bei den Wahlen Wahllokale mittels Heckenschützen anzugreifen, und sehr wahrscheinlich werden Selbstmordattentäter Bombenautos in Wahllokale steuern. Mehr als nette Plakatwände würde wohl eine verbesserte Sicherheitslage im Vorfeld dazu beitragen, die Iraker zur Wahl zu bringen - zu welcher Wahl auch immer. Die schreckliche Katastrophe namens ‘besetzter Irak’ wird mit jedem Tag schlimmer - auch das ist normal.

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Interessant ist der 2.Teil des Artikels über Aceh und die Öl und Gas Vorkommen. Dazu gehört auch die Verwicklungen Australiens in diese Konflikte und dann auch die Unterstützung Australiens durch die USA.
Zusammenhänge, die nicht gerne erwähnt werden in der westlichen Presse.
Das könnte auch erklären, weshalb Indonesien die fremden Soldaten schnell wieder los werden will.
Australien und Ost-Timor ist wieder ein Thema für sich.

Sun, January 16, 2005
Top marks to Canucks
By ERIC MARGOLIS
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margol…

FORENSIC TEAMS from a dozen nations are conducting the gruesome task of trying to identify horribly bloated, decomposing victims of the December tsunami that killed 5,000 in Thailand and 155,000 in neighbouring countries.

I flew down to Phuket this past week with Ontario`s former lieutenant-governor, Hilary Weston, one of Canada`s foremost diplomats and humanists, sent by Premier Dalton McGuinty to assess aid to the tsunami-ravaged region and assure continuity of the relief effort.

Canada is conducting an intelligent, targeted relief campaign that sets a standard for other nations. Prime Minister Paul Martin arrive here today, and will proceed to battered Sri Lanka tomorrow.

We spent a day with Dr. James Young, Ontario`s very capable commissioner of emergency management, who, with a group of RCMP officers, has played an important role in identifying tsunami victims. Young led forensic teams in the Swissair crash, World Trade Center attack and Bali bombings. Call him CSI Canada.

Hilary Weston`s mission is important because most governments quickly forget promises of aid made during disasters, and often ignore rural victims.

Follow-up and continuity are essential. Canada has pledged $425 million over five years, making it one of the top five donor nations.

The worst damage here occurred on the mainland north of Phuket. Resorts have been patched up and are again ready for resort business.

Meanwhile, Thailand is exhuming 2,000 hastily buried victims for identification. We watched grieving families searching photos of bloated corpses.

Thailand`s prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who faces upcoming elections, has turned the tsunami disaster into a political bonanza by ably managing the relief effort and rejecting foreign aid. Thaksin`s recent brutal repression of southern Thailand`s restive Muslims has been totally overshadowed by the tsunami disaster.

OIL, GAS-RICH ACEH

I also flew down Burma`s storm-ravaged Andaman Sea coast. Burma`s secretive hermit government understated the number of dead, but damage appears limited, and the real number of dead likely does not exceed 150.

While Thailand and Burma have disaster relief well under control, neighbouring Indonesia`s province of Aceh, where 100,000 died, is a mess. Jakarta just ordered foreign aid missions to get out by the end of March and has banned all journalists, human rights groups and aid workers from Aceh.

Indonesia fears foreign powers will move in on oil-and-gas-rich Aceh, where a bloody secessionist rebellion has festered for five decades.

A similar process occurred in Indonesia`s former East Timor province, which was detached from Indonesia by foreign pressure and is now falling under Australian influence.

In fact, Australia, strongly backed by the U.S., is fast assuming the role of regional superpower and policeman. Australia`s conservative government is beefing up its navy and mobile intervention forces.

Indonesia and Australia have been rivals and edgy neighbours since the 1960s. Indonesia fears Australia and the U.S. will use the tsunami crisis to assert influence over the entire region.

The rebellion by the separatist Free Aceh Movement has been totally ignored by the world which showed great sympathy for Christian secessionists of East Timor years ago, but little for Aceh`s Muslim separatists.

Aceh was an independent Islamic sultanate until conquered in a bloody war by the Netherlands in the 1870s.

The Dutch, many of whom still complain bitterly about harsh German occupation in World War II, acted with far greater ferocity in colonizing Indonesia, massacring tens of thousands of Indonesians and Achenese.

Indonesia took over Aceh after gaining independence after World War II. Indonesia`s muddled disaster relief will likely intensify the rebellion in Aceh, which feels itself exploited and neglected by the central government.

Washington, however, is branding the Aceh independence movement Islamic terrorists, just as it has done to Muslim separatists in the Philippines -- a misguided policy certain to create new crises in this turbulent part of southern Asia.

Humanitarian relief, alas, is quickly turning into political rivalry.

Calgary Sun / Ottawa Sun / Edmonton Sun / London Free Press / Winnipeg Sun

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Der Vorgang der Verurteilung ist bekannt, aber ich möchte noch einige Bemerkungen zu Charles A. Graner Jr. machen. Garner war vorher am State Correctional Institution-Greene, a maximum-security state prison in Greene County als Wächter angestellt. Er fiel dort dadurch auf, dass er in mehrere Fällen der Misshandlungen an Gefangenen beschuldigt wurde. Im Juli 2000 wurde wegen einer dieser Vergehen gefeuert, 2002 wurde diese Kündigung widerrufen und er nur leicht bestraft und sein Gehalt wurde nachgezahlt. Graner wurde während der Zeit bis 2002 6mal diziplinarisch bestraft wegen Gefangenmißhandlungen. Dann kam er über die Army Reserve, der er 2002 beitrat, 2003 in den Irak und dort als Spezialist nach Abu Ghraib. Das kann kein Zufall sein, dass ein Mann mit dem Vorleben an diese Stelle gekommen ist. Er wird schon zu einem bestimmten Zweck dort gelandet sein. Die Quellen sind WaPost und LATimes.

washingtonpost.com
Graner Gets 10 Years for Abuse at Abu Ghraib
Ex-Guard Said He Was Ordered to Mistreat Iraqis

By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 16, 2005; Page A01

FORT HOOD, Tex., Jan. 15 -- Former Army prison guard Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr. was sentenced to 10 years in a military stockade Saturday for his role in abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, an episode that sparked a wave of anti-American indignation around the world last spring.

The 10-member military jury passed sentence three hours after hearing Graner deliver an unsworn presentencing statement, not subject to cross-examination, in which he said that superior officers instructed him take actions at the prison that he knew would "violate the Geneva Conventions."

Graner spent 2 1/2 hours laying out an often harrowing tale of a chaotic, Dickensian prison where the rules of permissible conduct were constantly changing and most guards were young reservists with little or no training. At one point, he showed the jury a copy of the Army`s "ROE," or "Rules of Engagement," which spelled out four steps of increasing severity for guards to use in controlling unruly inmates: "Shout, Shove, Show [a weapon], Shoot."

Graner also said cellblock "One-Alpha" at the crumbling, overcrowded Army prison housed a number of "ghost detainees" -- prisoners held with no written records so that International Red Cross inspectors would not be aware of them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11973-2005Jan…

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Ich glaube, dass die geplanten Angriffe auf weitere Staaten nach dem Irak mehr Wunschdenken der Neocons und Bushs sind.
Es sind noch nicht mal genügend Soldaten für den Irak da und ein Angriff auf den Iran, wenn er auf dem Boden erfolgen sollte, brauchte mehr Truppen als der Irak.
Auch sind die Landschaften anders im Iran.
Dass die Neocons gerne bis nach Peking maschieren möchten und dort überall Demokratie verbreiten wollen, ist schon seit langen bekannt.
Aber diese Angriffe würden die USA auch militärisch überfordern, denn die vielgelobten `präzisen` Militärschläge, sind meist garnicht so präzise und ohne Bodentruppen sind Kriege gegten den Iran nicht zu gewinnen.
Und mit den Bodentruppen hapert es, man kriegt schon für den Irak nicht genug Soldaten. Weder Freiwillige und noch Nationalgardisten verpflichten sich in ausreichender Zahl.
Hersh ist aber in seinen Berichten immer sehr genau, ob er die Abu Ghraib Gefangenenmißhandlungen aufdeckt oder ob er Perle mit den Fingern in der Keksdose erwischt (Perle ist und war in einige dubiose Finanzgeschäfte verstrickt) und dieser zurücktreten muß.
Hersh hat immer sauber recheriert.

THE COMING WARS
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
What the Pentagon can now do in secret.
Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31
Posted 2005-01-17

George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Rumsfeld who has directed its implementation and has absorbed much of the public criticism when things went wrong—whether it was prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib or lack of sufficient armor plating for G.I.s’ vehicles in Iraq. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for Rumsfeld’s dismissal, and he is not widely admired inside the military. Nonetheless, his reappointment as Defense Secretary was never in doubt.

Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”

For more than a year, France, Germany, Britain, and other countries in the European Union have seen preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon as a race against time—and against the Bush Administration. They have been negotiating with the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear-weapons ambitions in exchange for economic aid and trade benefits. Iran has agreed to temporarily halt its enrichment programs, which generate fuel for nuclear power plants but also could produce weapons-grade fissile material. (Iran claims that such facilities are legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or N.P.T., to which it is a signator, and that it has no intention of building a bomb.) But the goal of the current round of talks, which began in December in Brussels, is to persuade Tehran to go further, and dismantle its machinery. Iran insists, in return, that it needs to see some concrete benefits from the Europeans—oil-production technology, heavy-industrial equipment, and perhaps even permission to purchase a fleet of Airbuses. (Iran has been denied access to technology and many goods owing to sanctions.)

The Europeans have been urging the Bush Administration to join in these negotiations. The Administration has refused to do so. The civilian leadership in the Pentagon has argued that no diplomatic progress on the Iranian nuclear threat will take place unless there is a credible threat of military action. “The neocons say negotiations are a bad deal,” a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) told me. “And the only thing the Iranians understand is pressure. And that they also need to be whacked.”

The core problem is that Iran has successfully hidden the extent of its nuclear program, and its progress. Many Western intelligence agencies, including those of the United States, believe that Iran is at least three to five years away from a capability to independently produce nuclear warheads—although its work on a missile-delivery system is far more advanced. Iran is also widely believed by Western intelligence agencies and the I.A.E.A. to have serious technical problems with its weapons system, most notably in the production of the hexafluoride gas needed to fabricate nuclear warheads.

A retired senior C.I.A. official, one of many who left the agency recently, told me that he was familiar with the assessments, and confirmed that Iran is known to be having major difficulties in its weapons work. He also acknowledged that the agency’s timetable for a nuclear Iran matches the European estimates—assuming that Iran gets no outside help. “The big wild card for us is that you don’t know who is capable of filling in the missing parts for them,” the recently retired official said. “North Korea? Pakistan? We don’t know what parts are missing.”

One Western diplomat told me that the Europeans believed they were in what he called a “lose-lose position” as long as the United States refuses to get involved. “France, Germany, and the U.K. cannot succeed alone, and everybody knows it,” the diplomat said. “If the U.S. stays outside, we don’t have enough leverage, and our effort will collapse.” The alternative would be to go to the Security Council, but any resolution imposing sanctions would likely be vetoed by China or Russia, and then “the United Nations will be blamed and the Americans will say, ‘The only solution is to bomb.’”

A European Ambassador noted that President Bush is scheduled to visit Europe in February, and that there has been public talk from the White House about improving the President’s relationship with America’s E.U. allies. In that context, the Ambassador told me, “I’m puzzled by the fact that the United States is not helping us in our program. How can Washington maintain its stance without seriously taking into account the weapons issue?”

The Israeli government is, not surprisingly, skeptical of the European approach. Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister, said in an interview last week in Jerusalem,with another New Yorker journalist, “I don’t like what’s happening. We were encouraged at first when the Europeans got involved. For a long time, they thought it was just Israel’s problem. But then they saw that the [Iranian] missiles themselves were longer range and could reach all of Europe, and they became very concerned. Their attitude has been to use the carrot and the stick—but all we see so far is the carrot.” He added, “If they can’t comply, Israel cannot live with Iran having a nuclear bomb.”

In a recent essay, Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (and a supporter of the Administration), articulated the view that force, or the threat of it, was a vital bargaining tool with Iran. Clawson wrote that if Europe wanted coöperation with the Bush Administration it “would do well to remind Iran that the military option remains on the table.” He added that the argument that the European negotiations hinged on Washington looked like “a preëmptive excuse for the likely breakdown of the E.U.-Iranian talks.” In a subsequent conversation with me, Clawson suggested that, if some kind of military action was inevitable, “it would be much more in Israel’s interest—and Washington’s—to take covert action. The style of this Administration is to use overwhelming force—‘shock and awe.’ But we get only one bite of the apple.”

There are many military and diplomatic experts who dispute the notion that military action, on whatever scale, is the right approach. Shahram Chubin, an Iranian scholar who is the director of research at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told me, “It’s a fantasy to think that there’s a good American or Israeli military option in Iran.” He went on, “The Israeli view is that this is an international problem. ‘You do it,’ they say to the West. ‘Otherwise, our Air Force will take care of it.’” In 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor, setting its nuclear program back several years. But the situation now is both more complex and more dangerous, Chubin said. The Osirak bombing “drove the Iranian nuclear-weapons program underground, to hardened, dispersed sites,” he said. “You can’t be sure after an attack that you’ll get away with it. The U.S. and Israel would not be certain whether all the sites had been hit, or how quickly they’d be rebuilt. Meanwhile, they’d be waiting for an Iranian counter-attack that could be military or terrorist or diplomatic. Iran has long-range missiles and ties to Hezbollah, which has drones—you can’t begin to think of what they’d do in response.”

Chubin added that Iran could also renounce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “It’s better to have them cheating within the system,” he said. “Otherwise, as victims, Iran will walk away from the treaty and inspections while the rest of the world watches the N.P.T. unravel before their eyes.”

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

Some of the missions involve extraordinary coöperation. For example, the former high-level intelligence official told me that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts. (In 2003, the I.A.E.A. disclosed that Iran had been secretly receiving nuclear technology from Pakistan for more than a decade, and had withheld that information from inspectors.) The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.

Getting such evidence is a pressing concern for the Bush Administration. The former high-level intelligence official told me, “They don’t want to make any W.M.D. intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq. The Republicans can’t have two of those. There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.” The official added that the government of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for its coöperation—American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, to the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming evidence, “confessed” to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. “It’s a deal—a trade-off,” the former high-level intelligence official explained. “‘Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.’ It’s the neoconservatives’ version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation.”

The agreement comes at a time when Musharraf, according to a former high-level Pakistani diplomat, has authorized the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons arsenal. “Pakistan still needs parts and supplies, and needs to buy them in the clandestine market,” the former diplomat said. “The U.S. has done nothing to stop it.”

There has also been close, and largely unacknowledged, coöperation with Israel. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon said that the Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran. (After Osirak, Iran situated many of its nuclear sites in remote areas of the east, in an attempt to keep them out of striking range of other countries, especially Israel. Distance no longer lends such protection, however: Israel has acquired three submarines capable of launching cruise missiles and has equipped some of its aircraft with additional fuel tanks, putting Israeli F-16I fighters within the range of most Iranian targets.)

“They believe that about three-quarters of the potential targets can be destroyed from the air, and a quarter are too close to population centers, or buried too deep, to be targeted,” the consultant said. Inevitably, he added, some suspicious sites need to be checked out by American or Israeli commando teams—in on-the-ground surveillance—before being targeted.

The Pentagon’s contingency plans for a broader invasion of Iran are also being updated. Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran. Updating the plan makes sense, whether or not the Administration intends to act, because the geopolitics of the region have changed dramatically in the last three years. Previously, an American invasion force would have had to enter Iran by sea, by way of the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman; now troops could move in on the ground, from Afghanistan or Iraq. Commando units and other assets could be introduced through new bases in the Central Asian republics.

It is possible that some of the American officials who talk about the need to eliminate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure are doing so as part of a propaganda campaign aimed at pressuring Iran to give up its weapons planning. If so, the signals are not always clear. President Bush, who after 9/11 famously depicted Iran as a member of the “axis of evil,” is now publicly emphasizing the need for diplomacy to run its course. “We don’t have much leverage with the Iranians right now,” the President said at a news conference late last year. “Diplomacy must be the first choice, and always the first choice of an administration trying to solve an issue of . . . nuclear armament. And we’ll continue to press on diplomacy.”

In my interviews over the past two months, I was given a much harsher view. The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”

The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. “Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement,” the consultant told me. “The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse”—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.

“The idea that an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed,” said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security Council in the Bush Administration. “You have to understand that the nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum, and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation that’s technologically sophisticated.” Leverett, who is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, warned that an American attack, if it takes place, “will produce an Iranian backlash against the United States and a rallying around the regime.”

Rumsfeld planned and lobbied for more than two years before getting Presidential authority, in a series of findings and executive orders, to use military commandos for covert operations. One of his first steps was bureaucratic: to shift control of an undercover unit, known then as the Gray Fox (it has recently been given a new code name), from the Army to the Special Operations Command (socom), in Tampa. Gray Fox was formally assigned to socom in July, 2002, at the instigation of Rumsfeld’s office, which meant that the undercover unit would have a single commander for administration and operational deployment. Then, last fall, Rumsfeld’s ability to deploy the commandos expanded. According to a Pentagon consultant, an Execute Order on the Global War on Terrorism (referred to throughout the government as gwot) was issued at Rumsfeld’s direction. The order specifically authorized the military “to find and finish” terrorist targets, the consultant said. It included a target list that cited Al Qaeda network members, Al Qaeda senior leadership, and other high-value targets. The consultant said that the order had been cleared throughout the national-security bureaucracy in Washington.

In late November, 2004, the Times reported that Bush had set up an interagency group to study whether it “would best serve the nation” to give the Pentagon complete control over the C.I.A.’s own élite paramilitary unit, which has operated covertly in trouble spots around the world for decades. The panel’s conclusions, due in February, are foregone, in the view of many former C.I.A. officers. “It seems like it’s going to happen,” Howard Hart, who was chief of the C.I.A.’s Paramilitary Operations Division before retiring in 1991, told me.

There was other evidence of Pentagon encroachment. Two former C.I.A. clandestine officers, Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, who publish Intelligence Brief, a newsletter for their business clients, reported last month on the existence of a broad counter-terrorism Presidential finding that permitted the Pentagon “to operate unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat. . . . A number of the countries are friendly to the U.S. and are major trading partners. Most have been cooperating in the war on terrorism.” The two former officers listed some of the countries—Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Malaysia. (I was subsequently told by the former high-level intelligence official that Tunisia is also on the list.)

Giraldi, who served three years in military intelligence before joining the C.I.A., said that he was troubled by the military’s expanded covert assignment. “I don’t think they can handle the cover,” he told me. “They’ve got to have a different mind-set. They’ve got to handle new roles and get into foreign cultures and learn how other people think. If you’re going into a village and shooting people, it doesn’t matter,” Giraldi added. “But if you’re running operations that involve finesse and sensitivity, the military can’t do it. Which is why these kind of operations were always run out of the agency.” I was told that many Special Operations officers also have serious misgivings.

Rumsfeld and two of his key deputies, Stephen Cambone, the Under-secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, will be part of the chain of command for the new commando operations. Relevant members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have been briefed on the Defense Department’s expanded role in covert affairs, a Pentagon adviser assured me, but he did not know how extensive the briefings had been.

“I’m conflicted about the idea of operating without congressional oversight,” the Pentagon adviser said. “But I’ve been told that there will be oversight down to the specific operation.” A second Pentagon adviser agreed, with a significant caveat. “There are reporting requirements,” he said. “But to execute the finding we don’t have to go back and say, ‘We’re going here and there.’ No nitty-gritty detail and no micromanagement.”

The legal questions about the Pentagon’s right to conduct covert operations without informing Congress have not been resolved. “It’s a very, very gray area,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a West Point graduate who served as the C.I.A.’s general counsel in the mid-nineteen-nineties. “Congress believes it voted to include all such covert activities carried out by the armed forces. The military says, ‘No, the things we’re doing are not intelligence actions under the statute but necessary military steps authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to “prepare the battlefield.”’” Referring to his days at the C.I.A., Smith added, “We were always careful not to use the armed forces in a covert action without a Presidential finding. The Bush Administration has taken a much more aggressive stance.”

In his conversation with me, Smith emphasized that he was unaware of the military’s current plans for expanding covert action. But he said, “Congress has always worried that the Pentagon is going to get us involved in some military misadventure that nobody knows about.”

Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, U.S. military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities. Some operations will likely take place in nations in which there is an American diplomatic mission, with an Ambassador and a C.I.A. station chief, the Pentagon consultant said. The Ambassador and the station chief would not necessarily have a need to know, under the Pentagon’s current interpretation of its reporting requirement.

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”

One of the rationales for such tactics was spelled out in a series of articles by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and a consultant on terrorism for the rand corporation. “It takes a network to fight a network,” Arquilla wrote in a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These “pseudo gangs,” as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists’ camps. What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today’s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult.

“If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda,” Arquilla wrote, referring to John Walker Lindh, the twenty-year-old Californian who was seized in Afghanistan, “think what professional operatives might do.”

A few pilot covert operations were conducted last year, one Pentagon adviser told me, and a terrorist cell in Algeria was “rolled up” with American help. The adviser was referring, apparently, to the capture of Ammari Saifi, known as Abderrezak le Para, the head of a North African terrorist network affiliated with Al Qaeda. But at the end of the year there was no agreement within the Defense Department about the rules of engagement. “The issue is approval for the final authority,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “Who gets to say ‘Get this’ or ‘Do this’?”

A retired four-star general said, “The basic concept has always been solid, but how do you insure that the people doing it operate within the concept of the law? This is pushing the edge of the envelope.” The general added, “It’s the oversight. And you’re not going to get Warner”—John Warner, of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee—“and those guys to exercise oversight. This whole thing goes to the Fourth Deck.” He was referring to the floor in the Pentagon where Rumsfeld and Cambone have their offices.

“It’s a finesse to give power to Rumsfeld—giving him the right to act swiftly, decisively, and lethally,” the first Pentagon adviser told me. “It’s a global free-fire zone.”

The Pentagon has tried to work around the limits on covert activities before. In the early nineteen-eighties, a covert Army unit was set up and authorized to operate overseas with minimal oversight. The results were disastrous. The Special Operations program was initially known as Intelligence Support Activity, or I.S.A., and was administered from a base near Washington (as was, later, Gray Fox). It was established soon after the failed rescue, in April, 1980, of the American hostages in Iran, who were being held by revolutionary students after the Islamic overthrow of the Shah’s regime. At first, the unit was kept secret from many of the senior generals and civilian leaders in the Pentagon, as well as from many members of Congress. It was eventually deployed in the Reagan Administration’s war against the Sandinista government, in Nicaragua. It was heavily committed to supporting the Contras. By the mid-eighties, however, the I.S.A.’s operations had been curtailed, and several of its senior officers were courtmartialled following a series of financial scandals, some involving arms deals. The affair was known as “the Yellow Fruit scandal,” after the code name given to one of the I.S.A.’s cover organizations—and in many ways the group’s procedures laid the groundwork for the Iran-Contra scandal.

Despite the controversy surrounding Yellow Fruit, the I.S.A. was kept intact as an undercover unit by the Army. “But we put so many restrictions on it,” the second Pentagon adviser said. “In I.S.A., if you wanted to travel fifty miles you had to get a special order. And there were certain areas, such as Lebanon, where they could not go.” The adviser acknowledged that the current operations are similar to those two decades earlier, with similar risks—and, as he saw it, similar reasons for taking the risks. “What drove them then, in terms of Yellow Fruit, was that they had no intelligence on Iran,” the adviser told me. “They had no knowledge of Tehran and no people on the ground who could prepare the battle space.”

Rumsfeld’s decision to revive this approach stemmed, once again, from a failure of intelligence in the Middle East, the adviser said. The Administration believed that the C.I.A. was unable, or unwilling, to provide the military with the information it needed to effectively challenge stateless terrorism. “One of the big challenges was that we didn’t have Humint”—human intelligence—“collection capabilities in areas where terrorists existed,” the adviser told me. “Because the C.I.A. claimed to have such a hold on Humint, the way to get around them, rather than take them on, was to claim that the agency didn’t do Humint to support Special Forces operations overseas. The C.I.A. fought it.” Referring to Rumsfeld’s new authority for covert operations, the first Pentagon adviser told me, “It’s not empowering military intelligence. It’s emasculating the C.I.A.”

A former senior C.I.A. officer depicted the agency’s eclipse as predictable. “For years, the agency bent over backward to integrate and coördinate with the Pentagon,” the former officer said. “We just caved and caved and got what we deserved. It is a fact of life today that the Pentagon is a five-hundred-pound gorilla and the C.I.A. director is a chimpanzee.”

There was pressure from the White House, too. A former C.I.A. clandestine-services officer told me that, in the months after the resignation of the agency’s director George Tenet, in June, 2004, the White House began “coming down critically” on analysts in the C.I.A.’s Directorate of Intelligence (D.I.) and demanded “to see more support for the Administration’s political position.” Porter Goss, Tenet’s successor, engaged in what the recently retired C.I.A. official described as a “political purge” in the D.I. Among the targets were a few senior analysts who were known to write dissenting papers that had been forwarded to the White House. The recently retired C.I.A. official said, “The White House carefully reviewed the political analyses of the D.I. so they could sort out the apostates from the true believers.” Some senior analysts in the D.I. have turned in their resignations—quietly, and without revealing the extent of the disarray.

The White House solidified its control over intelligence last month, when it forced last-minute changes in the intelligence-reform bill. The legislation, based substantially on recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, originally gave broad powers, including authority over intelligence spending, to a new national-intelligence director. (The Pentagon controls roughly eighty per cent of the intelligence budget.) A reform bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 96-2. Before the House voted, however, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld balked. The White House publicly supported the legislation, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert refused to bring a House version of the bill to the floor for a vote—ostensibly in defiance of the President, though it was widely understood in Congress that Hastert had been delegated to stall the bill. After intense White House and Pentagon lobbying, the legislation was rewritten. The bill that Congress approved sharply reduced the new director’s power, in the name of permitting the Secretary of Defense to maintain his “statutory responsibilities.” Fred Kaplan, in the online magazine Slate, described the real issues behind Hastert’s action, quoting a congressional aide who expressed amazement as White House lobbyists bashed the Senate bill and came up “with all sorts of ludicrous reasons why it was unacceptable.”

“Rummy’s plan was to get a compromise in the bill in which the Pentagon keeps its marbles and the C.I.A. loses theirs,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Then all the pieces of the puzzle fall in place. He gets authority for covert action that is not attributable, the ability to directly task national-intelligence assets”—including the many intelligence satellites that constantly orbit the world.

“Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing so they can ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What are your priorities?’ Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it.”

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January 17, 2005
ABU GHRAIB SCANDAL
High-Ranking Officers May Face Prosecution in Iraqi Prisoner Abuse, Military Officials Say
By KATE ZERNIKE

FORT HOOD, Tex., Jan. 16 - The Army reservist accused of being the ringleader of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison failed to convince a jury he was following orders when he mistreated detainees, but higher-ranked officers still may be prosecuted, military officials and lawyers for the officers say.

The reservist, Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr., who was sentenced here on Saturday to 10 years in prison, could offer no witnesses or evidence to prove that higher-ups authorized the treatment seen in the photographs that set off the abuse scandal: naked detainees leashed and crawling, or forced to masturbate, simulate oral sex or stack in a pyramid.

But the scandal, which exploded last spring, has led to several Pentagon investigations that have found what one called "personal responsibility at higher levels," not only for failure to supervise and enforce discipline, but also in some cases for condoning and encouraging mistreatment of detainees in cell blocks and during interrogations.

And at Specialist Graner`s trial, prosecutors did not deny sworn testimony that military intelligence soldiers, civilian interrogators and some officers asked soldiers to carry out questionable treatment, like striking detainees and having female soldiers point and laugh as male detainees showered.

A lawyer for one of the officers, who did not want to be named before his client is charged, said prosecution seemed more likely now. "Maybe six weeks ago we thought that the worst that was going to happen was a slap on the wrist, and he was not going to be charged," the lawyer said. "Things seem to be moving to the forefront."

Several witnesses at the Graner trial testified that Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the highest-ranking military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, and Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the head of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison, had either known about or specifically encouraged tactics like using dogs to threaten detainees.

The two men were among five officers recommended for discipline in a Pentagon report in August, which said they bore responsibility for what happened even though they were not directly involved in abuse.

That report implicated 29 other military intelligence soldiers in at least 44 cases of abuse from July 2003 to February 2004, including one death, beatings, using dogs to threaten adolescent detainees, and having prisoners stripped naked and left for hours in dark, poorly ventilated cells that were stifling hot or freezing cold.

The report said that while the claims of Specialist Graner and other military police soldiers that they had been acting at the behest of military intelligence were "self-serving," they did "have some basis in fact."

A classified portion of the report said Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, approved the use there of some interrogation practices intended to be limited to captives held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Five investigations have been completed; four others, including one announced two weeks ago into Federal Bureau of Investigation reports of abuse at Guantánamo Bay, are continuing.

Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, said Sunday that he did not know whether other people would be charged, or when the results of two investigations that are now months overdue would be completed. "There is no timetable associated with the inquiry process," Colonel Venable said. "As individuals are identified for potential wrongdoing they`ll be dealt with appropriately."

Three low-ranking military police soldiers face courts-martial for the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

Paul Bergrin, a lawyer for Sgt. Javal Davis, whose trial is to begin here Feb. 2, said that following orders was only one part of his defense. He would also emphasize how interrogators set a bad example, chaining detainees naked to the bars of their cells, striking them and leaving them in isolation units.

"There`s a lot of things that Sgt. Javal Davis saw and lived through that wasn`t portrayed" in the Graner case, Mr. Bergrin said.

The findings of the Pentagon report that implicated military intelligence soldiers were forwarded to military commanders and the Justice Department for possible criminal charges. But so far, only one military intelligence soldier, Specialist Armin Cruz, has been charged. He was sentenced to eight months in prison.

Lawyers for some of the people implicated in the various reports said the Graner trial would make it harder to prosecute their clients.

"Whatever Graner was spewing was contradicted by the prosecution and soundly rejected by the jury," said Hank Hockeimer, a lawyer for Steven Stefanowicz, a civilian contractor who several witnesses at the trial testified had encouraged them to be rough with detainees. "He has zero credibility."

Human rights groups still are not completely satisfied and have demanded that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld be held responsible for what happened at Abu Ghraib.

The Center for Constitutional Rights responded to the Graner verdict by calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Mr. Rumsfeld`s role in creating policies that governed treatment of prisoners. "Whatever Charles Graner did, however heinous his acts may have been, we believe he is taking the fall for the architects of a policy that empowered him to torture and abuse those being held at Abu Ghraib," said Michael Ratner, the center`s president.

Lawyers for the low-ranking soldiers who have been charged say they remain skeptical that higher-ups will ever be charged.

"The higher up they go, the more problems they have with people leading to the Pentagon," said Harvey Volzer, who represented Megan Ambuhl, who was discharged from the military as part of a plea bargain in the Abu Ghraib abuses. "Pappas gives them Sanchez, and they don`t want that. Sanchez can give them Rumsfeld, and they don`t want that.

"Rumsfeld can lead to Bush and Gonzales, and they definitely don`t want that," Mr. Volzer said, referring to President Bush and to Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel and attorney general nominee, who argued in a memorandum that parts of the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and "obsolete."

Mr. Bergrin noted that when he asked a military judge to allow testimony by Colonel Pappas, Colonel Jordan and others at Sergeant Davis`s court-martial, he was told they could not testify because prosecutors planned to charge them.

"I think the military is using these young enlisteds as scapegoats," he said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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The Independent
Hotel journalism gives American troops a free hand as the press shelters indoors
Monday, 17th January 2005, by Robert Fisk


OTEL journalism" is the only phrase for it. More and more Western reporters in Baghdad are reporting from their hotels rather than the streets of Iraq’s towns and cities. Some are accompanied everywhere by hired, heavily armed Western mercenaries. A few live in local offices from which their editors refuse them permission to leave. Most use Iraqi stringers, part-time correspondents who risk their lives to conduct interviews for American or British journalists, and none can contemplate a journey outside the capital without days of preparation unless they "embed" themselves with American or British forces.

Rarely, if ever, has a war been covered by reporters in so distant and restricted a way. The New York Times correspondents live in Baghdad behind a massive stockade with four watchtowers, protected by locally hired, rifle-toting security men, complete with NYT T-shirts. America’s NBC television chain are holed up in a hotel with an iron grille over their door, forbidden by their security advisers to visit the swimming pool or the restaurant "let alone the rest of Baghdad" lest they be attacked. Several Western journalists do not leave their rooms while on station in Baghdad.

So grave are the threats to Western journalists that some television stations are talking of withdrawing their reporters and crews. Amid an insurgency where Westerners - and many Arabs as well as other foreigners - are kidnapped and killed, reporting this war is becoming close to impossible. The murder on videotape of an Italian correspondent, the cold-blooded killing of one of Poland’s top reporters and his Bulgarian cameraman, and the equally bloody assault on a Japanese reporter on the notorious Highway 8 south of Baghdad last year have persuaded many journalists that a large dose of discretion is the better part of valour.

The Independent, along with several British and American papers, still covers stories in Baghdad in person, moving with hesitation - not to mention trepidation - through the streets of a city slowly being taken over by insurgents. Only six months ago, it was still possible to leave Baghdad in the morning, drive to Mosul or Najaf or other major cities to cover a story, and return by evening. By August, it was taking me two weeks to negotiate my dubious safety for a mere 80-mile journey outside Baghdad.

I found the military checkpoints on the motorways deserted, the roads lined with smashed American trucks and burnt-out police vehicles. Today, it is almost impossible. Drivers and translators working for newspapers and television companies are threatened with death. Several have asked to be relieved of their duties on 30 January lest they be recognised on the streets during Iraq’s elections. In the brutal 1990s war in Algeria, at least 42 local reporters were murdered and a French cameraman was shot dead in the Algiers casbah. But the Algerian security forces could still give a minimum of protection to reporters. In Iraq, they cannot even protect themselves.

The police and the Iraqi National Guard - much trumpeted by the Americans as the men who will take over after an American withdrawal - are heavily infiltrated by insurgents. Checkpoints may be manned by policemen, but it is now unclear just who the cops are working for. US troops operating in and around Baghdad are now avoided by Western journalists, unless they are "embedded", as much as they are by Iraqis because of the indiscipline with which they open fire on civilians on the least suspicion.

So questions are being asked. What is a reporter’s life worth? Is the story worth the risk? And, much more seriously from an ethical point of view, why do not more journalists report on the restrictions under which they operate? During the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, editors often insisted on prefacing journalists’ dispatches from Saddam’s Iraq by talking about the restrictions under which they were operating. But today, when our movements are much more circumscribed, no such "health warning" accompanies their reports. In many cases, viewers and readers are left with the impression that the journalist is free to travel around Iraq to check out the stories which he or she confidently files each day. Not so.

"The United States military couldn’t be happier with this situation," a long-time American correspondent in Baghdad says. "They know that if they bomb a house of innocent people, they can claim it was a ’terrorist’ base and get away with it. They don’t want us roaming around Iraq and so the ’terrorist’ threat is great news for them.

"They can claim they’ve shot 600 or 1,000 insurgents and we have no way of checking because we can’t go to the cemetery or visit the hospitals because we don’t want to get kidnapped and have our throats cut."

Thus, many reporters are now reduced to telephoning the American military or the Iraqi "interim" government for information from their hotel rooms, receiving "facts" from men and women who are even more isolated from Iraq in the Baghdad Green Zone around Saddam Hussein’s former republican palace than are the journalists. Or they take reports from their correspondents who are embedded with American troops and who will, necessarily, get only the American side of the story.

Yes, it is still possible to report from the street in Baghdad. But fewer and fewer of us are doing this, and there may come a time when we have to balance the worth of our reports against the risk to our lives.

We have not reached that point yet. So far, we still see a little more of Iraq than the people who claim to be running this country.

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Dahr Jamail`s Iraq Dispatches

January 17, 2005
Destroying Babylon

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000171.…

January 16, 2005

The onslaught of Mosul has begun, as occupation forces are launching attacks into Iraq’s third largest city. While there are mass resignations of police and elections polling staff there, yet another new police chief has been awarded control of the 1,000 strong police force-which was over 5,000 men just two months ago.

In Ramadi fierce clashes continue between the bringers of “democracy” and those resisting the occupation. It is reported that five huge explosions hammered a US base near the city.

Samarra wasn’t without its share of “democracy” as US soldiers opened fire on a car of civilians. The military spokesman said warning shots were fired before the car was shot, wounding two people. Iraqi police, along with several witnesses however, reported the car was shot by a tank and four people died. Just yesterday a US soldier was killed in Samarra, along with four Iraqi soldiers.

Of course clashes persist in “stabilized” Fallujah. Remember how the reason Fallujah bombed to the ground was to bring stability and security for the “elections?” Remember how Iraq was invaded because the past regime had weapons of mass destruction?

Closer to home, an Iraqi Army patrol was attacked just south of the capital, injuring two of them. Horrible as that is, they fared better than 15 of their comrades who were kidnapped from a bus recently near Hit.

As the gas crisis persists and worsens by the day, 300 followers of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr began a sit-in today at the Oil Ministry-their chief complaint is the question, “Why does the US military have plenty of gasoline for their vehicles and Iraqis do not?”

Good question.

As I’m preparing for my day this morning the “green zone” is mortared as I make some coffee. Just like yesterday. And the day before that. And…well, you get the idea.

Of course these are only the highlights of the violence. Stories of the new “freedom” being enjoyed by Iraqis abound in daily life as well.

Abu Talat’s wife works in a bank and she told him many of the banks in Baghdad are paying their employees in advance for the next two weeks for fear of bank robberies during the “elections.”

We are driving by the Rashid Bank in the Karrada district if Baghdad as he tells the story.
Iraqi Army soldiers have sealed the road that runs in front of the bank, most of them standing around with their black face masks on smoking cigarettes, casually holding their Kalashnikovs.

“My wife told me that four billion Iraqi Dinars ($2.6 million) were looted from a vehicle recently that was traveling between Kut and Baghdad,” he says, “Three of the guards were killed while transporting the money to the Central Bank in Baghdad.”

In case a bank looting spree accompanies the “elections” we go to collect some funds I had wired to a local bank.

Most of the day has found our cell phones without signal. Recently the Iraqi “government” announced that in order to provide security for the polls on January 30, cell and satellite phones will be cut, and the use of cars will be “limited” the day before, of and after the “elections.”

I say “elections” because the Higher Commission for Elections announced that it won’t be releasing the names of the candidates prior to the “elections.” With four of Iraq’s 18 governorates unable to participate in them, an estimated 90% of the Sunni population not voting, a sizeable amount of the Shia boycotting and a very large percentage of Iraqis unwilling to vote because of the horrendous security situation, calling them elections seems a bit of a stretch.

Apaches rumble low overhead as we leave the bank and head over to al-Dora to visit some friends. We weave through some concrete barriers in the on-ramp to the highway.

Once at our destination, we share coffee with some friends. I ask one of them, a college student, how things are going.

“The problems are endless,” she tells me, “No electricity, no jobs, and there is never enough money.”

Her sister tells us there has been fighting in Dora everyday, and the electricity is usually cut when it occurs.

We talk some more before taking off, as it’s getting dark. I recall that a friend of mine from Baquba told me earlier today, when my mobile was actually receiving a signal, that there had been fighting there everyday, and many home raids. He had even been detained for five hours by the military. “I do not know why they detained me,” he told me, “This is the freedom-they are free to detain anyone here without a reason.”

We slowly make our way out of Dora, passing one black banner (death announcements) after another. Some of them tell the cause of death along with the person’s name.

“That man was killed by an explosion,” Abu Talat reads to me, “And that one by gunfire.”

The black banners are everywhere in Baghdad. Buildings, fences and walls are darkened by them at every turn. They’ve always been visible throughout the occupation, but now, like the beggars, they are everywhere.

The Guardian recently reported that “troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon.”

The ancient city, south of Baghdad, has been used by US and Polish forces as a military camp during the occupation, despite objections from archaeologists.

A study conducted by archeological experts found cracks and gaps where people had tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate,
“2,600 year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles, archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and trenches driven into ancient deposits.”

The story in The Guardian continues:

“Outrage is hardly the word, this is just dreadful,” said Lord Redesdale, an archaeologist and head of the all-party parliamentary archaeological group. “These are world sites. Not only is what the American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it`s actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world.”

Tim Schadla Hall, reader in public archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, said: “In this case we see an international conflict in which the US has failed to take into account the requirements of the Hague convention ... to protect major archaeological sites - just another convention it seems happy to ignore.”

So Babylon is being destroyed. Along with the Iraqi people.

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 17, 2005 06:56 AM

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West Wing wanabees: wake up and smell the coffee

Bush`s second term shows that Britain`s political class is living in the past
David Clark
Monday January 17, 2005

Guardian
On the surface of it, President Bush`s inauguration on Thursday changes nothing. The Republicans will remain in power for another four years and the world will continue to wait hopefully for America to return to the multilateral fold. In fact, it changes everything. It is the end of illusion for those who still believe we are dealing with the America of Roosevelt and Kennedy and time for Britain to adjust its policy accordingly.

The Atlantic alliance was founded on a belief in the indivisibility of western democratic values. Tony Blair`s justification for tying himself so closely to Bush`s war on terror paid explicit homage to that belief: "The basic values of America are our values too ... Democracy, freedom, tolerance, justice." At a sufficient level of abstraction, this is self- evidently true. All advanced democracies adhere to concepts of representative government, equality, human rights and the rule of law that find their origins in the European tradition of liberal thought. There is every reason to want Europe and America to work closely together to defend what they hold in common.

But that cannot be the end of the matter, for beneath these broad value headings there is now clear disagreement about what their application involves in practice. Atlanticism was the product of a unique moment in history when American and European thinking on the big political and economic issues had converged. The memory of the 1930s depression and the need to contain Soviet power produced a postwar consensus in favour of welfare capitalism and multilateral diplomacy. This consensus foundered, first on the monetary unilateralism of Nixon, and more recently on the diplomatic and military unilateralism of Bush.

In many ways this long retreat from New Deal liberalism has returned America to the default setting of its founding values, characterised by hostility to government and a reverence for laissez-faire. It is important, therefore, to understand that when President Bush today talks about freedom (a term he prefers to democracy), he is talking primarily about free markets. We can see this clearly in the occupation policies America has imposed on Iraq where the economy was liberalised first and elections were added almost as an afterthought. Whatever else it involves, freedom does not include the right to choose "unfreedom" in the form of an economic policy that departs from American norms.

There is no meeting point between this vision and the one preferred on our side of the Atlantic. Europeans regard capitalism after the manner of Churchill`s famous remark about democracy: it is the worst possible system except for all the others. Its necessity is regretted and efforts are made to cushion society from its most harmful consequences. The new European constitution reflects this outlook by endorsing the concept of the social market economy. In doing so, it declares for a distinctive set of values that sets Europe apart from America, where capitalism is widely celebrated as a morally purifying force.

These differences are not transitory. They are deeply embedded in historical experience. It would be an exaggeration to say that America was created on a level playing field, but the abundance of space and natural resources gave meaning to the idea that it was the land of opportunity for all. In Europe, the struggle for equality took place against an established pattern of property ownership that foreclosed the possibility of social advance for the majority. That is why the question of wealth redistribution has always loomed larger in the European debate.

Of course, with the passage of time, wealth has become as entrenched in America as anywhere else and social mobility, on some measures, is now lower than in the welfare democracies of northern Europe. But the myth of the American dream is less important for our purposes than the fact that Americans continue to believe in it. According to one survey, a staggering 19% of Americans think they belong to the richest 1% and another 20% think they will get there in their lifetime.

There is nothing new in American exceptionalism. The novel element has been added by the fact that it is now allied to an extraordinary preponderance of global power with all the assumptions of superiority that flow from it.

This finds expression in the neoconservative assertion that the American model is both the product of an exceptional culture and universally exportable. The contradiction between these propositions can be resolved only in a project that is nakedly imperial and involves an element of coercion. This applies as much to social Europe as to Ba`athist Iraq.

The question for us is where Britain fits in. The notion of an "English-speaking world" united by a common culture has long been favoured by conservatives who wish to trump the geopolitical logic of Britain`s commitment to Europe with an appeal to values. But attempts to substantiate it fail to get beyond the banal observation that we share a common language and a lot of waffle about the Magna Carta.

Contemporary opinion surveys tell a very different story: that, in terms of values, Britain is a mainstream European country. The Pew survey, to take one example, shows that 62% of British people believe that government has a responsibility to ensure that no one is in need, compared with 57% in Germany and 62% in France. The figure for America is 34%. Similar trends can be discerned on military intervention, the UN, religion and morality.

Given this, it is a wonder that the myth of Britain`s transatlantic affinity has persisted for so long. One reason is that it is shared by many on the left who ought to know better. They can be found in the corridors of Whitehall and some of the trendier leftish thinktanks: the West Wing wannabes with their preppy styles and New England attitudes. It is this section of our political elite that has harboured the most damaging illusions about the modern world of which it now needs to be disabused. There is no "Emerging Democratic Majority". America is not a "50-50" nation. President Bartlet is not in power. There is an America beyond Massachusetts, and it is firmly in control.

We now have perfect symmetry between right- and leftwing visions of the special relationship: the former posits a Britain that doesn`t exist, the latter an America that doesn`t exist. The question is how much longer our national policy can be allowed to rest on fantasy. As they say in America, it`s time wake up and smell the coffee.

· David Clark is a former Labour government adviser

[e-mail]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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IWR Book Review (Parody News) - Throughout its history, the United States has been plagued with corrupt leaders, imbeciles, and politicians who would do anything for re-election.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush is no exception to this trend.

From Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy to neocon messiah Leo Strauss, George W. Bush`s Profiles in Stupidity tells the stories of some of the worst, self-centered, and fear mongering boneheads in history.
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Für die Fäkalerotiker aus dem Mooshammer-Thread
http://www.internetweekly.org/images/bush_profiles_in_sewage…

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!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

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"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

-- Pres. Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/207960_firstpersonsfac…

`S factor` still relevant in election

Monday, January 17, 2005

NEAL STARKMAN
GUEST COLUMNIST

In January 2004, I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek essay called "The S Factor," in which I identified an issue that I believed had been overlooked as a strong determinant of the way people vote.

The S factor -- short for the Stupid factor -- describes people who don`t understand cause and effect, can`t handle more than two sides of an issue and don`t seek out multiple sources of information. It was my contention that, although the S factor applies to people across the political spectrum, it went a long way to explaining the apparent popularity of President Bush in the face of facts that indicated he was neither competent nor virtuous.

One year later, is the S factor relevant? A survey found that a significant majority of Bush supporters believed that Iraq had either actual weapons of mass destruction or a major program for producing them, that Iraq was providing "substantial" support to al-Qaida and that "most experts" agreed with those conclusions. The corresponding numbers for Sen. John Kerry supporters were far less.

Let`s reduce this to the personal: Shortly before the election, NASCAR celebrity Darrell Waltrip explained his support for Bush by saying that he -- Waltrip -- wasn`t "an issues guy" but that he`d been impressed by Bush`s handshake.

Listen up, folks: Facts, observations and reason are not the currencies in which many people deal.

We`ve been conditioned to think that if only we could lay down the facts as we know them and make cogent, logical arguments, others would at least understand us, paving the way to some sort of consensus. But it doesn`t always work that way. Millions of people respond exclusively to simple solutions for complex problems, think non-linearly and would rather someone else do the hard work of being "the issues guy." For these Americans, it`s more important to feel than to think.

That might work well in church or therapy, but it`s dysfunctional in the practical world. And it`s a partial answer to why Bush garnered so many votes: Can you argue facts or logic with people who still believe that Saddam Hussein masterminded 9/11? Can you argue facts or logic with people who still believe that Bush has made us safer? And can you argue facts or logic with people who believe that handshakes -- or smiles, or haircuts or wives` offhand comments -- trump policies?

Is it any wonder that those who adhere to ask-no-questions, do-as-you`re-told-from-on-high faiths consistently favor conservative candidates? Voltaire said, "Faith begins where reason ends." But many people don`t even give reason a chance to start.

Let no one doubt the prominence of the S factor. Whether or not it`s patronizing to say that doesn`t matter; it exists. "Dumbing down" our arguments is not the answer. We have to slide horizontally into another universe and try to figure out a different way to communicate. At the same time, we need to persevere in teaching young people how to think critically. Maybe it`s not too late for the next generation.

George Lakoff ("Moral Politics; Don`t Think of an Elephant") promotes reframing issues so that people of reactionary bent will listen to what others are saying. He`s right. We have to do a lot of reframing, we have to apply stricter standards of truth and accuracy to mass media, we have to transform the apparatus of communication -- the sender, the receiver and the medium itself.

The real battle ahead of us isn`t Democrat versus Republican, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal or even church versus state. It`s much more basic than that: The real battle is people who reason versus people who don`t.

Neal Starkman lives in Seattle.

© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Da wird das Problem noch mal beschrieben, das Bush hat bevor er weitere Überfälle starten kann.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-outlook17jan17,0,…
RONALD BROWNSTEIN / WASHINGTON OUTLOOK
Even Bush`s Most Loyal GOP Soldiers Alarmed by Strain on Troops
Ronald Brownstein

January 17, 2005

The strains on the volunteer military from the war in Iraq are now unsettling as many Republicans as Democrats — and exposing an enduring contradiction in President Bush`s agenda.

Conservative defense analysts and GOP legislative leaders are raising alarms over the pressures that Iraq is imposing on the military, especially the part-time Army National Guard and Reserve. With growing urgency, these critics argue that the Pentagon is relying too heavily on the citizen-soldiers of the Guard and Reserve in Iraq because the administration has refused to enlarge the size of the full-time military enough to meet new demands.

"The problem for the United States is not imperial overstretch, it`s trying to run the planet on the cheap," American Enterprise Institute fellow Tom Donnelly, a leading neoconservative defense commentator, wrote recently. Military historian Frederick W. Kagan delivered a similar indictment in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine.

Most strikingly, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) this month urged an increase in the active military and condemned lengthy deployments that he said were compelling Guard and Reserve volunteers to effectively "serve in the permanent forces."

These dissents signal an important shift in the political weather as Bush begins his second term. Until recently, complaints about the Pentagon`s personnel strategy came from Democrats and a few maverick Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But it`s a more ominous sign for the White House when a GOP leader such as Blunt, ordinarily a loyal soldier for Bush, breaks ranks.

These warnings reflect the accumulating evidence that the grueling struggle in Iraq is stretching both the reservist and active-duty components of the volunteer force.

In Iraq, tens of thousands of Guard and Reserve members are serving much longer overseas missions than had been common for reservists. About one-third of active-duty Army troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have served a second tour of combat duty, a previously rare burden. Thousands have been presented with "stop-loss" orders that prevent them from leaving the military when their commitment is completed.

Yet the need in Iraq is so great that Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of Defense under President Reagan, says the Pentagon may need to send some troops back for a third tour next year if the U.S. doesn`t significantly reduce its presence by then. One senior military official recently disclosed that the Pentagon was already considering rewriting Guard and Reserve rules to allow longer tours of active duty than the current 24-month maximum. That trial balloon helped trigger Blunt`s unusual public complaint.

"I`m absolutely confident it would contribute to further deterioration of the Guard and Reserve," he said.

Not surprisingly in this environment, the Army National Guard failed to meet its recruiting goals in 2004. And although the Army Reserve met its quota last year, it too has fallen short in recent months. Looking down the road, the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, recently concluded that the military was too small to meet the global commitments America was assuming.

The origins of these problems long precede Bush. Between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, both major parties understandably supported reductions in the full-time force. The active-duty Army contracted by 21% during President George H.W. Bush`s four years and another 21% during President Clinton`s eight, dropping from 770,000 to 482,000 troops.

Overuse of part-time forces in Iraq also has its roots partly in the Pentagon`s post-Vietnam decisions to rely on the Guard and Reserve to provide troops for civilian functions, such as military police and engineers.

Lengthy peacekeeping deployments for reservists in Bosnia and Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia first highlighted problems with that approach, but neither the Clinton nor the current Bush administration did enough to bring that civilian expertise into the full-time force.

Now, critics ranging from Blunt to Korb to Donnelly say the Pentagon should enlarge the Army and increase the number of active-duty troops trained for nation-building activities. Blunt won`t put a number yet on the increase he wants. Korb says 86,000, and Donnelly believes that even more are needed.

The problem is that every 10,000 active-duty soldiers cost the Pentagon about $1 billion a year. Blunt says Congress could fund a larger military by cutting other spending. But with Washington already confronting huge budget deficits, it`s difficult to see how the U.S. could afford a much larger military without raising taxes, as it has done every other time the nation fought a major war.

Yet Bush is moving in the opposite direction with tax cuts that have reduced federal revenue in each of the last two years to less than 16.5% of gross domestic product. Taxes haven`t been that low for two consecutive years in more than half a century.

Those numbers highlight the fundamental contradiction between Bush`s expansive vision of America`s mission to bring democracy to the Islamic world and his crimped approach to funding the government that must implement it. By failing to provide means to match his ends, Bush is violating the classic test of statecraft that columnist Walter Lippmann laid down in World War II: "bringing into balance … the nation`s commitments and the nation`s power."

One way to restore equilibrium would be to retrench the nation`s commitments, starting with a withdrawal from Iraq. There`s little chance Bush will take that route. But neither has he been willing to adequately fund his goals.

That imbalance is forcing the burdens of his foreign policy onto soldiers who are asked to do too much because there are too few of them to share the load. The reservists too long from home and the enlisted soldiers too long under fire measure the cost of a military too small for its missions and a tax cut too large for its time.

Ronald Brownstein`s column appears every Monday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times` website at http://www.latimes.com/brownstein .


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Latest Fatality: Jan 16, 2005
Jan.05: 40

Meldungen aus dem Irak von den Agenturen:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Take a virtual tour of Dr. King`s Birth Home.
http://www.nps.gov/malu/BirthHomeTour/

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Islamisten machen gezielt Jagd auf Christen im Irak

http://onnachrichten.t-online.de/c/32/33/59/3233598.html


saubere leistung, mr. bush!

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Monday, January 17, 2005
War News for Monday, January 17, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Eight ING soldiers killed in checkpoint attack near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqis killed in car bomb ambush of US patrol in Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Seven Iraqi policemen killed, 15 wounded in car bombing in Beiji.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis killed in fighting with US troops in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents execute Egyptian truck driver in Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Shi’ite election candidate survives assassination attempt in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One driver missing after insurgents attack convoy near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi MOI soldier wounded by mine near Samarra.

CJTF-7 reports one US soldier killed in vehicle accident near Baghdad.

Fuel and power shortage protests reported in Baghdad.

Kuwait increases security at oil facilities.

Baghdad. “Electricity in Baghdad is more spotty than when I was last here in June, when demand was at its summer peak. Now, the lights go out for most of the evening hours, and people without money for generators shiver in the darkness. Gas lines stretch for miles, because the electricity cuts affect the operation of refineries. I`ve heard no adequate explanation yet for why Baghdad`s electricity situation has gotten worse. Communications, too, are difficult. Baghdad`s cell phone network works only a few hours a day. (The contract arranged by U.S. authorities has developed into a major scandal.)”

Rummy’s Army. “Oregon Army National Guard soldiers who served in Iraq are leaving the military at a significantly higher rate than normal, according to The Oregonian. The Portland newspaper said preliminary figures show that fewer than half — 180 to 190 — of the Iraq veterans in the Oregon Guard`s 1st Battalion, 162nd Infantry, decided to re-enlist after returning in April. Retention rates typically hover around 80 percent.”

Rummy’s Army, Part Deux. “Outside observers agree. ‘The Army`s wheels are going to come off in the next 24 months,’ Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general, said last week. ‘The data are now beginning to come in to support that.’ McCaffrey said the service needs to add 80,000 troops to ease the strain brought on by the Iraq war. ‘We are in a period of considerable strategic peril,’ he said. ‘And it`s because Rumsfeld has dug in his heels and said, `I cannot retreat from my position.`”’ Thanks to alert reader Navy Wife for the link.

KBR. “He had dodged roadside bombs, mortar fire, rocket-propelled grenades and bullets as he drove his unarmored flatbed between U.S. military bases in Iraq. He had lived that unnerving fear of being kidnapped by men in black hoods. And he was earning no more than he made driving a truck in the United States, with an extra run to Mississippi thrown in. So four months into a one-year contract, Petty came home to his family in Burnet, population 4,735. He was a broken man, said his wife, Sylvia Petty, profoundly different from the person who had left Texas in May hoping to return free of debt.”

Note to Readers

Sorry for the short update today. Go read River’s latest post at Baghdad Burning or Juan Cole’s news analysis at Informed Comment.

Thanks,

YD



# posted by yankeedoodle : 6:14 AM
Comments (14) | Trackback (0)

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 17. Januar 2005, 19:52
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,337215,00.html

Absurde Waffen

Labor wollte Schwulmacher fürs Pentagon entwickeln

7,5 Millionen Dollar wollte ein Forschungslabor vom Pentagon für den Auftrag, homoerotische Aphrodisiaka zu entwickeln, mit denen die USA die Wehrkraft ihrer Feinde zersetzen könnten. Das US-Verteidigungsministerium beschäftigte sich allen Ernstes mit dieser Idee - lehnte den Vorschlag aber vor 11 Jahren endgültig ab.

Washington - Laut Mitarbeitern des Verteidigungsministeriums sollte das Aphrodisiaka dazu eingesetzt werden, Homosexualität unter den feindlichen Truppen anzuregen. Mit dieser Wunderwaffe sollte laut einer Meldung der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters die "Disziplin und Moral der feindlichen Einheiten" untergraben werden.

"Ein widerliches, aber vollkommen untödliches Beispiel könnten durchgreifend wirkende, den Sexualtrieb fördernde Mittel sein - insbesondere wenn die Chemikalie homosexuelles Verhalten hervorruft", heißt es in einem Dokument.

Doch laut den Verteidigungsexperten war die Entwicklung dieser nicht tödlichen, chemischen Waffen zu schwierig. Ein Labor in der Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio wollte für diese ziemlich absurde Idee sechs Jahre lang vom Pentagon gefördert werden und verlangte für die Entwicklung eines solchen Mittels 7,5 Millionen Dollar.

Bekannt wurde diese Idee erst jetzt durch eine US-Verbraucherschutzgruppe. Ein Pentagon-Sprecher versuchte umgehend abzuwiegeln: Dieses Projekt sei lediglich bei einem Brainstorming entstanden und wurde umgehend ad acta gelegt.

Dem Bericht zufolge wollte das Labor aber auch an besonders beiß- und stechfreudigen Käfern und Nagetieren forschen, die über und im feindlichen Gebiet verteilt werden sollten. Eine andere, ziemlich kreative Idee war auch die Herstellung eines Mittels, das heftigen Mundgeruch auslösen sollte. Der sollte dem Feind die Kontaktaufnahme mit Zivilisten erschweren.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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Published on Sunday, January 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Bush’s Choice for Energy Secretary Was One of Texas’ Top Five Worst Polluters
by Jason Leopold


In the bizarro world that President Bush lives in, it pays—literally—to be a miserable failure, a criminal and a corporate con man. Those are just some of the characteristics of the dastardly men and women who were tapped recently to fill the vacancies in Bush’s second-term cabinet.

But one of the President’s most outrageous decisions (besides naming Alberto Gonzales, who concocted a legal case for torturing foreign prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Attorney General) has got to be choosing 66 year-old Sam Bodman to serve as Secretary of Energy. This is a guy who for a dozen years ran a Texas-based chemical company that spent years on the top five lists of the country’s worst polluters.

It’s not just a few clouds of smoke emanating from an oil refinery or a power plant that got Bodman’s old company, Boston-based Cabot Corporation, those accolades. It was the 54,000 tons of toxic emissions that his company’s refineries released into the air in the Lone Star state in 1997 alone that made Cabot the fourth largest source of toxic emissions in Texas. Cabot is the world’s largest producer of industrial carbon black, a byproduct of the oil refinery process.

In 2000, the year Bodman left Cabot to join the Bush administration as Deputy Commerce Secretary, Cabot accounted for 60,000 of the more than half-a-million tons of toxic emissions released into the Texas air, according to report by the Texas State Summary of Emissions.

A loophole created in the 1972 Texas Clean Air Act exempted or “grandfathered” industrial plants built before 1971 from new, stricter pollution control rules. But in the mid-1990s companies such as Cabot were supposed to curb the pollution coming from its refineries. Environmentalists demanded that then Gov. Bush rein in the polluters and close the so-called grandfather loophole as the air in Texas became smoggier.

Instead, in 1997, then Gov. Bush asked two oil company executives to outline a voluntary program that allowed the grandfathered polluters to decide on their own exactly how much to cut the pollution at their plants. The oil execs summoned a meeting of two dozen industry reps at Exxon offices in Houston and presented them with the program.

In a memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, one executive wrote that "clearly the insiders from oil and gas believe that the Governor`s office will `persuade` the (Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission) to accept what program is developed between the industry group and the Governor`s Office."

“And they did. And two years later this joke of a program was enacted into law by a bill written by the general counsel for the Texas Chemical Council who also lobbies for energy and utility companies. The bill was denounced by newspapers across the state,” according to a March 5, 2000 report in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

According to people familiar with the legislation, Sam Bodman was part of the original working group that drafted legislation that then Gov. Bush signed into law that basically permitted Cabot and other companies to continue to emit the same level—and in some cases more—toxic emissions as they had been years earlier without so much as receiving a slap-on-the-wrist by then Gov. Bush.

Bodman personally contributed $1,000 to Bush`s presidential campaign and $20,000 to Republican committees in the 1999-2000 election. Bodman is the wealthiest member of the Bush administration. His net worth is estimated to be between $42 million and $164 million, the bulk of it in Cabot stock, deferred compensation and other benefits.

Bodman shoddy environmental record aside, he may also be complicit in one of Africa’s deadliest wars.

In October 2002, Bodman’s former company came under fire when a United Nations Panel of Experts produced a report accusing the company, along with several other US corporations, of helping to fuel the wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) while he ran Cabot by purchasing coltan from Congo during the conflict and illegally plundering the country’s vast natural resources.

Cabot has publicly denied the allegations in the UN report, but a report by the Belgian Senate states that Eagle Wings Resources International had a long-term contract to supply Cabot with coltan, which it too purchased from Congo during the war. Eagle Wings was also identified in the UN report as contributing to the war.

In response, environmental Friend of the Earth United States (FOE) and the UK-based human rights group Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) filed a complaint with the US State Department last August against Cabot and several other western corporations for its role in aiding the rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo by conducting business there, essentially inadvertently aiding a violent conflict that contributed to widespread human rights abuses.

AID an FOE filed a complaint with the U.S. State Department last August claiming Cabot and other western corporations having violated the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) “Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises,” a set of international standards for responsible corporate behavior.

The UN panel said in its report that a “three-year investigation found that sophisticated “elite networks” of high-level political, military and businesspersons, in collaboration with various rebel groups, intentionally fueled the conflict in order to retain control over the country’s vast natural resources. The Panel implicated many Western companies for directly or indirectly helping to fuel the war.”

The State Department is the agency in charge of deciding whether US companies breach the OECD guidelines. Despite the allegations included in the UN report and the complaint filed by the two activist groups, the State Department has refused to launch an independent investigation into whether Cabot, under Bodman’s leadership, and the other US companies might have contributed to the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to the UN report, an increase in the export of columbo tantalite, otherwise known as coltan from which the metal tantalum is extracted, in 1999 and 2000 resulted in “a sharp increase in the world prices of tantalum…leading to a large increase in coltan production in eastern DRC…While the processors of coltan and other Congolese minerals in Asia, Europe and North America may not have been aware of what was happening in the DRC, the Panel’s investigations uncovered such serious concerns that it was decided to raise the international business community’s awareness…”

Cabot is the world’s largest refiner of coltan. The other US corporations identified in the UN report, Kemet and Vishay, both purchase processed tantalum from Cabot. Under Bodman’s leadership an unknown amount of the coltan Cabot Corporation was purchasing could have originated from the DRC. Cabot Corporation has stated publicly that “to the best of its knowledge none [of its coltan came] from environmentally sensitive areas in Africa, but it can’t be sure.”

As Energy Secretary, Bodman will be looking out for the energy behemoths he used to commiserate with while he was chairman and chief executive of Cabot, Vice President Dick Cheney being one of them. Many of those energy corporations have donated millions to fund President Bush’s inaugural parties. And Cheney wants Bodman to reward their pals by making a convincing case why the President’s controversial energy policy should sail through Congress, the environment be damned.

Jason Leopold is the author of the forthcoming book Off the Record: An Investigative Journalist’s Inside View of Dirty Politics, Corporate Scandal, and a Double Life Exposed (Rowman & Littlefield). He can be reached at [e-mail]. Visit his website at www.jasonleopold.com

© 2005 Jason Leopold

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Saboteurs fired a rocket that ignited a blaze on an oil pipeline complex near the Iraqi refining center of Baiji, north of Baghdad.
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Für alle, die sich für den Ablauf der Wahlen in der ukraine interessieren, hier der Link zu einem Überblick über den Ablauf. Ein sehr langer Artikel.
Der Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/international/europe/17ukr…
BACK CHANNELS: A CRACKDOWN AVERTED
How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation`s Path
By C. J. CHIVERS

Published: January 17, 2005

KIEV, Ukraine, Jan. 16 - As protests here against a rigged presidential election overwhelmed the capital last fall, an alarm sounded at Interior Ministry bases outside the city. It was just after 10 p.m. on Nov. 28.
More than 10,000 troops scrambled toward trucks. Most had helmets, shields and clubs. Three thousand carried guns. Many wore black masks. Within 45 minutes, according to their commander, Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov, they had distributed ammunition and tear gas and were rushing out the gates.

Kiev was tilting toward a terrible clash, a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war. And then, inside Ukraine`s clandestine security apparatus, strange events began to unfold.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/international/europe/17ukr…

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Nochmals das Thema US-Wahl.
Das hier ist ein gutes Beispiel, weshalb Wahlmaschinen ohne Papierstreifen nicht zugelassen werden sollten.
Es geht nicht um Wahlbetrug, sondern um einen Vorfall der bei jeder elektronischen Wahlmaschine vorkommen könnte.

January 18, 2005
MAKING VOTES COUNT
One Last Election Lesson

The November election may feel like ancient history, but it is still going on in North Carolina. The state has been unable to swear in an agriculture commissioner because a single malfunctioning electronic voting machine lost more ballots than the number of votes that separate the two candidates. The State Board of Elections, the candidates and the public are sharply divided on how to proceed. The mess North Carolina finds itself in is a cautionary tale about the perils of relying on electronic voting that does not produce a paper record.

When the returns came in for the agriculture commissioner race, two things were clear: the Republican, Steve Troxler, and the Democrat, Britt Cobb, were just 2,287 votes apart, and a voting machine in Carteret County had lost 4,438 votes. The machine had mistakenly been set to keep roughly 3,000 votes in its memory, which was not enough. And in a spectacularly poor design decision, it was programmed to let people keep "voting" even when their votes were not being saved.

There have been many suggestions for what to do next. The State Board of Elections initially wanted to have a revote limited to Carteret County, but a court struck that down. Then it scheduled a new statewide election, but that, too, was held to be improper. The elections board, which is bitterly divided along partisan lines, has been ordered by a judge to try again to find a way to resolve the election. But no one is predicting it will be easy. "There are conflicting and little-used statutes and constitutional provisions that may not be consistent with each other," says Don Wright, the general counsel of the elections board.

In the meantime, both sides are promoting methods that appear designed to ensure that their candidate wins. Republicans want to count 1,352 affidavits recently collected by Mr. Troxler from Carteret County voters saying that they voted for him on the faulty machine. They say that if the affidavits were counted, it would be mathematically impossible for Mr. Cobb to win. Democrats say this would violate the principle of a secret ballot and open up the possibility of voter coercion. Some of Mr. Cobb`s backers argue that the State Constitution requires that the race be decided by the state legislature, which just happens to be in Democratic hands.

North Carolina agriculture commissioner may not be the loftiest of offices. But if the same glitch had occurred in Washington, where Christine Gregoire was just elected governor by 129 votes, it would have destabilized the entire state government. If it had occurred in Florida in 2000, where President Bush`s margin was just 537 votes, it would have undermined an entire presidential election.

North Carolina`s plight underscores a basic point about elections: because there are often problems, there must be a mechanism for a recount. If the Carteret County voting machine had produced a voter-verified paper record each time a vote was cast, these paper records could have been be counted and the matter would be resolved. But electronic voting machines that do not produce paper records make recounts impossible.

The one positive thing to come out of the agriculture commissioner race fiasco is that it has prompted North Carolina to reconsider its use of paperless electronic voting. As the state ponders the issue, it should look to Ohio. Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio secretary of state who did so many things wrong as elections supervisor last year, recently did one very important thing right. He directed all of the state`s counties to adopt paper-based optical-scan voting systems. If Carteret County had voted on machines that produced a paper record, North Carolina would not have the constitutional crisis it has now - it would have an agriculture commissioner.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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January 18, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
That Magic Moment
By PAUL KRUGMAN

A charming man courts a woman, telling her that he`s a wealthy independent businessman. Just after the wedding, however, she learns that he has been cooking the books, several employees have accused him of sexual harassment and his company is about to file for bankruptcy. She accuses him of deception. "The accountability moment is behind us," he replies.

Last week President Bush declared that the election was the "accountability moment" for the war in Iraq - the voters saw it his way, and that`s that. But Mr. Bush didn`t level with the voters during the campaign and doesn`t deserve anyone`s future trust.

I won`t belabor the W.M.D. issue, except to point out that the Bush administration, without exactly lying, managed to keep most voters confused. According to a Pew poll, on the eve of the election the great majority of voters, of both parties, believed that the Bush administration had asserted that it found either W.M.D. or an active W.M.D. program in Iraq.

Mr. Bush also systematically misrepresented how the war was going. Remember last September when Ayad Allawi came to Washington? Mr. Allawi, acting as a de facto member of the Bush campaign - a former official close to the campaign suggested phrases and helped him rehearse his speech to Congress - declared that 14 or 15 of Iraq`s 18 provinces were "completely safe," and that the interim government had 100,000 trained troops. None of it was true.

Now that the election is over, we learn that the search for W.M.D. has been abandoned. Meanwhile, military officials have admitted that even as Mr. Bush kept asserting that we were making "good progress," the insurgency was growing in numbers and effectiveness, that the Army Reserve is "rapidly degenerating into a `broken` force," and oh, by the way, we`ll need to spend at least another $100 billion to pay for war expenses and replace damaged equipment. But the accountability moment, says Mr. Bush, is behind us.

Maybe we can`t hold Mr. Bush directly to account for misleading the public about Iraq. But Mr. Bush still has a domestic agenda, for which the lessons of Iraq are totally relevant.

White House officials themselves concede - or maybe boast - that their plan to sell Social Security privatization is modeled on their selling of the Iraq war. In fact, the parallels are remarkably exact.

Everyone has noticed the use, once again, of crisis-mongering. Three years ago, the supposed threat from Saddam somehow became more important than catching the people who actually attacked America on 9/11. Today, the mild, possibly nonexistent long-run financial problems of Social Security have somehow become more important than dealing with the huge deficit we already have, which has nothing to do with Social Security.

But there`s another parallel, which I haven`t seen pointed out: the politicization of the agencies and the intimidation of the analysts. Bush loyalists begin frothing at the mouth when anyone points out that the White House pressured intelligence analysts to overstate the threat from Iraq, while neocons in the Pentagon pressured the military to understate the costs and risks of war. But that is what happened, and it`s happening again.

Last week Andrew Biggs, the associate commissioner for retirement policy at the Social Security Administration, appeared with Mr. Bush at a campaign-style event to promote privatization. There was a time when it would have been considered inappropriate for a civil servant to play such a blatantly political role. But then there was a time when it would have been considered inappropriate to appoint a professional advocate like Mr. Biggs, the former assistant director of the Cato Institute`s Project on Social Security Privatization, to such a position in the first place.

Sure enough, The New York Times reports that under Mr. Biggs`s direction, employees of the Social Security Administration are being forced to disseminate dire warnings about the system`s finances - warnings that the employees say are exaggerated.

Still, there are two reasons why the selling of Social Security privatization shouldn`t be another slam dunk.

One is that we`re not talking about secret intelligence; the media, if they do their job, can check out the numbers and see that they don`t match what Mr. Bush is saying. (A good starting point is Roger Lowenstein`s superb survey in The Times Magazine last Sunday.)

The other is that we`ve been here before. Fool me once ...

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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A televisual fairyland

The US media is disciplined by corporate America into promoting the Republican cause
George Monbiot
Tuesday January 18, 2005

Guardian Unlimited
On Thursday, the fairy king of fairyland will be recrowned. He was elected on a platform suspended in midair by the power of imagination. He is the leader of a band of men who walk through ghostly realms unvisited by reality. And he remains the most powerful person on earth.

How did this happen? How did a fantasy president from a world of make believe come to govern a country whose power was built on hard-headed materialism? To find out, take a look at two squalid little stories which have been concluded over the past 10 days.

The first involves the broadcaster CBS. In September, its 60 Minutes programme ran an investigation into how George Bush avoided the Vietnam draft. It produced memos which appeared to show that his squadron commander in the Texas National Guard had been persuaded to "sugarcoat" his service record. The programme`s allegations were immediately and convincingly refuted: Republicans were able to point to evidence suggesting the memos had been faked. Last week, following an inquiry into the programme, the producer was sacked, and three CBS executives were forced to resign.

The incident couldn`t have been more helpful to Bush. Though there is no question that he managed to avoid serving in Vietnam, the collapse of CBS`s story suggested that all the allegations made about his war record were false, and the issue dropped out of the news. CBS was furiously denounced by the rightwing pundits, with the result that between then and the election, hardly any broadcaster dared to criticise George Bush. Mary Mapes, the producer whom CBS fired, was the network`s most effective investigative journalist: she was the person who helped bring the Abu Ghraib photos to public attention. If the memos were faked, the forger was either a moron or a very smart operator.

It`s true, of course, that CBS should have taken more care. But I think it is safe to assume that if the network had instead broadcast unsustainable allegations about John Kerry, none of its executives would now be looking for work. How many people have lost their jobs, at CBS or anywhere else, for repeating bogus stories released by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about Kerry`s record in Vietnam? How many were sacked for misreporting the Jessica Lynch affair? Or for claiming that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme in 2003? Or that he was buying uranium from Niger, or using mobile biological weapons labs, or had a hand in 9/11? How many people were sacked, during Clinton`s presidency, for broadcasting outright lies about the Whitewater affair? The answer, in all cases, is none.

You can say what you like in the US media, as long as it helps a Republican president. But slip up once while questioning him, and you will be torn to shreds. Even the most grovelling affirmations of loyalty won`t help. The presenter of 60 Minutes, Dan Rather, is the man who once told his audience" "George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions and, you know, as just one American, he wants me to line up, just tell me where." CBS is owned by the conglomerate Viacom, whose chairman told reporters: "We believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company." But for Fox News and the shockjocks syndicated by Clear Channel, Rather`s faltering attempt at investigative journalism is further evidence of "a liberal media conspiracy".

This is not the first time something like this has happened. In 1998, CNN made a programme which claimed that, during the Vietnam war, US special forces dropped sarin gas on defectors who had fled to Laos. In this case, there was plenty of evidence to support the story. But after four weeks of furious denunciations, the network`s owner, Ted Turner, publicly apologised in terms you would expect to hear during a show trial in North Korea: "I`ll take my shirt off and beat myself bloody on the back." CNN had erred, he said, by broadcasting the allegations when "we didn`t have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt". As the website wsws.org has pointed out, it`s hard to think of a single investigative story - Watergate, the My Lai massacre, Britain`s arms to Iraq scandal - which could have been proved at the time by journalists "beyond a reasonable doubt". But Turner did what was demanded of him, with the result that, in media fairyland, the atrocity is now deemed not to have happened.

The other squalid little story broke three days before the CBS people were sacked. A US newspaper discovered that Armstrong Williams, a television presenter who (among other jobs) had a weekly slot on a syndicated TV show called America`s Black Forum, had secretly signed a $240,000 contract with the US Department of Education. The contract required him "to regularly comment" on George Bush`s education bill "during the course of his broadcasts" and to ensure that "Secretary Paige [the education secretary] and other department officials shall have the option of appearing from time to time as studio guests".

It`s hard to see why the administration bothered to pay him. Williams has described as his "mentors" Lee Atwater - the man who, under Reagan`s presidency, brought a new viciousness to Republican campaigning - and the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond. His broadcasting career has been dedicated to promoting extreme Republican causes and attacking civil rights campaigns.

What makes this story interesting is that the show he worked on was founded, in 1977, by the radical black activists Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, to "allow black reporters to hold politicians and activists of all persuasions accountable to black people". They sold their shares in 1980, and the programme was later bought by the Uniworld Group. With Williams`s help, the new owners have reversed its politics, and turned it into a recruitment vehicle for the Republican party. Williams appears to have been taking money for doing what he was doing anyway.

These stories, in other words, are illustrations of the ways in which the US media is disciplined by corporate America. In the first case the other corporate broadcasters joined forces to punish a dissenter in their ranks. In the second case a corporation captured what was once a dissenting programme and turned it into another means of engineering conformity.

The role of the media corporations in the US is similar to that of repressive state regimes elsewhere: they decide what the public will and won`t be allowed to hear, and either punish or recruit the social deviants who insist on telling a different story. The journalists they employ do what almost all journalists working under repressive regimes do: they internalise the demands of the censor, and understand, before anyone has told them, what is permissible and what is not.

So, when they are faced with a choice between a fable which helps the Republicans, and a reality which hurts them, they choose the fable. As their fantasies accumulate, the story they tell about the world veers further and further from reality. Anyone who tries to bring the people back down to earth is denounced as a traitor and a fantasist. And anyone who seeks to become president must first learn to live in fairyland.

www.monbiot.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Tuesday, January 18, 2005

I`ve been having javascript problems at Blogger the past 24 hours, so I`m doing this manually. Sorry in advance for any formatting problems. It is very temporary.


Pace of Attacks picks up in Iraq, with Explosion Tuesday Morning in Baghdad, 24 Dead on Monday

A big car bomb exploded outside the headquarters in Baghdad of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq on Tuesday morning. The number of casualties is unclear as I write. SCIRI is a leading Shiite party and part of the United Iraqi Alliance list that is expected to do very well in the January 30 elections. SCIRI was based in Tehran from its formation in 1982, and hit the Baathists in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and all through the 1990s. The Baathists hate it as a party of quislings, and were probably behind the murder by car bomb of its leader, Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, on August 29, 2003, as well as the recent car bombing that targeted his brother and successor, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Two US troops assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died in action in Anbar Province on Monday.

Guerrillas targeted police officers in Baiji with a car bomb on Monday, killing 10 and wounding 28. In the eastern city of Baqubah, guerrillas fired rpg`s at an Iraqi military vehicle, killing 8 soldiers and wounding 4.

Reuters adds,

` "In other pre-election violence, clashes erupted in the southern town of Musayib after guerrillas fired on a polling station. One guard was killed and two wounded." `

This incident is further evidence that the guerrillas can strike deep in the south of the country, and are not limited to operations in the Sunni Arab heartland. They can be expected to strike there on Election Day.

Guerrillas in Mosul kidnapped Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, 66, of the Syrian Catholic Church an arm of the Roman Catholic church on Monday, prompting a protest from the Vatican.

A poll published in the al-Mada newspaper suggested that 2/3s of registered voters in Baghdad intended to vote on January 30. I would not make too much of this finding. Baghdad has a population of 5 million, with about 2 million Shiites and nearly a million Kurds, the populations most enthusiastic to vote. The poll is skewed toward likely voters, since it is reporting the attitudes of those who have already bothered to register. The poll would only be counter-intuitive if it told us that most Sunni Arabs in the capital planned to vote, something Reuters is not alleging. So I don`t think the poll tells us anything we didn`t already know. We expect big Shiite and Kurdish turnouts. It is the one-third of registered voters who do not plan to vote who worry me, since they are probably mostly Sunni Arabs, and are being joined by some rejectionist Shiites.

The All India Ulema [Clerical] Council has submitted a demand to the US government that they be allowed to send election observers to Iraq. They note the suspicion in which the US is held in the Muslim world, and the importance of Iraq in Islamic history for Muslims. Bush said Sunday that he hoped Muslims who wanted peace could be persuaded that the US did as well. Here is an opening. The Indian Muslim community is about 130 million strong.


Al-Hayat is reporting that a compromise has been reach over Kirkuk, whereby Kurds from that city who were deported by Saddam will be allowed to vote in local and provincial elections as residents of Kirkuk. The city is contested by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, and is an armed camp. The Kurds had earlier threatened to boycott the elections if Kirkuk residents were allowed to vote (the implication being that the 1/3 of the city that is Arab is actually interlopers given Kurdish property by Saddam).


The Accountability Moment and Hersh on Iran

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh threw Washington, Islamabad and Tehran into consternation Monday with his report in the New Yorker on the activities of Bush`s Pentagon with regard to Iran. He said that the Pentagon had alread sent some special ops teams into Iran to look for evidence of a nuclear weapons program, with Pakistani help. Bush used the Pentagon instead of the CIA, Hersh alleged, because Bush maintains that there are no reporting requirements with regard to Congress this way. Using the CIA would have required informing the Senate Intelligence Committee, by law. Probably Pentagon intelligence gathering falls under the same statute, but that is an untested theory and for the moment Rumsfeld is acting as though the Pentagon is unconstrained.

I don`t think there is any doubt that Bush and his appointees at the head of the Department of Defense intend to do something to Iran. If Iraq had gone well, they probably would already have attacked it. Since their land army is tied down in Iraq, they have to use special operations forces for aggressive action against Iran. The Pentagon and also Pakistan are denying the report heatedly. But it makes sense. Iran has formed a close military alliance with India, Pakistan`s chief rival in South Asia, and Iran has come out on top in the new Afghanistan, with Tajik and Hazarah allies displacing the largely Pushtun, Pakistan-oriented Taliban. And Pakistan has reason not to want Iran to get nukes, thus surrounding Pakistan with nuclear powers on both the east and the south. So Pakistan has every reason to cooperate with the US against Iran.

As for Bush and his DoD hawks, they have been quite clear about their intentions. They announced that Iraq and Iran were part of an axis of evil, and we have already seen what happens to regimes so categorized.

The potential for trouble for the United States if the Bush administration acts aggressively toward Iran is enormous. It could turn the Iraqi Shiites and the Afghan Hazarahs decisively against Washington. An Iran in chaos similar to that in Iraq would be three or four times the problem for the US and the world that Iraq is.

Ironically, Bush revealed the day before Hersh`s article that he has learned nothing from his mistakes in Iraq.

Bush`s comments in the Washington Post on Sunday that he did not need to fire anybody over his Iraq policy because the US electorate had endorsed that policy cause a political uproar.

` "We had an accountability moment, and that`s called the 2004 election," he was reported as saying. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates and chose me, for which I`m grateful." `

Bush doesn`t seem to know the difference between getting a mandate to lead and getting a mandate to continue failed policies. Those Americans who voted for Bush often did so, according to polls, despite worries that Iraq wasn`t going well. They didn`t put him back in to just keep on making the same stupid mistakes. They put him back in in hopes that he had been seasoned by the errors and was committed enough to the project to see it through properly.

That is why he should have fired the top three officials at the Department of Defense, to signal that he was going to make a course correction.

Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith don`t know how to fix the Iraq mess, and don`t even seem to pay much attention to the problems. In testimony before Congress last spring, Wolfowitz grossly underestimated the number of US troops that had been killed in the guerrilla war.

Rumsfeld either was involved in the decision to put the US into the torture business, or didn`t keep watch on subordinates who did make that decision. Either way, he goes down in history as the Marquis de Sade of Abu Ghraib. He didn`t know that it would only have taken a phone call to increase the number of armored vehicles sent to our troops in Iraq. And, when he was asked about the difficulties of holding elections in Iraq, he said it would be all right if the polls couldn`t be held in some areas of the country. He did not know that his subordinate, Paul Bremer, had set the elections up as national and proportional, so that if one region with a major ethnic group did not vote, it would end up not being represented in parliament. (Rumsfeld seems to have though it was like the US, where if you have a light turnout in a district, you still get a congressman, he or she just doesn`t represent much of the electorate). He should be fired.

Feith is so much of a security risk because of his long ties to the Likud Party in Israel that for a while the Pentagon brass was refusing to share classified documents with his office. One of his subordinates is under investigation by the FBI for turning confidential Pentagon policy documents over to an official in the Israeli embassy via the pro-Israeli lobbying group, AIPAC. Feith had signed on to a 1996 policy paper for Likud party politician Benyamin Netanyahu that called for a war against Iraq for Israeli security purposes and openly opposed the Oslo peace process, which could have resolved the festering Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Feith`s Office of Special Plans, its personnel drawn in part from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, cherry-picked intelligence on Saddam`s Iraq to make an exaggerated and unfounded case for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction programs and an operational link to al-Qaeda.

Bush should have been elected, as a war president, with a big margin. He wasn`t. He barely got back in. The American public is just not going to put up with this World War IV nonsense that the Neocons keep putting out. If Bush doesn`t find a way to resolve the Iraq mess, and if he is so foolhardy as to pursue direct confrontation with Syria and Iran that proves just as disastrous, he may well turn the US public decisively against the Republican Party for decades, as the party of adventure, war and ruin.

Benjamin Franklin said in the 1758 edn. of Poor Richard`s that "Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that." What he didn`t envisage was a pupil at the helm of state who would scarcely even learn in the hard school (or perhaps not even that). When your helmsman won`t correct course, you as passenger are in big trouble. That is where the US now stands.

When the constitutional convention was over in 1787, “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” In that case he knew exactly where the threat would come from. Overly ambitious politicians.