Guten Morgen Mr. Bush - 500 Beiträge pro Seite (Seite 56)

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The mythology of people power
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1449869,00.ht…
The glamour of street protests should not blind us to the reality of US-backed coups in the former USSR
John Laughland
Friday April 1, 2005


Guardian
Before his denunciation yesterday of the "prevailing influence" of the US in the "anti-constitutional coup" which overthrew him last week, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan had used an interesting phrase to attack those who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power.

Originally used as a label for covert operatives shoring up apartheid in South Africa, before being adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy" movement in Iran in November 2001, the third force is also the title of a book published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which details how western-backed non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can promote regime and policy change all over the world. The formulaic repetition of a third "people power" revolution in the former Soviet Union in just over one year - after the similar events in Georgia in November 2003 and in Ukraine last Christmas - means that the post-Soviet space now resembles Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, when a series of US-backed coups consolidated that country`s control over the western hemisphere.

Many of the same US government operatives in Latin America have plied their trade in eastern Europe under George Bush, most notably Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, who boasted in these pages in 2001 that he was doing in Belarus exactly what he had been doing in Nicaragua: "supporting democracy".

But for some reason, many on the left seem not to have noticed this continuity. Perhaps this is because these events are being energetically presented as radical and leftwing even by commentators and political activists on the right, for whom revolutionary violence is now cool.

As protesters ransacked the presidential palace in Bishkek last week (unimpeded by the police who were under strict instructions not to use violence), a Times correspondent enthused about how the scenes reminded him of Bolshevik propaganda films about the 1917 revolution. The Daily Telegraph extolled "power to the people", while the Financial Times welcomed Kyrgyzstan`s "long march" to freedom.

This myth of the masses spontaneously rising up against an authoritarian regime now exerts such a grip over the collective imagination that it persists despite being obviously false: try to imagine the American police allowing demonstrators to ransack the White House, and you will immediately understand that these "dictatorships" in the former USSR are in reality among the most fragile, indulgent and weak regimes in the world.

The US ambassador in Bishkek, Stephen Young, has spent recent months strenuously denying government claims that the US was interfering in Kyrgyzstan`s internal affairs. But with anti-Akayev demonstrators telling western journalists that they want Kyrgyzstan to become "the 51st state", this official line is wearing a little thin.

Even Young admits that Kyrgyzstan is the largest recipient of US aid in central Asia: the US has spent $746m there since 1992, in a country with fewer than 5 million inhabitants, and $31m was pumped in in 2004 alone under the terms of the Freedom Support Act. As a result, the place is crawling with what the ambassador rightly calls "American-sponsored NGOs".

The case of Freedom House is particularly arresting. Chaired by the former CIA director James Woolsey, Freedom House was a major sponsor of the orange revolution in Ukraine. It set up a printing press in Bishkek in November 2003, which prints 60 opposition journals. Although it is described as an "independent" press, the body that officially owns it is chaired by the bellicose Republican senator John McCain, while the former national security adviser Anthony Lake sits on the board. The US also supports opposition radio and TV.

Many of the recipients of this aid are open about their political aims: the head of the US-funded Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, Edil Baisalov, told the New York Times that the overthrow of Akayev would have been "absolutely impossible" without American help. In Kyrgyzstan as in Ukraine, a key element in regime change was played by the elements in the local secret services, whose loyalty is easily bought.

Perhaps the most intriguing question is why? Bill Clinton`s assistant secretary of state called Akayev "a Jeffersonian democrat" in 1994, and the Kyrgyz ex-president won kudos for welcoming US-backed NGOs and the American military. But the ditching of old friends has become something of a habit: both Edward Shevardnadze of Georgia and Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine were portrayed as great reformers for most of their time in office.

To be sure, the US has well-known strategic interests in central Asia, especially in Kyrgyzstan. Freedom House`s friendliness to the Islamist fundamentalist movement Hizb ut-Tahrir will certainly unsettle a Beijing concerned about Muslim unrest in its western provinces. But perhaps the clearest message sent by Akayev`s overthrow is this: in the new world order the sudden replacement of party cadres hangs as a permanent threat - or incentive - over even the most compliant apparatchik.

· John Laughland is a trustee of www.oscewatch.org and an associate of www.sandersresearch.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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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/
Saturday, April 02, 2005

Sistani Fatwa on Security

Al-Hayat: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani gave a fatwa Friday saying that cooperation with the forces charged with safeguarding security in Iraq is "obligatory" on all Iraqis, "as long as the principles of Islamic law are observed."

Sistani was replying to a letter sent him, which asked if it was required to cooperate with security forces aiming at keeping the country safe, at a time when it was threatened by former regime elements and those who came from abroad to throw the country into turmoil. The new fatwa does not change anything, since Sistani was known to have this position. But it does reinforce the legitimacy of the new Iraqi military and police forces, being trained by the US.

At the same time, 64 Sunni clerics gave a fatwa that for Iraqis to join the military and police is permitted. Indeed, they called for Iraqis to join these forces, saying that they are national in character and not a militia pertaining to a particular sect. The signatories included prominent members of the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Islamic Party, including Shaikh Abd al-Ghafur al-Samarra`i, the prayer leader at the Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, Shaikh Ahmad Hasan al-Taha, leader of the Abu Hanifa mosque and a member of AMS, and Shaikh Ziyad Mahmud al-Ani, rector of the Islamic College in Baghdad and a member if the IIP.

Unlike Sistani`s this ruling does potentially change things. The Sunni clerics seem to have figured out that boycotting the new government is just a form of self-marginalization, and if Sunnis aren`t in the army and police, then those forces will be largely Shiite and Kurdish.

US and coalition military casualties were down substantially in March. While this is wonderful news, it is not clear why exactly this change occurred, and therefore it is difficult to assess. The US has not be doing much in the way of large-scale assaults, a la Fallujah or Najaf, since the Iraqi election. The new elected government has made it clear that it does not want any more Fallujah type operations. When US troops aren`t out fighting, they are less vulnerable. The US military is a hard target, whereas the guerrillas consider Iraqi police and army units to be soft targets. There are still 60 attacks a day in Iraq, many of them quite bloody, so the guerrilla war has hardly wound down.

Al-Hayat adds that the bid by Sunni parliamentarian Mishaan al-Juburi to become speaker of the house was criticized by Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (a Shiite group). Al-Qubanji said that al-Juburi had been a close friend of Uday and Qusay, the sons of Saddam Hussein. The religious Shiites seem convinced that all Sunnis in the parliament with the exception of the 3 in the United Iraqi Alliance are ex-Baathists, and they want to make them ineligible to be speaker. That would throw the office to Fawaz al-Jarba, a Shamar notable who ran on the UIA ticket.

In contrast, ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the young Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr is calling for demonstrations on April 9, the day Saddam fell from power in 2003. He says the rallies should protest the delay in trying Saddam and should demand that US troops leave the country immediately.

The Bush administration has been holding a US citizen, who was naturalized and lived here 20 years, prisoner as an "enemy combatant" without legal counsel for several months in Iraq. The prisoner is said to have provided logistical aid to the network of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. If true, this imprisonment without legal counsel directly contravenes a US Supreme Court ruling that the Bush administration cannot hold some US citizens outside the law and the judiciary.

The minaret of one of the oldest surviving mosques in the world, an architectural treasure, was damaged by heavy weaponry. The US military blamed "terrorists."

I have loved that building for decades, and am sick to my stomach about it being damaged. It influenced Islamic architecture in Cairo and Andalusia.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that many women trying to run beauty parlors in Iraq are harassed by religious militias.

In what is potentially very bad news for US contractors in Iraq, the US Justice Department argued that they can be sued in US courts for fraud.

posted by Juan @ [url4/2/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/sistani-fatwa-on-security-al-hayat.html[/url]

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[urlU.S. Soldier Convicted of Killing Iraqi Walks Free]http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=5QIMQ05EFZDDMCRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=8063769§ion=news[/url]

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The US forces, like the Crusaders before them, are prisoners in their own fortresses
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=625…

Sitting in Saddam Hussein`s palace they can stare over the parapets but that is as much as most will ever see of Iraq
By Robert Fisk

The Independent

02 April 2005

I drove Pat and Alice Carey up the coast of Lebanon this week to look at some castles. Pat is a builder from County Wicklow, brave enough to take a holiday with his wife in Beirut when all others are thinking of running away. But I wanted to know what he thought of 12th-century construction work.

How did he rate a Crusader keep? The most beautiful of Lebanon`s castles is the smallest, a dinky-toy palisade on an outcrop of rock near the village of Batroun. You have to climb a set of well-polished steps - no hand-rails, for this is Lebanon - up the sheer side of Mseilha castle and then clamber over doorsills into the dark, damp interior.

So we padded around the battlements for half an hour. "Strongly made or they wouldn`t be still here," Pat remarked. "But you wouldn`t find any company ready to put up the insurance. And in winter, it must have been very, very cold."

And after some minutes, he looked at me with some intensity. "It`s like being in a prison," he said.

And he was right. The only view of the outside world was through the archers` loopholes in the walls. Inside was darkness. The bright world outside was cut off by the castle defences. I could just see the splashing river to the south of the castle and, on the distant horizon, a mountainside. That was all the defenders - Crusaders or Mamlukes - would have seen. It was the only contact they had with the land they were occupying.

Up at Tripoli is Lebanon`s biggest keep, the massive Castle of St Gilles that still towers ominously over the port city with its delicate minarets and mass of concrete hovels. Two shell holes - remnants of Lebanon`s 1975-1990 civil war - have been smashed into the walls, but the interior of the castle is a world of its own; a world, that is, of stables and eating halls and dungeons. It was empty - the tourists have almost all fled Lebanon - and we felt the oppressive isolation of this terrible place.

Pat knew his Crusader castles. "When you besieged them, the only way to get inside was by pushing timber under the foundations and setting fire to the wood. When they turned to ash, the walls came tumbling down. The defenders didn`t throw boiling oil from the ramparts. They threw sand on to the attackers. The sand would get inside their armour and start to burn them until they were in too much pain to fight. But it`s the same thing here in Tripoli as in the little castle. You can hardly see the city through the arrow slits. It`s another - bigger - prison."

And so I sat on the cold stone floor and stared through a loophole and, sure enough, I could see only a single minaret and a few square metres of roadway. I was in darkness. Just as the Crusaders who built this fortress must have been in darkness.

Indeed, Raymond de Saint-Gilles spent years besieging the city, looking down in anger from his great fortress, built on the "Pilgrim`s Mountain", at the stout burghers of Tripoli who were constantly re-supplied by boat from Egypt. Raymond himself died in the castle, facing the city he dreamed of capturing but could not live to enter.

And of course, far to the east, in the ancient land of Mesopotamia, there stand today equally stout if less aesthetic barricades around another great occupying army. The castles of the Americans are made of pre-stressed concrete and steel but they serve the same purpose and doom those who built them to live in prisons.

From the "Green Zone" in the centre of Baghdad, the US authorities and their Iraqi satellites can see little of the city and country they claim to govern. Sleeping around the gloomy republican palace of Saddam Hussein, they can stare over the parapets or peek through the machine-gun embrasures on the perimeter wall - but that is as much as most will ever see of Iraq.

The Tigris river is almost as invisible as that stream sloshing past the castle of Mseilha. The British embassy inside the "Green Zone" flies its diplomats into Baghdad airport, airlifts them by helicopter into the fortress - and there they sit until recalled to London.

Indeed, the Crusaders in Lebanon - men with thunderous names like Tancred and Bohemond and Baldwin - used a system of control remarkably similar to the US Marines and the 82nd Airborne. They positioned their castles at a day`s ride - or a day`s sailing down the coast in the case of Lebanon - from each other, venturing forth only to travel between their keeps.

And then out of the east, from Syria and also from the Caliphate of Baghdad and from Persia came the "hashashin", the "Assassins" - the Crusaders brought the word back to Europe - who turned the Shia faith into an extremist doctrine, regarding assassination of their enemies as a religious duty.

Anyone who doubts the relevance of these "foreign fighters" to present-day Iraq should read the history of ancient Tripoli by that redoubtable Lebanese-Armenian historian Nina Jidejian, which covers the period of the Assassins and was published at the height of the Lebanese civil war.

"It was believed that the terrorists partook of hashish to induce ecstatic visions of paradise before setting out to perform their sacred duty and to face martyrdom..." she writes. "The arrival of the Crusaders had added to ... latent discontent and created a favourable terrain for their activities." Ouch.

One of the Assassins` first victims was the Count of Montferrat, leader of the Third Crusade who had besieged Acre in 1191 - "Saint Jean d`Acre" to the Christians - and who met his death at the hands of men sent by the Persian "terrorist" leader, Hassan-i Sabbah. The Assassins treated Saladin`s Muslim army with equal scorn - they made two attempts to murder him - and within 100 years had set up their own castles around Tripoli. They established a "mother fortress" from which - and here I quote a 13th-century Arab geographer - "the Assassins chosen are sent out thence to all countries and lands to slay kings and great men".

And so it is not so hard, in the dank hallways of the Castle of St Gilles to see the folly of America`s occupation of Iraq. Cut off from the people they rule, squeezed into their fortresses, under constant attack from "foreign fighters", the Crusaders` dreams were destroyed.

Sitting behind that loophole in the castle at Tripoli, I could even see new meaning in Osama bin Laden`s constant reference to the Americans as "the Crusader armies". The Crusades, too, were founded on a neo-conservative theology. The knights were going to protect the Christians of the Holy Land; they were going to "liberate" Jerusalem - "Mission Accomplished" - and ended up taking the spoils of the Levant, creating petty kingdoms which they claimed to control, living fearfully behind their stone defences. Their Arab opponents of the time did indeed possess a weapon of mass destruction for the Crusaders. It was called Islam.

"You can see why the Crusaders couldn`t last here," Pat said as we walked out of the huge gateway of the Castle of Saint Gilles. "I wonder if they even knew who they were fighting."

I just resisted asking him if he`d come along on my next trip to Baghdad, so I could hear part two of the builder`s wisdom.


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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US vigilantes begin border stake-out

Immigrants` rights activists fear that volunteers arriving in Tombstone, Arizona, for month-long patrol could provoke mayhem
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Saturday April 2, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1450762,00.html

Guardian
Hundreds of anti-immigrant activists were gathering in Tombstone, Arizona, yesterday to begin a month-long unofficial patrol of the border with Mexico. To greet them, hundreds of immigrants` rights activists planned to travel to the desert of Arizona from across the southern US.

And caught in the middle, are the thousands of undocumented immigrants who try to cross the border from Mexico each day, and the hundreds of US government border patrol agents who try to stop them.

"It`s a dangerous place down there," says TJ Bonner, the president of the 10,000 member Border Patrol Council, which represents the agency`s officers. "It`s the wild west reincarnated."

The Minuteman Project, which is organising the volunteer patrols, is being run from the offices of the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper. Many of the volunteers are expected to be armed. They will wear improvised uniforms and be equipped with everything from shortwave radios to nightsights to a small fleet of light aircraft.

Their strategy is to split into groups of six, spread out across a 23-mile stretch of the border between the two countries, and wait.

They should not have to wait long: in January alone, the Tucson sector, which includes the portion south of Tombstone, saw 35,704 undocumented immigrants detained by the border patrol. In 2004 491,000 were apprehended in the sector. The reckoner generally used is that for every would-be immigrant apprehended, three enter the country.

Should the Minuteman volunteers see someone who appears to be an undocumented immigrant, they have been told to report the sighting to the authorities and stand aside while they do their work. "You will offer your assistance and become force-multipliers to assist their monumental task of turning back the tidal wave of people entering our country illegally," reads the project`s website.

"If challenged, you will physically remove yourself from the situation ... The idea is for your firearm to remain holstered ... Why risk going to jail and ruining the mission by engaging a group of illegals? The time for that is not yet upon us. Remember, this is activism, yet it is symbolic at best. We know millions of illegals are here, thousands continue to come and nothing short of military intervention will cease the flow."

Some critics are concerned that despite the advice to remain within the law, elements attracted by the rhetoric could easily create mayhem. The Aryan Nation group has described the project as a "white pride event" and left leaflets in letterboxes in Douglas, a predominantly Latino town on the US side of the border.

The Los Angeles-based Latino gang MS-13 has reportedly instructed its members to travel to Tombstone to teach the Minutemen a lesson. The former silver-mining town, the setting for the gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881, is a fitting location.

But the potential for violence seems to have diminished in recent days as the Minuteman Project has sought to describe itself as a political protest, aiming to highlight the inadequacies of federal immigration policies.

"We certainly do appreciate any support from any group of citizens, and we share their frustration at the federal government`s inaction," Mr Bonner says.

"But we do have concerns about what they are proposing to do. It`s a political protest about the government not meeting its responsibilities: could they do it in a safer environment? Absolutely."

Robin Hoover, the president of Humane Borders, a group that leaves water for immigrants trekking across the Arizona desert, says the potential for violence lies elsewhere.

"I can just imagine some guys on day four or five, and they`re having their tailgate parties and drinking some beer, and along come some drug mules.

"These people are armed, and don`t take kindly to having their business interrupted.

"I can certainly understand people wanting to bring attention to the border, because it`s broken. But only the federal government can fix it. The circumstances of this are just a chemistry for confusion and possibly death."

Others are concerned that the Minutemen will turn into what their critics already call them: vigilantes. Chris Simcox, an organiser of the group and the editor of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, was convicted on a federal weapons charge last year, and some point to the illegal detention of immigrants by US citizens in the area.

But while allegations of abuse of immigrants abound, there have been no prosecutions. The immigrants, say law enforcement officials, refuse to press charges.

Whether the Minuteman Project lives up to the hype remains to be seen. A month is a long time to sit in the desert. But it might succeed in highlighting the country`s dysfunctional immigration policies and bringing pressure to bear on the Bush administration.

Both George Bush and his Mexican counterpart Vicente Fox have criticised the Minuteman Project, with Mr Bush denouncing the participants as vigilantes, and Mr Fox saying international law would be used to prevent such groups from making progress.

But the politicians have succeeded in bringing all sides in the debate together to condemn their proposed solutions.

Mr Bush`s guestworker programme, says Mr Hoover, was drawn up by the US chamber of commerce. Mr Bonner says that "until the government gets serious and enacts tough legislation on employers of illegal immigrants" the problem will remain.

Both sides agree that, should a combination of gangs, vigilantes and federal agents achieve the unlikely feat of closing down the Tucson sector border, it will have one effect: those who they are trying to stop will simply move to another point on the frontier.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Cochran hat OJ Simson verteidigt

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The Pentagon`s Secret Stash
Why we`ll never see the second round of Abu Ghraib photos
Matt Welch
http://www.reason.com/0504/co.mw.the.shtml

The images, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out." NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they eventually were made public.

But they never were. After the first batch of Abu Ghraib images shocked the world on April 28, 2004, becoming instantly iconic—a hooded prisoner standing atop a box with electrodes attatched to his hands, Pfc. Lynndie England dragging a naked prisoner by a leash, England and Spc. Charles Graner giving a grinning thumbs-up behind a stack of human meat—no substantial second round ever came, either from Abu Ghraib or any of the other locations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay where abuses have been alleged. ABC News broadcast two new photos from the notorious Iraq prison on May 19, The Washington Post printed a half-dozen on May 20 and three more on June 10, and that was it.

"It refutes the glib claim that everything leaks sooner or later," says the Federation of American Scientists` Steven Aftergood, who makes his living finding and publishing little-known government information and fighting against state secrecy. "While there may be classified information in the papers almost every day, there`s a lot more classified information that never makes it into the public domain."

It`s not for lack of trying, at least from outside the government. Aftergood, for example, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Defense Department on May 12, asking generally for "photographic and video images of abuses committed against Iraqi prisoners" and specifically for the material contained on three compact discs mentioned by Rumsfeld in his testimony. The Defense Department told him to ask the U.S. Central Command, which sent him back to Defense, which said on second thought try the Army`s Freedom of Information Department, which forwarded him to the Army`s Crime Records Center, which hasn`t yet responded. "It`s not as if this is somehow an obscure matter that no one`s quite ever heard of," Aftergood notes.

Officials have given two legal reasons for suppressing images of prisoner abuse: "unwarranted invasion of privacy" and the potential impact on law enforcement. The Freedom of Information Act`s exemptions 6 and 7 (as these justifications are known, respectively) have been used repeatedly to rebuff the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which since October 2003 has unearthed more than 600 torture-related government documents but zero images.

The privacy objection is easily answered: Why not just obscure any identifying features? The law enforcement question, which has a firmer legal footing, is whether distribution of the images could "deprive a person of a fair trial or an impartial adjudication." Yet even there, the globally publicized photographs of Charles Graner, for instance, were ruled by a military judge to be insufficient grounds to declare his trial unfair. And Graner, sentenced to 10 years for his crimes, is the only one of the eight charged Abu Ghraib soldiers to contest his case in court.

"We`ve seen virtually no criminal investigations or criminal prosecutions," says ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer, who plans to challenge the nondisclosure in court. "The vast majority of those photographs and videotapes don`t relate to ongoing criminal investigations; on the contrary they depict things that the government approved of at the time and maybe approves of now."

Legalities are one thing, but the real motivation for choking off access is obvious: Torture photos undermine support for the Iraq war. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, "If these are released to the public, obviously it`s going to make matters worse."

The Abu Ghraib photos did more to kneecap right-wing support for the Iraq war, and put a dent in George Bush`s approval ratings, than any other single event in 2004. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote two glum pieces about "the failure to understand the consequences of American power"; The Washington Post`s George Will called for Rumsfeld`s head; blogger Andrew Sullivan turned decisively against the president he once championed; and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned: "We risk losing public support for this conflict. As Americans turned away from the Vietnam War, they may turn away from this one."

News analyses about the war coalition`s crackup competed for front-page space with the Abu Ghraib reports for nearly two weeks, until a videotape emerged showing American civilian Nick Berg getting his head sawed off in Iraq. Suddenly, editorialists were urging us to "keep perspective" about "who we`re fighting against."

By that time, the executive and legislative branches had learned their lesson: Don`t release images. The day after the Berg video, members of Congress were allowed to see a slide show of 1,800 Abu Ghraib photographs. The overwhelming response, besides revulsion, was, in the words of Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), that the pictures "should not be made public." "I feel," Warner said, "that it could possibly endanger the men and women of the armed forces as they are serving and at great risk."

Just before former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, author of two memos relating to interrogation methods and the Geneva Conventions, faced confirmation hearings to become attorney general, there were press whispers that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin (D-Mich.), might choose the occasion to force more disclosure of torture photos. It didn`t happen. "He and Senator Warner," says Levin spokeswoman Tara Andringa, "are on the same page."

As is, no doubt, a good percentage of the U.S. population. Public opinion of journalism has long since plummeted below confidence levels in government. Prisoner abuse wasn`t remotely an issue in the 2004 presidential campaign, let alone an electoral millstone for the governing party. The mid-January discovery of photographs showing British soldiers abusing Iraqis barely caused a ripple in the States. Neither did the Associated Press` December publication of several new photos of Navy SEALs vamping next to injured and possibly tortured prisoners (prompting the New York Post to demand an apology from...the Associated Press).

As The Wall Street Journal`s James Taranto put it, with great cynicism and possibly great accuracy, "if the Democrats really think that belaboring complaints about harsh treatment of the enemy is the way to `score points with the public,` they`re more out of touch than we thought."

Looking ahead to the next four years, there is little doubt that the administration, its supporters, and Congress will use whatever legal means are available to prevent Abu Ghraib—the public relations problem, not the prisoner abuse—from happening again. The Defense Department has commissioned numerous studies about America`s problem with "public diplomacy" since the September 11 massacre; all those compiled since last May hold up the iconic torture images as the perfect example of what not to let happen again.

"The Pentagon realizes that it`s images that sell the story," Aftergood says. "The reason that there is a torture scandal is because of those photographs. There can be narratives of things that are much worse, but if they aren`t accompanied by photos, they somehow don`t register....The Abu Ghraib photos are sort of the military equivalent of the Rodney King case....And I hate to attribute motives to people I don`t know, but it is easy to imagine that the officials who are withholding these images have that fact in mind."


Associate Editor Matt Welch is a columnist for Canada`s National Post.

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http://www.icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx

Das erste Monat in dem eine Liste der irakischen Opfer erstellt wurde.

Month: March-05
This is not a complete list, simply a compilation based on our news archive.
Date Incident Civilian Police/Mil Total
03/31/05 Three Iraqi national guards and two civilians were killed in an attack on a military checkpoint near Suleiman Beik, 60 miles south of the city of Kirkuk, a captain in the force said. 2 Civilian 3 Police/Mil 5 Total
03/31/05 In another attack, a suicide car bomber detonated his car beside an Iraqi army patrol in Samarra, killing two soldiers, officials sai 0 2 2
03/31/05 A car bomb blew up Thursday morning targeting a Shiite procession in Toz east of Tikrit, killing three Iraqis and wounding 19 others, said a US military statement. 3 0 3
03/31/05 In Samarra, north of Baghdad, seven people were killed when a car bomb exploded in the path of a US-Iraqi patrol, police said, adding that four were civilians. 4 0 4
03/30/05 Police said the explosives laden vehicle, driven by a lone suicide bomber, blew up in Al-Zaitoun district, killing one person and wounding six others, adding that the attack apparently targetted a patrol of the American Army. 1 0 1
03/30/05 In Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, a school guard died in a car bombing and a school teacher was wounded, an interior ministry official said. 1 0 1
03/30/05 In Balad, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad, a rebel was killed and an Iraqi soldier was wounded during an hour-long shoot-out, while in nearby Dujail, unknown gunmen kidnapped a truck driver and killed his passenger, security officials said. 1 0 1
03/30/05 Close to Baiji, 200 kilometres north of the capital, two brothers who worked for the Iraqi army were found dead by soldiers, said an army captain. 0 2 2
03/30/05 A car bomb exploded today in western Baghdad, killing one person and injuring at least six others, and attackers opened fire on Shiite pilgrims heading to a major religious festival that draws some 1.5 million people. 1 0 1
03/30/05 Near Mahaweel, about 35 miles south of Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on Shiite pilgrims, killing one and injuring two, police Capt. Muthana al-Furati said. 1 0 1
03/30/05 A bomb blast killed two Iraqis including one policeman and wounding four others in the governorate of Al-Diwaniah in the south of Iraq on Wednesday, police said. 1 1 2
03/30/05 Insurgents have opened fire on a U.S. military patrol in Mosul and six people have been killed in a subsequent exchange of gunfire, including a woman and child, Iraqi police say. 5 0 5
03/30/05 A booby-trapped car exploded Wednesday in Mosul killing four civilians and wounding three others, a Kurdish source said. 4 0 4
03/29/05 unknown gunmen killed Wa`adullah Abdulqader, a university professor, in the Eastern suburbs of Mosul, a security source said. 1 0 1
03/28/05 The largest casualties occurred in the town of Massib south of Baghdad when a booby-trapped car exploded, killing seven people and wounding seven others. 7 0 7
03/28/05 In apparently related violence, a bicycle strapped with explosives blew up near a police car on the main road from Baghdad to Kerbala, killing two policemen and wounding several other police and civilians, local police said. 0 2 2
03/28/05 In Baghdad, masked gunmen opened fire on the car of Police Brig. Abdel Karim Fahed, killing him and his driver. 1 1 2
03/28/05 Two other police officers were killed and 12 others wounded in two roadside bomb explosions in the western part of Baghdad. 0 2 2
03/28/05 in Najaf, south of Kerbala, police major Nour Karim Nour was shot dead by US troops after approaching a checkpoint on the wrong side of the road, Najaf`s police chief said. The US military had no immediate information. 0 1 1
03/27/05 Attacks persisted Sunday, with gunmen killing a local official from SCIRI, a Shiite group, and two of his relatives. Police discovered their bodies Sunday in an abandoned car north of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. 2 1 3
03/27/05 Meanwhile, in Baghdad, witnesses say security for Iraq`s science and technology minister opened fire on a crowd of protesters who had gathered to demand their full wages. One person was killed. 1 0 1
03/27/05 [update]Four protestors died and many others were injured when gunmen opened fire randomly against a peaceful demonstration organized by installations protection policemen and Technology ministry employees here on Sunday. 3 0 3
03/27/05 Further north, four police were killed and six were wounded when rebels assaulted their police station in Tal Afar early Sunday with mortars and small arms fire, said Salah Mohammed, a doctor at the Tal Afar hospital. 0 4 4
03/27/05 Another soldier was killed and two more were wounded in violence in Balad, about 70 kilometres (55 miles) north of Baghdad, said Assad Sudad, a police captain there. 0 1 1
03/27/05 one soldier was killed and another was injured in an attack in Dhuluiyah, 70 kilometres (55 miles) north of Baghdad, said police captain Omar Jumaha. 0 1 1
03/27/05 Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and three more were wounded in separate attacks in and around Baquba. 0 3 3
03/26/05 Two Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad Saturday when U.S. forces detonated a booby-trapped car despite taking necessary precautions 2 0 2
03/26/05 Two Iraqi security force members and a civilian were killed around Baghdad Saturday, an interior ministry official said. 1 2 3
03/26/05 Al Qaeda`s wing in Iraq said it shot dead a senior Interior Ministry official kidnapped last month, and posted a video of the apparent killing on the Internet on Sunday. 0 1 1
03/26/05 Assailants in Iraq have opened fire on a cafe popular with ethnic Kurds in Kirkuk. At least one person was killed and three injured. 1 0 1
03/25/05 Eleven Iraqi police commandos were killed and 14 other people wounded in a suicide car bombing in Ramadi late Thursday, a US military spokesman said. 0 11 11
03/25/05 In an attack on Friday in Iskandariya, in a lawless area just south of Baghdad, a bomber blew up his car beside an Iraqi army convoy, killing three soldiers and wounding six, soldiers at the scene said. 0 3 3
03/25/05 In further violence north of the capital, a mortar attack on an Iraqi army barracks in Suleiman Beg killed one soldier and wounded a man who had come to visit one of his soldier sons, an army spokesman said. 0 1 1
03/25/05 FIVE Iraqi cleaning ladies who worked on a US base south-east of Baghdad died when their car came under gunfire, an Iraqi official said today. 5 0 5
03/25/05 General Salman Mohamed was driving his car with two sons and another relative when a car with gunmen on board opened fire on them in Baghdad Jadida at 3:30 pm (1230 GMT)," the official said on condition of anonymity. 1 1 2
03/25/05 Two other Iraqi officers and their driver were killed in South of Kirkuk in Norther Iraq. 1 2 3
03/25/05 At least two Iraqis were killed and 19 wounded, many of them pilgrims marching to the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle Friday by a police station, south of Baghdad, provincial police said. 2 0 2
03/24/05 Iraqi police mistook a group of Iraqi soldiers who were dressed in civilian clothing carrying guns for insurgents Thursday and opened fire, sparking a 10-minute gunbattle that killed three soldiers and two police in the northern town of Rabia. 0 5 5
03/24/05 Multiple attacks killed three insurgents and wounded one and killed one ING and wounded three. Also three ING were kidnapped. An Iraqi truck driver was killed. And police said they found the body of a 44-year-old contractor working with US forces. 0 1 1
03/24/05 In Shurgat, west of Kirkuk, one Iraqi soldier was killed and two more were wounded when three mortar rounds fell on their base, said Captain Ahmed Salam of the army. 0 1 1
03/24/05 Further south in Bir Ahmed, east of Saddam Hussein`s northern hometown of Tikrit, police said they found the body of Othman Ara, a 44-year-old contractor working with US forces. 1 0 1
03/24/05 In Balad, 70 kilometres (40 miles) north of Baghdad, an Iraqi truck driver was killed by gunmen as he was changing a flat tire, said Lieutenant Colonel Adel Abdullah of the town`s police. 1 0 1
03/24/05 Meanwhile, Iraqi forces located two beheaded bodies believed to be of Iraqi soldiers on the main road between Baghdad and Abu Ghreib today. 0 2 2
03/23/05 Five bodies, including that of a female university student, were found south of Baghdad Wednesday while a mortar killed an Iraqi girl and wounded another at a primary school west of the capital, police and medical sources said. 5 0 5
03/23/05 The mortar fell on the al-Junainah school in the Amariyah district, killing an 11-year-old girl and also wounding a 13-year-old female student, a hospital worker at Yarmuk hospital said. 1 0 1
03/23/05 An Iraqi police officer was killed and two others wounded on Tuesday night at a US military checkpoint northeast of Baghdad, the Iraqi police said. 0 1 1
03/23/05 And in the ongoing targeting of religious figures, a Sunni imam, Aziz Mohammed, was gunned down on Wednesday in Jurf al-Sakhr, south of Baghdad, said a spokesman for the Sunni Waqf, or religious administration. 1 0 1
03/22/05 Militants targeted a U.S. patrol with a roadside bomb Tuesday that killed four nearby civilians in the northern city of Mosul 4 0 4
03/22/05 at least seven Iraqi commandos died when they raided an insurgent base near Samarra with the backing of US troops, the US military said. 0 7 7
03/22/05 The relentless bloodshed continued, with nine Iraqis, including three soldiers, killed in attacks mainly in Sunni areas in the north, security sources said Tuesday. 6 3 9
03/21/05 Street battles broke out Monday between US troops and militants in the center of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, witnesses said. Also, a roadside bomb hit an American SUV, near Fallujah on Sunday night, killing all occupants and destroying the vehicle. 1 0 1
03/21/05 Insurgent attacks across Iraq on Monday left seven civilians and three Iraqi soldiers dead. 7 3 10
03/20/05 In the main southern city of Basra, a civilian was killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a police patrol, police said. 1 0 1
03/20/05 A policeman was killed and three others wounded in a similar attack in Samarra, while the bodies of an Iraqi army officer and his cousin were found in the same area, according to police. 1 2 3
03/20/05 gunmen attacked a police station in Baquba killing at least four police and wounding two as a truck bomb rammed into the entrance of an Iraqi army barrack wounding 17 people, a police official said. 0 4 4
03/20/05 Separately, two unidentified bodies shot in the chest and head were found in the city, which has become a new front for the insurgency since November. 2 0 2
03/20/05 Attackers struck again hours later opening fire on the procession bearing Kachmoula`s coffin as it made its way to the cemetery, killing two people and wounding 14, hospital sources said. 2 0 2
03/20/05 In the main northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber with a fake badge slipped into a building housing the provincial anti-corruption department and blew himself up inside the office of its chief, General Walid Kachmoula, killing him and two of his guards 0 3 3
03/20/05 The Iraqi police found Saturday dead body of a policeman in Misaiab area south of the capital, a source of the police said. 0 1 1
03/20/05 In Iraq, fighters targeted Iraqi security forces and government buildings with gunfire, suicide bomb attacks and mortar rounds Sunday, leaving at least five people dead, including a senior anti-corruption official. 0 5 5
03/20/05 Witnesses told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the bomb exploded when a police patrol passed by it to also damage a number of civilian vehicles around the blast site. 1 0 1
03/19/05 Attackers gunned down a police officer heading to work Saturday in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, then bombed a funeral procession carrying his corpse, killing three other policemen and injuring two, officials said. 0 4 4
03/18/05 Three Iraqi civilians were killed Friday when a US military truck ran over a civilian vehicle on the main road between Tikrit and Kirkuk north of Baghdad, police said. 3 0 3
03/18/05 A group of Iraqis look over the crater left after a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi Police patrol in Baghdad, Iraq Friday, March 18, 2005. One police officer and six civilians were wounded.(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) 0 1 1
03/18/05 Two senior Iraqi police officers were assassinated Thursday in a string of political slayings targeting symbols of new Iraq security apparatuses. 0 2 2
03/18/05 The corpses of an Iraqi soldier and a businessman working with the Americans were discovered Friday. A soldier was kidnapped in Tuz and south of Baghdad, a truck driver was shot dead Thursday by highway robbers. 1 1 2
03/18/05 At least seven Iraqis died yesterday, including three policemen blown up as they buried a murdered colleague. The policemen were killed and seven others wounded when a bomb exploded in the tense northern oil centre of Kirkuk 4 3 7
03/17/05 A suicide car bomb Thursday killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded 15 others, including six US soldiers, in the volatile northern city of Mosul, the US military said. 2 0 2
03/17/05 Imam Abdel Rahim Samarrai was standing outside his Thulal Nukatain mosque in Baghdad`s Jadida district when he was killed by gunfire from a car. 1 0 1
03/16/05 A car bomb exploded Wednesday near an Iraqi army post in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, killing five Iraqi soldiers and wounding 12 people, police said. 0 5 5
03/16/05 Anonymous militants assassinated a major in the Iraqi police force in the northern town of Mosul, Iraqi police sources told reporters Wednesday. 0 1 1
03/15/05 The deputy commander of the Iraqi army in western Al-Anbar province was shot dead by US troops at a checkpoint Tuesday night, a police officer said. 0 1 1
03/15/05 A suicide car bomb exploded in northeastern Baghdad, killing a child and wounding at least four people, including a police officer, police Col. Muhanad Sadoun said. 1 0 1
03/14/05 An Iraqi cameraman, Husam Hilal Sarsam who was working for a Kurdish-language television station was gunned down in Mosul on Monday, hospital sources in the restive northern city said. 1 0 1
03/14/05 Two Iraqi civilians have died after being wounded in crossfire involving a U.S. helicopter in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the U.S. military said. 2 0 2
03/14/05 Elsewhere, unknown attackers killed an Iraqi army captain while he was driving his car in the Abu Gharib district, west of Baghdad, said 1st Lt. Akram al-Zobaei. 0 1 1
03/14/05 Four Iraqis were killed in an armed clash that erupted on Monday in the Iraqi town of Al-Qaem in Al-Anbar in the west of the country, witnesses said. They said the four were killed in a firefight that pitted American troops against a group of gunmen. 4 0 4
03/14/05 Two farmers were in a pickup truck carrying lettuce when a car bomb exploded in their path, killing them and wounding two passersby, according to a policeman at the scene who did not wish to be identified. 2 0 2
03/14/05 Two Iraqis were killed and a third injured in an automobile accident on Saturday, when a fuel tanker traveling fast in an American convoy crashed at 8:30 p.m. along a highway in Baghdad. Six civilian cars were involved in the accident. 2 0 2
03/14/05 A suicide bomber has blown up his car at an Iraqi police and army checkpoint in a town south of Baghdad, killing two policemen and two civilians, local police say. 2 2 4
03/12/05 Unidentified gunmen killed two Iraqis in Tikrit province, north of the capital Baghdad, Iraqi police sources said Saturday. 2 0 2
03/12/05 Three Iraqi policemen were gunned down in Mosul and a foreign truck driver killed near Baiji on Saturday as three Afghans allegedly on their way to fight in the northern city were arrested in Baghdad. 0 3 3
03/12/05 Two Iraqis, including one policeman and the head engineer at the Baghdad airport, were killed in two attacks in Baghdad, an interior ministry source said Sunday. 1 2 3
03/12/05 Eleven Iraqis were killed in rebel attacks in the past two days, Iraqi security sources said Sunday, as 12 corpses that had been rotting on a farm for a month were found by soldiers south of Baghdad. 11 0 11
03/12/05 An Iraqi policeman was killed and three injured in a mortar attack at a checkpoint South of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Iraqi police said. 0 1 1
03/10/05 At least five policemen, including two high ranking officers, were killed in a series of shootings in Baghdad today. 0 5 5
03/10/05 Insurgents set up a fake police checkpoint and stopped Colonel Ahmed Abeis`s car as he was on the way to work. After asking his name, they shot him along with two other policemen in his car. One of the insurgents filmed the killing. 0 3 3
03/10/05 A suicide bomber blew himself up Thursday inside a Shiite mosque in the northern city of Mosul and killed at least 30 people, witnesses and hospital officials said. 30 0 30
03/10/05 Forty-six people were killed in Thursday`s suicide attack on a Shi`ite funeral in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Iraqi health officials said. (16 added from previous account) 16 0 16
03/10/05 North of the capital, gunmen shot down the son of a tribal chief Sheikh Suhail Ahmed as he left a US base in Balad. A contractor was killed near Tuz as he drove to Tikrit and roadside bombs killed an Iraqi soldier and a civilian near Duluiyah and Baiji. 2 1 3
03/10/05 In northern Mosul, two police officers were killed and two others were injured in clashes with insurgents. In northern Kirkuk, a woman identified as Nawal Mohammed, who worked with US forces, was killed in a drive-by shooting. 0 2 2
03/10/05 In the northern city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed an accountant working for KurdSat, Brig. Saraht Qadir said. The television station belongs to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Kurdish parties. 1 0 1
03/09/05 An explosion in the Iraqi capital Baghdad has shaken buildings and covered the area in a pall of smoke. At least one person died and 10 others were wounded in the blast. Volleys of automatic gunfire were heard before and after the explosion. 1 0 1
03/09/05 In Falluja, west of Baghdad, today a suicide car bomber attacked a National Guard center. Two guards and a civilian were killed and 15 people wounded, some of them guards and others civilians, according to national guard and hospital officials. 1 2 3
03/09/05 Gunmen have attacked the convoy of Iraqi Planning Minister Mehdi al-Hafidh in Baghdad, killing one of his bodyguards, police say. 1 0 1
03/09/05 a booby-trapped corpse exploded south of Baghdad, killing four Iraqi police officers. 0 4 4
03/09/05 A suicide bomber detonated a garbage truck packed with explosives outside the Agriculture Ministry and a hotel used by Western contractors Wednesday, killing himself and at least three others, officials said. 3 0 3
03/09/05 Iraqi officials said Wednesday that 35 bodies some bullet-riddled, others beheaded have been found at two separate sites and they believe some of the corpses are Iraqi soldiers kidnapped and executed by insurgents. (20 added from previous report) 20 0 20
03/09/05 A corrections team headed by the former director of the Geiger Corrections Center in Spokane survived a suicide bombing early today at Baghdad’s Al-Sadir Hotel in which two Iraqi police officers were killed and 40 people were injured. 0 2 2
03/08/05 Gunmen have killed three Iraqi women in the Shia district of Sadr City in Baghdad, police say. Police said they believed the women had been accused by a religious movement of being prostitutes, and were not killed for political reasons. 3 0 3
03/08/05 THE Iraqi army said today it found 15 beheaded corpses, both men and women, on an old military base near Latifiyah south of Baghdad. 15 0 15
03/08/05 A senior Iraqi official was gunned down in Baghdad on Tuesday after a day of attacks waged by insurgents against the country’s security services that left at least 27 people dead. 1 0 1
03/08/05 Clashes erupted between US troops and insurgents today in the troubled city of Ramadi, leaving at least two people dead, officials said. gunmen also attacked a convoy of trucks carrying food for the Trade Ministry in Salman Pak, southeast of the capital. 2 0 2
03/07/05 Insurgents killed five Iraqi soldiers in clashes near the town of Baquba on Monday and detonated a suicide car bomb that killed two policemen on their way to reinforce the troops, police and hospital sources said 0 7 7
03/07/05 Guerrillas launched a series of attacks in Iraq on Monday that left 31 people dead and dozens wounded as the country took its first major step toward forming a government whose most crucial task will be dealing with the insurgency. 0 31 31
03/06/05 From Iraq Body Count: prominent Sunni Arab politician shot while leaving her home` in Mosul 1 0 1
03/05/05 West of Baghdad in Abu Ghraib, gunmen in two vehicles killed an Iraqi army officer, said Capt. Akram al-Zubaie. 0 1 1
03/04/05 Hospital doctors in Hadithah, 350 kilometres west of the capital, said that three Iraqi civilians were killed and six wounded during an exchange of gunfire between insurgents and US troops. 3 0 3
03/04/05 From Iraq Body Count: Shiite imam [killed] as he arrived at the Kadmenain Mosque` in Doura, Baghdad 1 0 1
03/04/05 Six police officers were killed and 15 wounded in new car bomb attacks on Iraq`s security services, as political factions wrangled over putting together a government. 0 6 6
03/04/05 A police chief was gunned down near his home in south-central Iraq Friday, said the Polish military, which is deployed in the region, while one person was killed and three wounded in a car bomb in Baquba. 0 1 1
03/04/05 A roadside bomb apparently intended for a passing US military convoy killed a pedestrian on Friday in the Iraqi city of Samarra, according to police. 1 0 1
03/04/05 Elsewhere in the city, the bound bodies of two Iraqis who had been shot were discovered by police. 2 0 2
03/04/05 Seven Iraqi soldiers have been killed in various attacks, security sources said, as a daytime curfew was imposed in the restive town of Samarra, north of Baghdad 0 7 7
03/04/05 From Iraq Body Count: director of Islamic Relief Committee Killed 1 0 1
03/03/05 Two car bombs exploded near Iraq`s Interior Ministry in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least five policemen and wounding several others in relentless violence overshadowing efforts to form a new government. 0 5 5
03/03/05 From Iraq Body Count: `Iraqis working for a construction equipment company that supplies American contractors` 2 0 2
03/03/05 From Iraq Body Count: clashes between US troops and insurgents` - woman and child among the dead 2 0 2
03/02/05 Gunmen killed a judge and lawyer working for the tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein and members of his former regime, a day after the secret court referred five of the ousted dictator`s aides to trial for alleged crimes against humanity.. 2 0 2
03/02/05 The (IFTU) announces the loss of the martyred trade unionist and member of the Transport and Communication Workers Union, brother Ahmed Adris Abbas who was assassinated on Thursday 24th February 2005 in Martyrs’ Square in central Baghdad. 1 0 1
03/02/05 Two explosions in western Baghdad killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and injured many others on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. 0 13 13
03/01/05 "The two bodies were identified as bodyguards of a high-ranking official in the Iraqi Defense Ministry," Colonel Hassan Ahmad from the provincial headquarters of Salahudin police told Xinhua. 2 0 2
03/01/05 A judge working on the special tribunal established to try Saddam Hussein and other senior officials in his toppled regime was assassinated Tuesday in Baghdad... 1 0 1
Total 240 Civilian 200 Police/Mil 440 Total
Copyright 2003-2005 by iCasualties

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Latest Fatality: Apr 01, 2005
Koalitionstruppen Mar.05: 40

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
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Tomgram: Nick Turse, If You Build It, They Will Kill
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2298

There`s that classic line of career advice to the confused young hero of the 1967 film The Graduate: "I want to say one word to you. Just one word… plastics." With the perspective of a few extra decades under our belts (or beltways), that word probably should have been "arms." After all, what a couple of weeks it`s been for Washington`s war industries: The Pentagon announced the resumption of military aid to Guatemala after fifteen years (can weapons be far behind?) as well as, after another fifteen year hiatus, the prospective sale of a first batch of F-16s -- the latest version of the plane and a lovely big-ticket item evidently capable of carrying nuclear weapons India-wards -- to the Pakistanis in appreciation for their help in the borderlands (thanks, thanks, for the memories…). It also released a major document, the National Defense Strategy, pledging us to war, war, war till hell freezes over and, both in the document and elsewhere, signaling a new push for the militarization of space, guaranteed to enable "us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation." (If you launch it, can the biggest ticket weapons be far behind?)

The week`s cautionary note: Donald Rumsfeld`s urge to create the highest tech military in anyone`s history may have a few bugs, according to the superb Tim Weiner in a front-page piece for the New York Times (An Army Program to Build a High-Tech Force Hits Costly Snags). The vast program, called Future Combat Systems and overseen by Boeing (which is being paid $21 billion for the honor), is supposed to be "a seamless web of 18 different sets of networked weapons and military robots," including tanks so stripped down in terms of armoring that they can be flown instantly onto the battlefield. The program, initially only meant to arm 15 brigades or about 3,000 soldiers is, Army officials told Weiner, "a technological challenge as complicated as putting an astronaut on the moon." And as Paul L. Francis, the acquisition and sourcing management director for the Government Accountability Office commented, it is "a network of 53 crucial technologies… and 52 are unproven."

Think our Star Wars missile-defense system that, endless billions of dollars later, in test after test against mock-enemy missiles turns out to be incapable of hitting the broad side of a barn. Already the crucial Joint Tactical Radio Systems, known as JTRS (or "jitters"), which is slated to link the robots and humans of Future Combat Systems into one battlefield Megatron-like beast, doesn`t work and production on the first set of radios has been halted.

Speaking of "jitters," Congressional supporters of just about any Pentagon weapons system that comes down the pike, are getting edgy indeed when it comes to Future Combat Systems, which, at an estimated $145 billion or more, threatens to burst the congressional piggybank -- something of a Bush administration specialty in so many different areas. (Best line in the Weiner piece: "They said this month that they did not know if they could build a tank light enough to fly." I thought the line was, "… if pigs could fly," but I stand corrected.)

And, the money thing aside, here`s the rub -– one of them anyway: Sometimes the only effective defense against the highest tech levels of warfare turns out to be the lowest levels of the same. Remember the salutary tale of the wonderfully named Marine General Paul Van Riper (okay, it`s not Ripper, but close), who commanded the enemy "red army" in the military`s Millennium Challenge 02 war games in 2002? These maneuvers involved a war in a fictitiously named Persian Gulf country that resembled Iraq." The games were carefully scripted to prove the efficacy of a Rumsfeld-style high-tech army. Unfortunately, Gen. Van Riper stepped outside the script and using such simple devices -- the sort now undoubtedly being employed by the Iraqi insurgency -- as "motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to Red troops, thereby eluding Blue`s super-sophisticated eavesdropping technology," he trumped the techies. "At one point in the game, when Blue`s fleet entered the Persian Gulf, he sank some of the ships with suicide-bombers in speed boats. (At that point, the managers stopped the game, ‘refloated` the Blue fleet, and resumed play.)" He was reprimanded and finally quit in protest. But someone -- with the last couple of years in Iraq in mind -- should have paid the man some mind.

Perhaps that`s why our Secretary of Defense, responsible for sending those F-16s to Pakistan, has been in a panic over the fact that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez`s government recently bought 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles. Little Venezuela`s purchase of 1940`s-era-design rifles has Rummy in a tizzy; and, for all the high-tech goodies at his command, not without reason. The insurgency in Iraq has demonstrated that a relatively small force of lightly armed insurgents in an area roughly the size of California can bog down, stretch to the limit, and effectively counterbalance for two years the might of the U.S. military, despite its trillions of dollars worth of satellites, armor, artillery, air power, futuristic weapons, and old-fashioned bullets.

Two years on, as faithful readers of Juan Cole`s indispensable Informed Comment blog can attest, Iraq`s anti-occupation movement shows few signs of slowing. Right now, it`s keeping up a steady pace of 50 to 60 attacks a day, despite frequent cheery pronouncements on our evening news and in the press about "tipping points" (known back in Vietnam days as "progress" or "the crossover point," or the infamous "light at the end of the tunnel").

Take, as USA Today`s Steven Komarow reports, the military`s Abrams tank: "[D]esigned during the Cold War to withstand the fiercest blows from the best Soviet tanks, [it] is getting knocked out at surprising rates by the low-tech bombs and rocket-propelled grenades of Iraqi insurgents. In the all-out battles of the 1991 Gulf War, only 18 Abrams tanks were lost and no soldiers in them killed. But since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with tanks in daily combat against the unexpectedly fierce insurgency, the Army says 80 of the 69-ton behemoths have been damaged so badly they had to be shipped back to the United States."

Nick Turse reminds us below that, however bad the times may be for American tanks or troops, it`s springtime for ever-conglomerating American munitions makers. For them, and not just for the makers of the most futuristic weaponry either, the future beckons like a soaring Pentagon budget, like a strobe light at the end of an ever-darkening tunnel. After all, as Guy Dinsmore of the Financial Times reported just the other day (US draws up list of unstable countries):

"The US intelligence community is drawing up a secret watch-list of 25 countries where instability might precipitate US intervention, according to officials in charge of a new [State Department] office set up to co-ordinate planning for nation-building and conflict prevention… Conceived out of the acknowledged failure of postwar reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the new State Department office amounts to recognition by the Bush administration that it needs to get better at nation- building - a concept it once scorned as social work disguised as foreign policy."

And keep in mind that that`s just what`s happening in the once-scorned State Department on a budget of virtual pennies. Don`t even think about the interventionary planning going on in a place where you can imagine producing weaponry systems based on 52 unproven technologies.
Tom

If You Build It, They Will Kill
U.S. Military Weaponry of the Near Future
By Nick Turse

Lets face it, making war is fast superceding sports as the American national pastime. Since 1980, overtly or covertly, the United States has been involved in military actions in Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sudan, the Philippines, Colombia, Haiti (again), Afghanistan (again) and Iraq (again) and that`s not even the full list. It stands to reason when the voracious appetites of the military-corporate complex are in constant need of feeding.

As representatives of a superpower devoted to (and enamored with) war, it`s hardly surprising that the Pentagon and allied corporations are forever planning more effective ways to kill, maim, and inflict pain -- or that they plan to keep it that way. Whatever the wars of the present, elaborate weapons systems for future wars are already on the drawing boards. Planning for the projected fighter-bombers and laser weapons of the decades from 2030 to 2050 is underway. Meanwhile, at the Department of Defense`s (DoD`s) blue-skies research outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), even wilder projects -- from futuristic exoskeletons to Brain/Machine Interface initiatives -- are being explored.

Such projects, as flashy as they are frightening, are magnets for reporters (and writers like yours truly), but it`s important not to lose sight of the many more mundane weapons currently being produced that will be pressed into service in the nearer term in Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other locale the U.S. decides to add to the list of nations where it will turn people into casualties or "collateral damage" in the next few years. These projects aren`t as sexy as building future robotic warriors, but they`re at least as dangerous and deadly, so lets take a quick look at a few of the weapons our tax dollars are supporting today, before they hurt, maim, and kill tomorrow.

Set Phasers on Extreme Pain

Recently, the Air Force Research Laboratory called for "research in support of the Directed Energy Bioeffects Division of the Human Effectiveness Directorate." The researchers were to "conduct innovative research on the effects of directed energy technologies" on people and animals. What types of innovative research? One area involved identifying "biological tissue thresholds (minimum visible lesion) and damage mechanisms from laser and non-laser sources." In other words, how excruciating can you make it without leaving telltale thermal burns? And a prime area of study? "Pain thresholds." Further, there was a call for work to: "Determine the effects of electromagnetic and biomechanical insults on the human-body." Sounds like something out of Star Trek, right? Weaponry of the distant future? Think again.

In a TomDispatch piece last spring, I mentioned a "painful energy beam" weapon, the Active Denial System, that was about to be field-tested by the military. Recent reports indicate that military Humvees will be outfitted with exactly this weapon by the end of the year.

I`m sad to report that the Active Denial System isn`t the only futuristic weapon set to be deployed in the near-term. Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs) are also barreling down the weaponry-testing turnpike. They are part of a whole new generation of weapons systems that the Pentagon promotes under the label "non-lethal." The term conveniently obscures the fact that such weapons are meant to cause intense physical agony without any of the normal physical signs of trauma. (This, by the way, should make them -- or their miniaturized descendents -- excellent devices for clandestine torture).

PEPs utilize bursts of electrically charged gas (plasma) that yield an electromagnetic pulse on impact with a solid object. Such pulses affect nerve cells in humans (and animals) causing searing pain. PEPs are designed to inflict "excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometers away" No one knows the long-term physical or psychological effects of this weapon, which is set to roll-out in 2007 and is designed specifically to be employed against unruly civilians. But let`s remember, the Pentagon isn`t the Food and Drug Administration. No need to test for future effects when it comes to weapons aimed at someone else.

20th Century Weaponry for 21st Century Killing

Just recently the Department of Defense`s Defense Contracting Command-Washington put out a call for various technologies capable of "near-immediate transition to operations/production at the completion of evaluation." In other words, make it snappy.

In addition to a plethora of high-tech devices, from laser-sights for weapons to battlefield computers, the US Special Operations Forces had a special request: 40mm rifle-launched flechette grenades. For the uninitiated, flechettes are razor-sharp deadly darts with fins at their blunt ends. During the Vietnam War, flechette weaponry was praised for its ability to shred people alive and virtually nail them to trees. The question is, where will those Special Ops forces use the grenades and which people will be torn to bits by a new generation of American flechettes. Only time will tell, but one thing is certain -- it will happen.

The Special Ops troops aren`t the only ones with special requests. The Army has also put out a call to arms. While Army officials recently hailed the M240B 7.62mm Medium Machine Gun as providing "significantly improved reliability and more lethal medium support fire to ground units," they just issued a contract to FN Manufacturing Inc. produce a lighter-weight, hybrid titanium/steel variant of the weapon (known as the M240E6). And these are just a few of the new and improved weapons systems being readied to be rushed onto near-future American battlefields.

Shell Shock

Obviously, the military is purchasing guns and other weapons for a reason: to injure, maim, and kill. But the extent of the killing being planned for can only be grasped if one examines the amounts of ammunition being purchased. Let`s look at recent DoD contracts awarded to just one firm -- Alliant Lake City Small Caliber Ammunition Company, L.L.C., a subsidiary of weapons-industry giant Alliant Techsystems (ATK):

Awarded Nov. 24, 2004: "a delivery order amount of $231,663,020 as part of a $303,040,883 firm-fixed-price contract for various Cal .22, Cal .30, 5.56mm, and 7.62mm small caliber ammunition cartridges." Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2006.

Awarded February 7, 2005: "a delivery order amount of $20,689,101 as part of a $363,844,808 firm-fixed-price contract for various 5.56mm and 7.62mm Small Caliber Ammunition Cartridges." Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2006.

Awarded March 4, 2005: "a delivery order amount of $8,236,906 as part of a $372,586,618 firm-fixed-price contract for 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and .50 caliber ammunition cartridges." Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2006.

You and I can buy 400 rounds of 7.62mm rifle ammunition for less than $40. Imagine, then, what federal purchasing power and hundreds of millions of dollars can buy!

Alliant Ammunition and Powder Co. is also making certain that, as the years go by, ammo-capacity won`t be lacking. In February 2005, Alliant was awarded "a delivery order amount of $19,400,000 as part of a $69,733,068 firm-fixed-price contract for Services to Modernize Equipment at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant" -- a government-owned facility operated by ATK. Alliant notes that this year it is churning out 1.2 billion rounds of small-caliber ammunition at its Lake City plant alone. But that, it seems, isn`t enough when future war planning is taken into account. As it happens, ATK and the Army are aiming to increase the plant`s "annual capacity to support the anticipated Department of Defense demand of between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion rounds by 2006." Think about it. In this year, alone, one single ATK plant will produce enough ammunition, at one bullet each, to execute every man, woman, and child in the world`s most populous nation -- and next year they`re upping the ante.

The Military-Corporate Complex`s Merchants of Death

Once upon a time, a company like ATK would have been classified as one of the world`s "Merchants of Death." Then again, once upon a time -- we`re talking about the 1930s here-- the Senate was a place where America`s representatives were willing to launch probing inquiries into the ways in which arms manufacturers and their huge profits as well as their influences on international conflicts were linked to the dead of various lands. Back then, simple partisanship was set aside as the Senate`s Democratic majority appointed North Dakota`s Republican Senator Gerald P. Nye to head the "Senate Munitions Committee."

While today`s fawning House members can barely get aging baseball heroes to talk to them, the 1930s inquiry hauled some of the most powerful men in the world like J.P. Morgan, Jr. and Pierre du Pont before the committee. Even back in the 1930s, however, the nascent military-industrial complex was just too powerful and so the Senate Munitions Committee was eventually thwarted in its investigations. As a result, the committee`s goal of nationalizing the American arms industry went down in flames.

Today, the very idea of such a committee even attempting such an investigation is simply beyond the pale. The planning for futuristic war of various horrific sorts, not to speak of the production and purchase of weapons and ammunition by the military-corporate complex, is now beyond reproach, accepted without question as necessary for national (now homeland) security -- a concept which long ago trumped the notion of national defense.

The Future Is Now

While the military-academic complex and DARPA scientists are hard at work creating the sort of killing machines that a generation back were the stuff of unbelievable sci-fi novels, old-fashioned firearms and even new energy weapons are being readied for use by the American imperial army tomorrow or just a few short years in the future. In February 2005, Day & Zimmerman Inc., a mega-company with its corporate fingers dipped in everything from nuclear security and munitions production to cryogenics and travel services, inked a deal to deliver 445,288 M67 fragmentation hand grenades (which produce casualties within an effective range of 15 meters) to the Army in 2006. In which country will a civilian will lose an eye, a leg, or a life as a result? Weapons made to kill are made to be used. This year ATK`s Lake City Army Ammunition Plant will produce 1.2 billion rounds of ammunition at the DoD`s behest and the company proudly proclaims, "Approximately 75% of the ammunition produced annually is consumed."

With all those exotic pain rays, flechettes, super-efficient machine guns, and rounds and rounds of ammunition readied for action -- and they represent only a small part of the spectrum of weaponry and munitions being produced for war, American-style -- more people are sure to die, while others assumedly will experience "intense pain" from PEPs weapons and the like. Back in October of last year, a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, knocking on thousands of doors throughout Iraq, demonstrated that an estimated 100,000 civilians had already died violently as the direct or indirect consequence of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The main cause of these deaths: attacks by coalition (read as "U.S.") forces. The future promises more of the same.

No one should be surprised by these figures -- though many were (and many also continue to deny the validity of these numbers). It`s obvious that, if you build them; they will kill. And you thought that we were supposed to "err on the side of life"?

Nick Turse is a doctoral candidate at the Center for the History & Ethics of Public Health in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He writes for the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice and regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-corporate complex and the homeland security state.

Copyright 2005 Nick Turse


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March 29, 2005
Outsourcing War
By P. W. SINGER
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/

From the March/April 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs.

P. W. Singer is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Children at War.

UNDERSTANDING THE PRIVATE MILITARY INDUSTRY

The tales of war, profit, honor, and greed that emerge from the private military industry often read like something out of a Hollywood screenplay. They range from action-packed stories of guns-for-hire fighting off swarms of insurgents in Iraq to the sad account of a private military air crew languishing in captivity in Colombia, abandoned by their corporate bosses in the United States. A recent African "rent-a-coup" scandal involved the son of a former British prime minister, and accusations of war profiteering have reached into the halls of the White House itself.

Incredible as these stories often sound, the private military industry is no fiction. Private companies are becoming significant players in conflicts around the world, supplying not merely the goods but also the services of war. Although recent well-publicized incidents from Abu Ghraib to Zimbabwe have shone unaccustomed light onto this new force in warfare, private military firms (PMFs) remain a poorly understood--and often unacknowledged--phenomenon. Mystery, myth, and conspiracy theory surround them, leaving policymakers and the public in positions of dangerous ignorance. Many key questions remain unanswered, including, What is this industry and where did it come from? What is its role in the United States` largest current overseas venture, Iraq? What are the broader implications of that role? And how should policymakers respond? Only by developing a better understanding of this burgeoning industry can governments hope to get a proper hold on this newly powerful force in foreign policy. If they fail, the consequences for policy and democracy could be deeply destructive.

PRIVATE SECTOR AND PUBLIC INTEREST

PMFs are businesses that provide governments with professional services intricately linked to warfare; they represent, in other words, the corporate evolution of the age-old profession of mercenaries. Unlike the individual dogs of war of the past, however, PMFs are corporate bodies that offer a wide range of services, from tactical combat operations and strategic planning to logistical support and technical assistance.

The modern private military industry emerged at the start of the 1990s, driven by three dynamics: the end of the Cold War, transformations in the nature of warfare that blurred the lines between soldiers and civilians, and a general trend toward privatization and outsourcing of government functions around the world. These three forces fed into each other. When the face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union ended, professional armies around the world were downsized. At the same time, increasing global instability created a demand for more troops. Warfare in the developing world also became messier--more chaotic and less professional--involving forces ranging from warlords to child soldiers, while Western powers became more reluctant to intervene. Meanwhile, advanced militaries grew increasingly reliant on off-the-shelf commercial technology, often maintained and operated by private firms. And finally, many governments succumbed to an ideological trend toward the privatization of many of their functions; a whole raft of former state responsibilities--including education, policing, and the operation of prisons--were turned over to the marketplace.

The PMFs that arose as a result are not all alike, nor do they all offer the exact same services. The industry is divided into three basic sectors: military provider firms (also known as "private security firms"), which offer tactical military assistance, including actual combat services, to clients; military consulting firms, which employ retired officers to provide strategic advice and military training; and military support firms, which provide logistics, intelligence, and maintenance services to armed forces, allowing the latter`s soldiers to concentrate on combat and reducing their government`s need to recruit more troops or call up more reserves.

Although the world`s most dominant military has become increasingly reliant on PMFs (the Pentagon has entered into more than 3,000 such contracts over the last decade), the industry and its clientele are not just American. Private military companies have operated in more than 50 nations, on every continent but Antarctica. For example, European militaries, which lack the means to transport and support their forces overseas, are now greatly dependent on PMFs for such functions. To get to Afghanistan, European troops relied on a Ukrainian firm that, under a contract worth more than $100 million, ferried them there in former Soviet jets. And the British military, following in the Pentagon`s footsteps, has begun to contract out its logistics to Halliburton.

Nowhere has the role of PMFs been more integral--and more controversial--than in Iraq. Not only is Iraq now the site of the single largest U.S. military commitment in more than a decade; it is also the marketplace for the largest deployment of PMFs and personnel ever. More than 60 firms currently employ more than 20,000 private personnel there to carry out military functions (these figures do not include the thousands more that provide nonmilitary reconstruction and oil services)--roughly the same number as are provided by all of the United States` coalition partners combined. President George W. Bush`s "coalition of the willing" might thus be more aptly described as the "coalition of the billing."

These large numbers have incurred large risks. Private military contractors have suffered an estimated 175 deaths and 900 wounded so far in Iraq (precise numbers are unavailable because the Pentagon does not track nonmilitary casualties)--more than any single U.S. Army division and more than the rest of the coalition combined.

More important than the raw numbers is the wide scope of critical jobs that contractors are now carrying out, far more extensive in Iraq than in past wars. In addition to war-gaming and field training U.S. troops before the invasion, private military personnel handled logistics and support during the war`s buildup. The massive U.S. complex at Camp Doha in Kuwait, which served as the launch pad for the invasion, was not only built by a PMF but also operated and guarded by one. During the invasion, contractors maintained and loaded many of the most sophisticated U.S. weapons systems, such as B-2 stealth bombers and Apache helicopters. They even helped operate combat systems such as the Army`s Patriot missile batteries and the Navy`s Aegis missile-defense system.

PMFs--ranging from well-established companies such as Vinnell and mpri to startups such as the South African firm Erinys International--have played an even greater role in the postinvasion occupation and counterinsurgency effort. Halliburton`s Kellogg, Brown & Root division, the largest corporate PMF in Iraq, currently provides supplies for troops and maintenance for equipment under a contract thought to be worth as much as $13 billion. (This figure, in current dollars, is roughly two and a half times what the United States paid to fight the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War, and roughly the same as what it spent to fight the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish-American War combined.) Other PMFs are helping to train local forces, including the new Iraqi army and national police, and are playing a range of tactical military roles.

An estimated 6,000 non-Iraqi private contractors currently carry out armed tactical functions in the country. These individuals are sometimes described as "security guards," but they are a far cry from the rent-a-cops who troll the food courts of U.S. shopping malls. In Iraq, their jobs include protecting important installations, such as corporate enclaves, U.S. facilities, and the Green Zone in Baghdad; guarding key individuals (Ambassador Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, was protected by a Blackwater team that even had its own armed helicopters); and escorting convoys, a particularly dangerous task thanks to the frequency of roadside ambushes and bombings by the insurgents.

PMFs, in other words, have been essential to the U.S. effort in Iraq, helping Washington make up for its troop shortage and doing jobs that U.S. forces would prefer not to. But they have also been involved in some of the most controversial aspects of the war, including alleged corporate profiteering and abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS

The mixed record of PMFs in Iraq points to some of the underlying problems and questions related to the industry`s increasing role in U.S. policy. Five broad policy dilemmas are raised by the increasing privatization of the military.

The first involves the question of profit in a military context. To put it bluntly, the incentives of a private company do not always align with its clients` interests--or the public good. In an ideal world, this problem could be kept in check through proper management and oversight; in reality, such scrutiny is often absent. As a result, war-profiteering allegations have been thrown at several firms. For example, Halliburton--Vice President Dick Cheney`s previous employer--has been accused of a number of abuses in Iraq, ranging from overcharging for gasoline to billing for services not rendered; the disputed charges now total $1.8 billion. And Custer Battles, a startup military provider firm that was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in August 2004 has since been accused of running a fraudulent scheme of subsidiaries and false charges.

Still more worrisome from a policy standpoint is the question of lost control. Even when contractors do military jobs, they remain private businesses and thus fall outside the military chain of command and justice systems. Unlike military units, PMFs retain a choice over which contracts they will take and can abandon or suspend operations for any reason, including if they become too dangerous or unprofitable; their employees, unlike soldiers, can always choose to walk off the job. Such freedom can leave the military in the lurch, as has occurred several times already in Iraq: during periods of intense violence, numerous private firms delayed, suspended, or ended their operations, placing great stress on U.S. troops. On other occasions, PMF employees endured even greater risks and dangers than their military equivalents. But military operations do not have room for such mixed results.

The second general challenge with PMFs stems from the unregulated nature of what has become a global industry. There are insufficient controls over who can work for these firms and for whom these firms can work. The recruiting, screening, and hiring of individuals for public military roles is left in private hands. In Iraq, this problem was magnified by the gold-rush effect: many firms entering the market were either entirely new to the business or had rapidly expanded. To be fair, many PMF employees are extremely well qualified. A great number of retired U.S. special forces operatives have served with PMFs in Iraq, as have former members of the United Kingdom`s elite sas (Special Air Service). But the rush for profits has led some corporations to cut corners in their screening procedures. For example, U.S. Army investigators of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal found that "approximately 35 percent of the contract interrogators [hired by the firm caci] lacked formal military training as interrogators." In other cases, investigations of contractors serving in Iraq revealed the hiring of a former British Army soldier who had been jailed for working with Irish terrorists and a former South African soldier who had admitted to firebombing the houses of more than 60 political activists during the apartheid era.

Similar problems can occur with PMFs` clientele. Although military contractors have worked for democratic governments, the UN, and even humanitarian and environmental organizations, they have also been employed by dictatorships, rebel groups, drug cartels, and, prior to September 11, 2001, at least two al Qaeda-linked jihadi groups. A recent episode in Equatorial Guinea illustrates the problems that PMFs can run into in the absence of external guidance or rules. In March 2004, Logo Logistics, a British-South African PMF, was accused of plotting to overthrow the government in Malabo; a planeload of employees was arrested in Zimbabwe, and several alleged funders in the British aristocracy (including Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of Margaret Thatcher) were soon implicated in the scandal. The plotters have been accused of trying to topple Equatorial Guinea`s government for profit motives. But their would-be victim, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, is a corrupt dictator who took power by killing his uncle and runs one of the most despicable regimes on the continent--hardly a sympathetic victim.

The third concern raised by PMFs is, ironically, precisely the feature that makes them so popular with governments today: they can accomplish public ends through private means. In other words, they allow governments to carry out actions that would not otherwise be possible, such as those that would not gain legislative or public approval. Sometimes, such freedom is beneficial: it can allow countries to fill unrecognized or unpopular strategic needs. But it also disconnects the public from its foreign policy, removing certain activities from popular oversight.

The increased use of private contractors by the U.S. government in Colombia is one illustration of this trend: by hiring PMFs, the Bush administration has circumvented congressional limits on the size and scope of the U.S. military`s involvement in Colombia`s civil war. The use of PMFs in Iraq is another example: by privatizing parts of the U.S. mission, the Bush administration has dramatically lowered the political price for its Iraq policies. Were it not for the more than 20,000 contractors currently operating in the country, the U.S. government would have to either deploy more of its own troops there (which would mean either expanding the regular force or calling up more National Guard members and reservists) or persuade other countries to increase their commitments--either of which would require painful political compromises. By outsourcing parts of the job instead, the Bush administration has avoided such unappealing alternatives and has also been able to shield the full costs from scrutiny: contractor casualties and kidnappings are not listed on public rolls and are rarely mentioned by the media. PMF contracts are also not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. This reduction in transparency raises deep concerns about the long-term health of American democracy. As the legal scholar Arthur S. Miller once wrote, "democratic government is responsible government--which means accountable government--and the essential problem in contracting out is that responsibility and accountability are greatly diminished."

PMFs also create legal dilemmas, the fourth sort of policy challenge they raise. On both the personal and the corporate level, there is a striking absence of regulation, oversight, and enforcement. Although private military firms and their employees are now integral parts of many military operations, they tend to fall through the cracks of current legal codes, which sharply distinguish civilians from soldiers. Contractors are not quite civilians, given that they often carry and use weapons, interrogate prisoners, load bombs, and fulfill other critical military roles. Yet they are not quite soldiers, either. One military law analyst noted, "Legally speaking, [military contractors] fall into the same grey area as the unlawful combatants detained at Guantánamo Bay."

This lack of clarity means that when contractors are captured, their adversaries get to define their status. The results of this uncertainty can be dire--as they have been for three American employees of California Microwave Systems whose plane crashed in rebel-held territory in Colombia in 2003. The three have been held prisoner ever since, afforded none of the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Meanwhile, their corporate bosses and U.S. government clients seem to have washed their hands of the matter.

Such difficulties also play out when contractors commit misdeeds. It is often unclear how, when, where, and which authorities are responsible for investigating, prosecuting, and punishing such crimes. Unlike soldiers, who are accountable under their nation`s military code of justice wherever they are located, contractors have a murky legal status, undefined by international law (they do not fit the formal definition of mercenaries). Normally, a civilian`s crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the country where they are committed. But PMFs typically operate in failed states; indeed, the absence of local authority usually explains their presence in the first place. Prosecuting their crimes locally can thus be difficult.

Iraq, for example, still has no well-established courts, and during the formal U.S. occupation, regulations explicitly exempted contractors from local jurisdiction. Yet it is often just as difficult to prosecute contractors in their home country, since few legal systems cover crimes committed outside their territory. Some states do assert extraterritorial jurisdiction over their nationals, but they do so only for certain crimes and often lack the means to enforce their laws abroad. As a result of these gaps, not one private military contractor has been prosecuted or punished for a crime in Iraq (unlike the dozens of U.S. soldiers who have), despite the fact that more than 20,000 contractors have now spent almost two years there. Either every one of them happens to be a model citizen, or there are serious shortcomings in the legal system that governs them.

The failure to properly control the behavior of PMFs took on great consequence in the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse case. According to reports, all of the translators and up to half of the interrogators involved were private contractors working for two firms, Titan and caci. The U.S. Army found that contractors were involved in 36 percent of the proven incidents and identified 6 employees as individually culpable. More than a year after the incidents, however, not one of these individuals has been indicted, prosecuted, or punished, even though the U.S. Army has found the time to try the enlisted soldiers involved. Nor has there been any attempt to assess corporate responsibility for the misdeeds. Indeed, the only formal inquiry into PMF wrongdoing on the corporate level was conducted by caci itself. Caci investigated caci and, unsurprisingly, found that caci had done no wrong.

In the absence of legislation, some parties have already turned to litigation to address problems with PMFs--hardly the best forum for resolving issues related to human rights and the military. For example, some former Abu Ghraib prisoners have already tried to sue in U.S. courts the private firms involved with the prison. And the families of the four Blackwater employees murdered by insurgents in Fallujah have sued the company in a North Carolina court, claiming that the deceased had been sent into danger with a smaller unit than mandated in their contracts and with weapons, vehicles, and preparation that were not up to the standards promised.

The final dilemma raised by the extensive use of private contractors involves the future of the military itself. The armed services have long seen themselves as engaged in a unique profession, set apart from the rest of civilian society, which they are entrusted with securing. The introduction of PMFs, and their recruiting from within the military itself, challenges that uniqueness; the military`s professional identity and monopoly on certain activities is being encroached on by the regular civilian marketplace.

Most soldiers thus have a deeply ambivalent attitude toward PMFs. On the one hand, they are grateful to have someone help them bear their burden, which, thanks to military overstretch in Iraq, feels particularly onerous at the moment. Even though the job of the U.S. armed services has grown, the force has shrunk by 35 percent since its Cold War high; the British military, meanwhile, is at its smallest since the Napoleonic wars. PMFs help fill the gap as well as offer retired soldiers the potential for a second career in a field they know and love.

Some in the military worry, on the other hand, that the PMF boom could endanger the health of their profession and resent the way these firms exploit skills learned at public expense for private profit. They also fear that the expanding PMF marketplace will hurt the military`s ability to retain talented soldiers. Contractors in the PMF industry can make anywhere from two to ten times what they make in the regular military; in Iraq, former special forces troops can earn as much as $1,000 a day.

Certain service members, such as pilots, have always had the option of seeking work in the civilian marketplace. But the PMF industry marks a significant change, since it keeps its employees within the military, and thus the public, sphere. More important, PMFs compete directly with the government. Not only do they draw their employees from the military, they do so to play military roles, thus shrinking the military`s purview. PMFs use public funds to offer soldiers higher pay, and then charge the government at an even higher rate, all for services provided by the human capital that the military itself originally helped build. The overall process may be brilliant from a business standpoint, but it is self-defeating from the military`s perspective.

This issue has become especially pointed for special forces units, which have the most skills and are thus the most marketable. Elite force commanders in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States have all expressed deep concern over the poaching of their numbers by PMFs. One U.S. special forces officer described the issue of retention among his most experienced troops as being "at a tipping point." So far, the U.S. government has failed to respond adequately to this challenge. Some militaries now allow their soldiers to take a year`s leave of absence, in the hope that they will make their money quickly and then return, rather than be lost to the service forever. But Washington has failed to take even this step; it has only created a special working group to explore the issue.

CAVEAT EMPTOR AND -- AND RENTER

As all of these problems suggest, governments that use PMFs must learn to recognize their responsibilities as regulators--and as smart clients. Their failure to do so thus far has distorted the free market and caused a major shift in the military-industrial complex. Without change, the status quo will result in bad policy and bad business.

To improve matters, it is first essential to lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds the private military industry. There must be far more openness about and public oversight of the basic numbers involved. Too little is known about the actual dollars spent on PMFs; the Pentagon does not even track the number of contractors working for it in Iraq, much less their casualties.

To start changing matters, clients--namely, governments that hire PMFs--must exercise their rights and undertake a comprehensive survey to discern the full scope of what they have outsourced and what have been the results. Washington should also require that, like most other government documents, all current and future contracts involving nonclassified activities be made available to the public on request. Each contract should also include "contractor visibility" measures that list the number of employees involved and what they are to be paid, thus limiting the possibility of financial abuse.

The U.S. military must also take a step back and reconsider, from a national security perspective, just what roles and functions should be kept in government hands. Outsourcing can be greatly beneficial, but only to the point where it begins to challenge core functions. According to the old military doctrine on contracting, if a function was "mission-critical" or "emergency-essential"--that is, if it could affect the very success or failure of an operation--it was kept within the military itself. The rule also held that civilians were to be armed only under extraordinary circumstances and then only for self-protection. The United States should either return to these standards or create new ones; the present ad-hoc process is yielding poor results.

A third lesson is self-evident but has often been ignored: privatize something only if it will save money or raise quality. If it will not, then do not. Unfortunately, the Pentagon`s current, supposedly business-minded leadership seems to have forgotten Economics 101. All too often, it outsources first and never bothers to ask questions later. That something is done privately does not necessarily make it better, quicker, or cheaper. Rather, it is through leveraging free-market mechanisms that one potentially gets better private results. Success is likely only if a contract is competed for on the open market, if the winning firm can specialize on the job and build in redundancies, if the client is able to provide oversight and management to guard its own interests, and if the contractor is properly motivated by the fear of being fired. Forget these simple rules, as the U.S. government often does, and the result is not the best of privatization but the worst of monopolization.

Tapping simple business expertise would help the government become a better client. A staggering 40 percent of Defense Department contracts are currently awarded on a noncompetitive basis, adding up to $300 billion in contracts over the last five years. In the case of caci, the firm linked to abuses at Abu Ghraib, Army investigators subsequently reported not only that a caci employee may have helped write the work order, but also that the Abu Ghraib interrogators had been hired by simply amending an existing contract from 1998--for computer services overseen by the Department of the Interior.

When hiring contractors, the Defense Department must learn to better guard its own and the public`s interest. Doing so will require having sufficient eyes and ears to oversee and manage contracts. So far, the military woefully lacks this capacity. The U.S. government has only twice as many personnel overseeing contractors in Iraq, for example, as it had during the 1990s for its Balkans contracts--even though there are now 15 times more contracts and the context is much more challenging.

The government should also change the nature of the contracts it signs. Too often, the "cost plus" arrangement has become the default form for all contracts. But this setup, in effect, gives companies more profit if they spend more. When combined with inadequate oversight, it creates a system ripe for inefficiency and abuse. In addition to insisting on more stringent terms, the government should start to use the power of market sanctions to shape more positive results. These days, the opposite seems to happen far more often: Halliburton and caci were both granted massive contract extensions for work in Iraq, despite being in the midst of government investigations.

Finally, more must be done to ensure legal accountability. To pay contractors more than soldiers is one thing; to also give them a legal free pass (as happened with Abu Ghraib) is unconscionable. Loopholes must be filled and new laws developed to address the legal and jurisdictional dilemmas PMFs raise. Laws should be written to establish who can work for these companies, who the firms can work for, and who will investigate, prosecute, and punish any wrongdoing by contractors. Because this is a transnational industry, the solution will require international involvement. Proposals to update the international antimercenary laws and to create a UN body to sanction and regulate PMFs have already been made. But any such international effort will take years. In the meantime, every state that has any involvement with the private military industry, as a client or a home base, should update its laws. One hopes that countries will coordinate their efforts and involve regional bodies to maximize coverage. The United Kingdom, for example, could coordinate its present efforts with the rest of the European Union, and the United States should do the same with its allies.

The forces that drove the growth of the private military industry seem set in place. Much like the Internet boom, the PMF bubble may burst if the current spate of work in Iraq ever ends, but the industry itself is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Governments must therefore act to meet this reality. Using private solutions for public military ends is not necessarily a bad thing. But the stakes in warfare are far higher than in the corporate realm: in this most essential public sphere, national security and people`s lives are constantly put at risk. War, as the old proverb has it, is certainly far too important to be left to the generals. The same holds true for the CEOs.

Copyright 2002--2005 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All rights reserved.

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Es scheint sich doch noch was nach den Wahlen im politischen Irak zu bewegen.

April 3, 2005
Sunni Arab Is Elected Iraqi Parliament Speaker
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?

Filed at 4:56 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi lawmakers elected a Sunni Arab as parliament speaker and Shiite and Kurdish leaders as his deputies on Sunday, ending days of deadlock as they sought to balance the country`s predominant religious and ethnic groups in a new government.

The decision was a step toward repairing the tattered image of the newly elected National Assembly, which had bickered for days over the post.

Industry Minister Hajim al-Hassani was elected parliament speaker; elected as his deputies were Hussain al-Shahristani -- a Shiite and former nuclear scientist -- and the Kurdish leader Aref Taifour.

The parliament`s 275 members have struggled to form a new government since Jan. 30 elections, and their session Tuesday to choose a speaker disintegrated into shouts and accusations. Lawmakers had focused on picking a Sunni Arab for the post, in an effort to reach out to the minority dominant under Saddam Hussein.

The three were elected by secret ballot, with lawmakers writing three candidates on a piece of paper that was dropped into a box. The ballots were then read aloud and marked down, one-by-one, on a large, white board.

Forty-three parliament members did not attend Sunday`s session, but the reasons were unclear.

Lawmakers also hoped to name a new president later Sunday -- likely Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.

Once in his post, Talabani and his two vice presidents have two weeks to name the new interim prime minister, expected to be Shiite politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari. After that, the legislative body has until mid-August to write a new constitution that will pave the way for new elections and a permanent government.

In western Baghdad, officials were investigating an attack by dozens of insurgents who blew up car bombs and fired rocket propelled grenades late Saturday outside the Abu Ghraib prison.

The 40-minute clash killed one insurgent and injured 44 U.S. forces and 13 prisoners, U.S. military officials said.

It was unclear if the clash was aimed at helping prisoners escape. The militants were unable to penetrate the prison`s walls and no detainees were set free.

Some soldiers were evacuated with serious injuries, officials said, but many wounds were minor and treated at the scene.

Abu Ghraib was at the center of a prisoner abuse scandal that broke out in 2004 when pictures showing soldiers piling naked inmates in a pyramid and humiliating them sexually became public. The resulting scandal tarnished the military`s image worldwide and sparked investigations of detainee abuses.

The United States is holding about 10,500 prisoners in Iraq, with 3,446 at Abu Ghraib.

Also Sunday, two bystanders were injured when a bomb destroyed a store in southeast Baghdad, police Lt. Mazin Saeed said. It was unclear why the store was targeted.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

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Bush und die GOP versuchen mit aller Gewalt die Zusammensetzung der US-Gerichte zu ändern. Damit Urteile wie im Fall Schiavo oder in Bezug auf Herausgabe von unangenehmen Akten nicht mehr gesprochen werden. Richter an höheren Gerichten werden auf Lebenszeit ernannt und wenn verstorbene Richter ersetzt werden müssen, werden sie vom Präsidenten ernannt und müssen vom Senat bestätigt werden. Dafür galt eine Regelung genannt `filibuster`, dadurch wurden zur Bestätigung von Richtern 60 von 100 Senatoren gebraucht. Diese Regelung könnte mit einfacher Mehrheit ausser Kraft gesetzt werden, da sie keinen Verfassungsrang hat. Das wird i.A.von den Republikanern versucht. Die Mehrheitsverhältnisse im Senat sind augenblicklich 55 republikanische Stimmen zu 45 demokratischen Stimmen. Dabei ist es nie gewiss, ob die Senatoren auch nach ihrer Parteizugehörigkeit abstimmen werden. Alle Präsidenten der letzten Jahrzehnte haben sich an die Filibuster-Regel gehalten, nur jetzt wollen die Bush-Republikaner diese Regel kippen, um den Staatsstreich zu vollenden. Wenn die Richter auf Kurs gebracht sind, kann die USA in einen christlich-fundamentalistischen Staat umgewandelt werden. Denn alleine die Justiz hat bis jetzt den Weg blokiert. Der 87jährige Senator Byrd ist einer der hartnäckischsten Kämpfer gegen die `the nuclear option` wie die einfache Mehrheit in diesen Fällen genannt wird. Mehr über den Senator und über seine wechselvolle politische Entwicklung in dem folgenden Artikel. Joerver

April 3, 2005
A Master of the Senate`s Ways Is Still Parrying in His Twilight
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/politics/03byrd.html

WASHINGTON, April 2 - After 46 years in the United States Senate - including a 12-year stint as Democratic leader - Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia sees himself as its protector and defender, a guardian of its history and traditions.

A co-author of a four-volume tome of Senate history, Mr. Byrd, 87, comes to work each day with a tiny leather-bound copy of the Constitution in his left breast pocket. "I`ve forgotten more about the rules and procedures," Mr. Byrd said in an interview this week, "than most senators will ever know."

Now Mr. Byrd`s reputation as an authority on all things senatorial is under attack. Lawmakers return to Washington on Monday after a two-week recess, and the Senate is headed for a procedural showdown over a Republican-led drive to end the minority Democrats` use of the filibuster in blocking President Bush`s judicial nominees.

Mr. Byrd, the senior senator from West Virginia, is front and center in that fight, carrying the banner for his party and at the same time drawing the ire of conservatives outraged by his vocal defense of the filibuster.

Republicans hope to end judicial filibusters by changing Senate rules to prevent them - a move so explosive it has been dubbed "the nuclear option." Mr. Byrd, invoking Senate tradition and his beloved Constitution, is railing against it, drawing charges of hypocrisy from Republicans who say that when he was leader, he initiated some artful rules changes of his own.

"Such a sweet old man," Senator Rick Santorum said sardonically in an interview. Mr. Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who ranks third in his party`s leadership, went on: "Facts are facts, and the fact is Senator Byrd has singularly used this tactic more than any other leader in the United States Senate. To come in and feign outrage over a technique of which he was the master is even a little much for senators to swallow."

The fight has made Mr. Byrd, currently the longest-serving member of the Senate, an unlikely cult hero among liberals and an object of derision among conservatives in the twilight of his political career. He is up for re-election in 2006, and though he has not yet formally said whether he will run ("I`m inclined to," is as far as he will go), Republicans are already working to unseat him.

Christian conservatives and right-wing bloggers are unearthing his past as a one-time member of the Ku Klux Klan who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ("I`ve said time and time again that I was wrong about that and I apologize," Mr. Byrd said.) The National Republican Senatorial Committee is sending out a stream of "Byrd watching" news releases. "Robert Byrd Flies Off the Deep End," declared one. "Robert`s Rules of Order: Do as I Say, Not as I Did," blared another. And Republicans are decrying a recent speech by Mr. Byrd, in which he invoked Hitler to assail the nuclear option.

"One more speech like that and we`ll have more than enough votes" to eliminate the filibuster, said Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican leader. "We ought to call this the Byrd rule change."

Mr. Byrd began brushing up on the Senate`s rules decades ago, when some of his colleagues were barely out of diapers. He was encouraged, he said, by his mentor, Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. of Georgia. "He said, `Don`t just study the rules, study the precedents,` " Mr. Byrd recalled.

So Mr. Byrd did - a move that came in handy in 1977 when as Democratic leader, he helped close a loophole that had allowed Republicans effectively to filibuster legislation by offering a stream of amendments. Republicans say Mr. Byrd used procedures to limit debate on three other occasions, though he says he never once "deprived the minority" of "the right to freedom of speech."

While Republicans are holding Mr. Byrd as an emblem for inconsistency, Democrats are rallying around him. "He`s the Senate`s encyclopedia," said Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, called Mr. Byrd "a legend."

Indeed, when Mr. Byrd takes the Senate floor, voice quavering, finger wagging, words like "escutcheon" dripping from his lips, the chamber steps back in time. He quotes Popeye and Plato with equal ease.

Democrats are also discovering Mr. Byrd`s defense of the filibuster is a useful fund-raising tool. Last week, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out an e-mail appeal from Mr. Byrd in which he warned that "an ill wind is blowing across this country" and urged potential donors to download their own "personal Constitution by clicking here."

The battle over judges has been good for Mr. Byrd`s political coffers as well. The political action arm of the liberal advocacy group MoveOn .org, whose members fondly recall the senator`s blistering critique of the war in Iraq, raised more than $800,000 over the Internet last week for Mr. Byrd`s re-election. The fund-raiser came on the heels of a MoveOn rally several weeks ago, where Mr. Byrd delivered a hellfire-and-brimstone speech that was part religious revival, part civics lesson.

"These instant constitutional experts want to warp, want to bend, if you will, the Senate`s constitutional purpose with a witch`s brew of half truths, twisted logic and vicious attacks on freedom of speech," the senator thundered, wagging his finger and waving his copy of the Constitution. "Why? Because they don`t like the rules! They want to change the rules so they can pack the courts!"

The crowd swooned like schoolgirls catching their first glimpse of the Beatles, and the senator seemed to relish every minute. But political analysts say getting the rock-star reception from the MoveOn set could backfire for Mr. Byrd in West Virginia, where President Bush won last November`s election by 13 percentage points.

At home, Mr. Byrd is sometimes called "the prince of pork," for the millions of dollars in federal aid he has brought back for public works projects, many of which bear his name. He has represented the state in Washington for 52 years, having served 6 years in the House before the Senate. Republicans do not have a candidate to run against him, though they are courting Representative Shelley Moore Capito.

That would be quite a match-up, said Robert Rupp, a professor of political science and history at West Virginia Wesleyan College, noting that Mr. Byrd has not had a competitive race since 1958.

"What we have here is not a question of an old politician fading or fighting for his life," Professor Rupp said. "What we really have here is an old politician who is getting a revival, a new image, in what will be his last political campaign. So the question then becomes: what will the state owe an icon?"

With his white hair, his polished wooden cane and hands that shake from what aides say is a benign tremor, Mr. Byrd cuts a seemingly frail figure in the Capitol, and some wonder if he would be up for a grueling campaign. His wife of nearly 68 years, Erma, has been ill, and he said she is very much on his mind. Yet as he sat in his chandeliered Capitol office last week, his cane resting by his side, Mr. Byrd seemed energized, casting thunderbolts like Zeus from the mountaintop.

"How sad," Mr. Byrd declared, lowering his eyes and dragging out his words for dramatic effect, "will be the legacy of those senators who vote to assassinate freedom of speech in the Senate of the United States. What a blotch upon the escutcheon of the great basic liberty of the people. How sad."

And here, the senior senator from West Virginia grew silent for a moment before issuing his final warning: "And mark my words, people will know who wielded the dagger."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Das war zu erwarten, dass die hohen Hürden, die von der Besatzung im Irak aufgestellt wurden, um eine Regierung im Irak zu bilden, beschuldigt werden, dass bis jetzt keine Regierung zu Stande gekommen ist. Es ist auch sehr ungewöhnlich, dass ein 2/3 Mehrheit zur Wahl eines Ministerpräsidenten gebraucht wird.
Böswillige könnten behaupten, dass sei beabsichtigt gewesen von den Besatzern, um eine Regierungsbildung zu verhindern und dadurch die von den USA eingesetzte Übergangsregierung an der Macht zu lassen. Aber es gibt auch genauso Gerüchte, die Wahl wäre zu Ungunsten der Shiiten verfälscht worde, denn die Shiiten hätten mehr als 60% der Stimmen bei der Wahl erreicht, und das wäre nicht erwünscht gewesen. Aber wie gesagt, es sind Gerüchte.
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April 3, 2005
Iraqi Politicians Complain of Flaws in Interim Law
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/international/03baghdad-we…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 2 — After weeks of factional haggling that have prompted warnings of increasing civil distress, several leading Iraqi politicians have begun saying that flawed measures in the interim constitution are partly to blame for the failure to form a new government.

The document, which Iraqi officials co-wrote with the Americans, was approved in March 2004 and is the most enduring political legacy of the formal American occupation. It is called the transitional administrative law, or as the TAL, and sets the timetable for elections and the rules for installing a government, and it tries to address difficult issues, like the question of property restoration for Kurds exiled from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Senior politicians, particularly Shiite Arabs, are now attacking the TAL for enshrining a process that they see as contributing to the deadlock. They are especially critical of the measure that requires a two-thirds vote by the national assembly to appoint a president, and they point out that the law fails to set a deadline for the appointment.

“This is really sort of a weakness in the TAL,” said Adnan Ali, a deputy head of the Dawa Islamic Party, the Shiite party whose leader, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is the top candidate for prime minister. “It’s an obstruction rather than an assurance. This should have been done differently.”

Mr. Ali and other politicians acknowledge that hardheaded self-interest among the various factions has caused the delays, but they say the transitional law could have set a lower bar for consensus and specified more deadlines.

In most countries with parliamentary systems, the party that wins a simple majority of the seats has the right to install an executive government, legal experts say. Here, the main Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, won 140 of 275 assembly seats in the Jan. 30 elections, but must ally with one or more partners to form a coalition government because of the two-thirds rule.

The most obvious partner is the Kurdistan Alliance, which won 75 seats. But, nine weeks after the elections, the two sides have yet to finalize any deal.

Officials from the two groups also say the process has slowed because they are trying to bring in the parties of Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, and the Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted the elections.

Iraqis have grown disillusioned and restless, and the day-to-day workings of ministries have slowed because of the uncertainty. American commanders have warned of a possible rise in violence.

A car bomb exploded Saturday at a police station in the town of Khan Bani Saad, 10 miles north of Baghdad, killing four policemen and one civilian and wounding three policemen and a civilian, the Interior Ministry said.

Also on Saturday, the American military said a marine was killed the previous day by small-arms fire Ramadi.

But some American diplomats here and some Iraqi officials who helped write the transitional law say the process is unfolding as it should. They emphasize that the two-thirds requirement was meant to prevent any single group from dominating the new government. They also say they did not set a deadline on appointing the president to avoid “micromanaging” the process.

“The thinking simply was to have a balancing of powers and interests in the transitional period,” said Feisal al-Istrabadi, a senior fellow at the DePaul University College of Law and a main drafter of the transitional law. “It seemed to me that it was appropriate that a supermajority be required so no one party will dominate. I still believe that was the right decision.”

The transitional law requires that the assembly appoint, by a two-thirds vote, a president and two vice presidents, called the presidency council. Those officers then have two weeks to appoint a prime minister, who would in turn select a cabinet. The assembly would approve those positions by a majority vote. If the presidency council fails to choose a prime minister within the two weeks, the assembly can appoint one by a two-thirds vote.

Mr. Istrabadi said that he personally pushed for the two-thirds requirement, but that he did not expect such high bars in the permanent constitution the new assembly must write.

The requirement was put in “exactly because this is a transitional process,” said Mr. Istrabadi, now Iraq’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations in New York. He said he did not think that the negotiations had “taken an inordinate amount of time.”

A senior American diplomat said that the “genius of the TAL is it compels disparate Iraqi political interests to compromise.”

“If it acted by a simple majority,” he said, “it would actually promote a civil war rather than compromise.”

The same diplomat, though, acknowledged that he was surprised there was no government yet. He said it appeared that the politicians representing the three major groups in Iraqi society — Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds — were not reaching out to each other enough. On Tuesday, at the second meeting of the national assembly, there was “still not as much commingling between the groups as you would see in a Western parliament,” he said.

The two-thirds measure has irked officials in the main Shiite bloc. Shiite Arabs, the majority of the population, were long oppressed under Baathist rule and are eager to assume power.

Saad Jawad Qindeel, an assembly member and a representative of a major Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said: “Legally speaking, we in the United Iraqi Alliance don’t need any coalitions. We have enough votes, more than 50 percent of the assembly seats.”

Several other measures in the law could be slowing down the political process, Iraqi officials say. The law sets a deadline of Aug. 15 for the national assembly to agree on a first draft of the permanent constitution, but also gives the assembly the option of pushing back the deadline — and the elections for a full-term government — by up to half a year.

“There is great enthusiasm from everyone to draft the constitution,” said Jalaladeen al-Saghir, a conservative Shiite cleric who sits on the assembly and is a deputy of the Supreme Council. “But it’s possible to extend the deadline for six months, and this is fine.”

The transitional law also used purposefully vague language regarding the timing of restoration of property stripped from Kurds by Saddam Hussein’s government in Kirkuk: Article 58 merely says it should be done “expeditiously.” This issue in particular has been a big stumbling block in the negotiations, as the Kurds pressure the Shiites to speed up restoration.

The committee that drafted the transitional law included members of the political parties on the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Adnan Pachachi, the former foreign minister and exile, served as chairman. Officials from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the governing American body, worked with the committee.

Mr. Istrabadi said the best evidence so far of the transitional law’s success was the fact that the first set of elections took place as scheduled and, at least for a period, inspired confidence in the Iraqi people.

Still, the law will face many more tests. At the assembly meeting on Tuesday, the temporary head of the assembly kicked reporters out of the room and forced state-run television to cut to a popular folk singer belting out the national anthem, “My Homeland, My Homeland,” even though the transitional law says that “meetings of the national assembly shall be public.”

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Deshalb wird Bulgarien wohl auch seine Truppen zurückziehen.

April 3, 2005
Soldier`s Death Ruled Accident
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/politics/03bulgaria.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/politics/03bulgaria.html


WASHINGTON, April 2 - A Bulgarian soldier in Iraq was killed accidentally by American forces last month when combat patrols from each country shot at each other in the dark in response to what each side thought was a hostile attack, an American military investigation has concluded.

The soldier, Jr. Sgt. Gardi Gardev, died from gunshot wounds suffered in the incident that occurred on March 4 near the southern city of Diwaniya.

No Americans were held responsible for the shooting death, which a statement issued by the military headquarters in Baghdad on Saturday called "a tragic accident." The statement said "no further investigation or administrative action is required."

The shooting of the Bulgarian soldier took place on the same day that American soldiers at a security checkpoint in Baghdad fired on a car carrying the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, wounding her and killing an Italian intelligence officer. Within days, Bulgaria announced that it planned to withdraw its 450 troops in Iraq by the end of the year.

An investigation conducted by the Army`s First Corps Support Command and approved by the American ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, determined that the shooting was a result of miscommunication, a finding senior Bulgarian officials had suggested last month.

"The problem of communication was not solved," the Bulgarian Army chief of staff Nikola Kolev said at a news conference in Sofia last month. "These accidents happen."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Curveball war die Quelle des BND, irgendwie verwandt mit Chalabi.

April 3, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Curveball the Goofball
By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/opinion/04dowd.html

WASHINGTON

I had an editor once whose wife was in the Audubon Society. There were a lot of articles about birds in that newspaper.

I had an editor once who loved fishing. There were a lot of articles about fish in that newspaper.

Organizations organically respond to please the boss. Bosses naturally surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear.

When King Lear`s favorite daughter spoke frankly to him, and refused to fawn like her sisters, she was instantly banished. Insincerity pays.

It is absurd to have yet another investigation into the chuckleheaded assessments on Saddam`s phantom W.M.D. that intentionally skirts how the $40 billion-a-year intelligence was molded and manufactured to fit the ideological schemes of those running the White House and Pentagon.

As the commission`s co-chairman, Laurence Silberman, put it: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policy makers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

Huh? That`s like an investigation into steroids in baseball that looks only at the drug companies, not the players who muscled up.

We don`t need a 14-month inquiry producing 601 pages at a cost of $10 million to tell us the data on arms in Iraq was flawed. We know that. When we got over there, we didn`t find any.

This is the fourth exhaustive investigation that has not answered the basic question: How did the White House and Pentagon spin the information and why has no one gotten in trouble for it? If your kid lied and hid stuff from you to do something he thought would be great, then wouldn`t admit it and blamed someone else, he`d be punished - even if his adventure worked out all right for him.

When the "values" president and his aides do it, they`re rewarded. Condoleezza Rice was promoted to secretary of state. Stephen Hadley, Condi`s old deputy, was promoted to national security adviser. Bob Joseph, a national security aide who helped shovel the uranium hooey into the State of the Union address, is becoming an under secretary of state. Paul Wolfowitz, who painted the takeover of Iraq as such a cakewalk that our troops went in without the proper armor or backup, will run the World Bank. George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. when Al Qaeda attacked and when Saddam`s mushroom cloud gained credibility, got the Medal of Freedom.

Then the president appoints a compliant Democrat and a complicit conservative judge to head an inquiry set up to let the president off the hook.

Please, no more pantomime investigations. We all know what happened. Dick Cheney and the neocons had a fever to sack Saddam. Mr. Cheney and Rummy persuaded W., "the Man," that it was the manly thing to do. Everybody feigned a 9/11 connection. Ahmad Chalabi conned his neocon pals, thinking he could run Iraq if he gave the Bush administration the smoking gun it needed to sell the war.

Suddenly Curveball appeared, the relative of an aide to Mr. Chalabi, to become the lone C.I.A. source with the news that Iraq was cooking up biological agents in mobile facilities hidden from arms inspectors and Western spies. Curveball`s obviously sketchy assertions ended up in Mr. Tenet`s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and Colin Powell`s U.N. speech in February 2003, laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq.

Curveball`s information was used to justify the war even though it was clear Curveball was a goofball. As the commission report notes, a Defense Department employee at the C.I.A. met with him and "was concerned by Curveball`s apparent `hangover` during their meeting" and suspicious that Curveball spoke excellent English, even though the Foreign Service had told U.S. intelligence officials that Curveball did not speak English.

By early 2001, the C.I.A. was receiving messages from our Foreign Service, reporting that Curveball was "out of control" and off the radar. A foreign intelligence service also warned the C.I.A. in April 2002 that it had "doubts about Curveball`s reliability" and that elements of the tippling tipster`s behavior "strike us as typical of individuals we would normally assess as fabricators."

But Curveball`s crazy assertions had traction because they were what the White House wanted to hear.

The report warns the president to watch out for the "headstrong" intelligence agencies. If only the commission had concerned itself with headstrong officials at a higher level. Then its 601 pages would be worth reading.

E-mail: [e-mail]


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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Sunday, April 03, 2005

44 US Troops Injured in Abu Ghraib Attack, Some Seriously
12 Iraqis Wounded
6 Iraqis killed in Separate Incidents

[urlAn organized platoon of some 40 guerrillas]http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/consumer_news/11296993.htm[/url] launched mortar attacks on Abu Ghrain prison on Saturday, wounding 44 US troops, some seriously, and 12 Iraqis. The US holds 10,500 Iraqis prisoner, suspecting them of being active in the anti-US guerrilla movement. Mariam Fam of AP adds:


` Early Saturday, gunmen opened fire from a car in Baghdad, killing local official Hassib Zamil outside of the Education Ministry offices in the Sadr City neighborhood. In the central city of Khan Bani Saad, a car bomb killed five people, including four police officers on patrol. Two police officers and three civilians also were wounded . . . A car bomb also injured six Iraqis and set a house on fire in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military said. The attack happened Saturday as coalition soldiers, acting on a citizens` tip, were arriving to investigate, the U.S. military said. It also reported that a U.S. Marine was killed by enemy fire while conducting security operations in Ramadi on Friday. `



The trope in the American media of the "winding down" of the guerrilla war is without foundation. At 60 attacks a day, it is extremely active.

posted by Juan @ [url4/3/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/44-us-troops-injured-in-abu-ghraib.html[/url]

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Hier noch mal die Geschichte von Curveball, auch ein `Freund` aller NeoCons, jetzt TheoCons, hier im Board.
Schade dass man nicht im Board googeln kann.

THE NATION
`Curveball` Debacle Reignites CIA Feud
The former agency chief and his top deputy deny reports that they were told a key source for Iraqi intelligence was deemed unreliable.
By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller
Times Staff Writers
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0402-01.htm

April 2, 2005

WASHINGTON — A bitter feud erupted Friday over claims by a presidential commission that top CIA officials apparently ignored warnings in late 2002 and early 2003 that an informant code-named "Curveball" — the chief source of prewar U.S. intelligence about Iraqi germ weapons — was unreliable.

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet and his chief deputy, John E. McLaughlin, furiously denied that they had been told not to trust Curveball, an Iraqi refugee in Germany who ultimately was proved a fraud.

But the CIA`s former operations chief and one of his top lieutenants insisted in interviews that debates had raged inside the CIA about Curveball`s credibility, even as then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell vouched for the defector`s claims in a crucial address to the United Nations Security Council on the eve of war.

"The fact is there was yelling and screaming about this guy," said James L. Pavitt, deputy director of operations and head of the clandestine service until he retired last summer.

"My people were saying: `We think he`s a stinker,` " Pavitt said. But CIA bioweapons analysts, he said, "were saying: `We still think he`s worthwhile.` " Pavitt said he didn`t convey his own doubts to Tenet because he didn`t know until after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that Curveball was "of such import" in prewar CIA assessments provided to the president, Congress and the public.

"Later, I remember the guffaws by myself and others when we said, `How could they have put this much emphasis on this guy? … He wasn`t worth [anything] in our minds," Pavitt said.

Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA European Division, said he and other senior officials in his office — the unit that oversees spying in Europe — had issued repeated warnings about Curveball`s accounts.

"Everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening," said Drumheller, who retired in November after 25 years at the CIA. He said he never met personally with Tenet, but "did talk to McLaughlin and everybody else."

Drumheller scoffed at claims by Tenet and McLauglin that they were unaware of concerns about Curveball`s credibility. He said he was disappointed that the two former CIA leaders would resort to a "bureaucratic defense" that they never got a formal memo expressing doubts about the defector.

"They can say whatever they want," Drumheller said. "They know what the truth is …. I did not lie." Drumheller said the CIA had "lots of documentation" to show suspicions about Curveball were disseminated widely within the agency. He said they included warnings to McLaughlin`s office and to the Weapons Intelligence Non Proliferation and Arms Control Center, known as WINPAC, the group responsible for many of the flawed prewar assessments on Iraq.

"Believe me, there are literally inches and inches of documentation" including "dozens and dozens of e-mails and memos and things like that detailing meetings" where officials sharply questioned Curveball`s credibility, Drumheller said.

The CIA`s internal battles over Curveball were revealed Thursday in a scathing report by a presidential commission examining U.S. intelligence on Iraq and other key targets.

Drumheller and Pavitt, who each briefed the commission, added significant details in interviews Friday with the Los Angeles Times.

The CIA`s assessment that Iraq had secret arsenals of deadly bioweapons, the report said, "was based largely on reporting from a single human source," Curveball, even though his reporting "came into question in late 2002." The failure to communicate serious concerns about him to Powell and other policy makers "represents a serious failure of management and leadership," the commission concluded.

The case began when Curveball, a chemical engineer from Baghdad, first showed up in a German refugee camp in 1998. By early 2000, he was working with Germany`s Federal Intelligence Service, known as the BND, in exchange for an immigration card.

The Pentagon`s Defense Intelligence Agency, which handled Iraqi refugees in Germany, furnished the engineer with the Curveball code-name. He soon began providing technical drawings and detailed information indicating that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein secretly had built lethal germ factories on trains and trucks.

But the DIA never sought to check his background or information. Instead, the commission found, the DIA saw itself as a conduit for German intelligence, and funneled nearly 100 Curveball reports to the CIA between January 2000 and September 2001.

Except for a brief meeting between Curveball and a DIA medical technician in May 2000, German authorities refused to let U.S. intelligence officials interview their source until March 2004, a year after the war began.

But warnings mounted from the start.

After the meeting in May 2000, the DIA medical technician questioned the validity of Curveball`s information. Another warning came in April 2002, when a foreign spy service told the CIA it had "doubts about Curveball`s reliability," the commission reported.

With skepticism rising about Curveball, Drumheller said he arranged a lunch meeting with a German counterpart at Pavitt`s behest in late September or early October 2002 to ask for an American meeting with Curveball.

By then, Drumheller said, German intelligence officials were increasingly wary of Curveball. But he said they didn`t want to acknowledge their doubts in public and risk embarrassment.

Drumheller said the German intelligence officer used the lunch to convey a stark warning: "Don`t even ask to see him because he`s a fabricator and he`s crazy."

Drumheller said he passed that warning up to Pavitt`s office. He said he also informed another senior official in the European division and sent a notice to WINPAC, where the chief bioweapons analyst was considered the Curveball expert.

In a separate interview, Pavitt said he didn`t recall when he learned of the German warning. "A meeting took place without question," he said. "And I remember being told what he said. My recollection is I was told much, much later." He said commission investigators were unable to find a reference to it in his CIA calendar.

Pavitt rejected the notion that Drumheller should have issued a CIA-wide "burn notice" on Curveball`s reports after the lunch, saying it would be inappropriate to unleash a sweeping condemnation after a single meeting with a foreign officer from an agency unwilling to stand behind its statements.

A week before Christmas 2002, McLaughlin`s executive assistant held two meetings to discuss Curveball. One of Pavitt`s aides told the group about Drumheller`s meeting, and expressed other doubts. She also "made clear" that Pavitt`s division "did not believe that Curveball`s information should be relied upon."

The Curveball expert from WINPAC angrily argued back and apparently prevailed, the commission found. An official summary of the meeting later "played down" any doubts and said Curveball had been judged credible "after an exhaustive review."

Several weeks later, Drumheller discovered that his warning had been ignored when his executive officer brought him an advance copy of Powell`s Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the U.N.

Drumheller said he then arranged a meeting in McLaughlin`s office and described what the German operative had told him over lunch several months earlier. After listening for 10 minutes, Drumheller said, McLaughlin responded by saying, "Oh my! I hope that`s not true."

McLaughlin, who retired in January after 32 years at the CIA, said he did not recall the meeting and denied that Drumheller told him Curveball might be a fabricator.

"I have absolutely no recall of such a discussion. None," McLaughlin said in a statement Friday. "Such a meeting does not appear on my calendar, nor was this view transmitted to me in writing." He said he was "at a loss" to explain the conflicting accounts.

But another red flag appeared. On Jan. 27, 2003, the CIA`s Berlin station warned in a message to headquarters that Curveball`s information "cannot be verified."

Drumheller, meanwhile, said he never heard from McLaughlin or anyone else to confirm that Curveball`s material had been deleted from Powell`s speech. So when Tenet called him at home on another matter the night before Powell was to speak in New York, Drumheller said he raised the Curveball case.

"I gave him the phone number for the guy he wanted," Drumheller recalled. "Then it struck me, `I better say something.` I said, `You know, boss, there`s problems with that case.` He says, `Yeah, yeah, yeah, I`m exhausted. Don`t worry about it.` "

In a seven-page statement, Tenet sharply challenged much of that account.

Tenet called it "stunning and deeply disturbing" that the German warning in 2002 to Drumheller, "if true, was never brought forward to me by anyone." He said he first heard doubts about Curveball after the war, and only learned of the German warning from the presidential commission last month.

A series of formal warnings should have been "immediately and formally disseminated" after the lunch to alert intelligence and policy officials about the concern, Tenet said.

"No such reports were disseminated, nor do I recall the issue being brought to my attention," he said.

Tenet also disputed Drumheller`s account of their phone conversation the night before Powell`s speech. Tenet said he has "absolutely no recollection" of the CIA official warning him about Curveball.

"It is simply wrong for anyone to intimate that I was at any point in time put on notice that Curveball was probably a fabricator," he said.


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Published on Sunday, April 3, 2005 by the Seattle Times
Why Media Ownership Matters
by Amy Goodman and David Goodman
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?docum…

George Bush must have been delighted to learn from a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that 56 percent of Americans still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that have long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush`s handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay.

Americans believe these lies not because they are stupid, but because they are good media consumers. Our media have become an echo chamber for those in power. Rather than challenge the fraudulent claims of the Bush administration, we`ve had a media acting as a conveyor belt for the government`s lies.

As the Pentagon has learned, deploying the American media is more powerful than any bomb. The explosive effect is amplified as a few pro-war, pro-government media moguls consolidate their grip over the majority of news outlets. Media monopoly and militarism go hand in hand.

When it comes to issues of war and peace, the results of having a compliant media are as deadly to our democracy as they are to our soldiers. Why do the corporate media cheerlead for war? One answer lies in the corporations themselves — the ones that own the major news outlets.

At the time of the first Persian Gulf War, CBS was owned by Westinghouse and NBC by General Electric. Two of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers owned two of the major networks. Westinghouse and GE made most of the parts for many of the weapons in the Persian Gulf War. It was no surprise, then, that much of the coverage on those networks looked like a military hardware show.

We see reporters in the cockpits of war planes, interviewing pilots about how it feels to be at the controls. We almost never see journalists at the target end, asking people huddled in their homes what it feels like not to know what the next moment will bring.
The media have a responsibility to show the true face of war. It is bloody. It is brutal. Real people die. Women and children are killed. Families are wiped out; villages are razed. If the media would show for one week the same unsanitized images of war that the rest of the world sees, people in the U.S. would say no, that war is not an answer to conflict in the 21st century.

But we don`t see the real images of war. We don`t need government censors, because we have corporations sanitizing the news. A study released last month by American University`s School of Communications revealed that media outlets acknowledged they self-censored their reporting on the Iraq invasion out of concerns about public reaction to graphic images and content.

The media organizations in charge of vetting our images of war have become fewer and bigger — and the news more uniform and gung ho. Six huge corporations now control the major U.S. media: Rupert Murdoch`s News Corporation (FOX, HarperCollins, New York Post, Weekly Standard, TV Guide, DirecTV and 35 TV stations), General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Universal Pictures and 28 TV stations), Time Warner (AOL, CNN, Warner Bros., Time and its 130-plus magazines), Disney (ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, 10 TV and 72 radio stations), Viacom (CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster and 183 U.S. radio stations), and Bertelsmann (Random House and its more than 120 imprints worldwide, and Gruner + Jahr and its more than 110 magazines in 10 countries).

As Phil Donahue, the former host of MSNBC`s highest-rated show who was fired by the network in February 2003 for bringing on anti-war voices, told "Democracy Now!," "We have more [TV] outlets now, but most of them sell the Bowflex machine. The rest of them are Jesus and jewelry. There really isn`t diversity in the media anymore. Dissent? Forget about it."

The lack of diversity in ownership helps explain the lack of diversity in the news. When George W. Bush first came to power, the media watchers Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) looked at who appeared on the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC. Ninety-two percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male, and where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, there was even less diversity of opinion on the airwaves. During the critical two weeks before and after Colin Powell`s speech to the United Nations where he made his case for war, FAIR found that just three out of 393 sources — fewer than 1 percent — were affiliated with anti-war activism.

Three out of almost 400 interviews. And that was on the "respectable" evening news shows of CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS.

These are not media that are serving a democratic society, where a diversity of views is vital to shaping informed opinions. This is a well-oiled propaganda machine that is repackaging government spin and passing it off as journalism.

For the media moguls, even this parody of political "diversity" is too much. So as Gen. Colin Powell led the war on Iraq, his son, Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led the war on diversity of voices at home.

In the spring of 2003, Michael Powell tried to hand over the airwaves and newspapers to fewer and fewer tycoons by further loosening restrictions on how many media outlets a single company could own. Powell tried to scrap 30-year-old rules that limited the reach of any television network to no more than 35 percent of the national population, and limits on cross-ownership that, for example, prevented newspapers from buying television or radio stations in the same city. The new rules would have allowed a broadcast network to buy up stations that together reached 45 percent of the national population.

The attack on the existing media-ownership rules came from predictable corners: Both Viacom, which owns CBS, and Rupert Murdoch`s conservative FOX News Channel were already in violation, and would be forced to sell off stations to come into compliance with the 35-percent limit. The rule change would enable Murdoch to control the airwaves of entire cities. That would be fine with Bush and the Powells, since Murdoch is one of their biggest boosters.

Murdoch declared in February 2003 that George W. Bush "will either go down in history as a very great president or he`ll crash and burn. I`m optimistic it will be the former by a ratio of 2 to 1." Murdoch leaves nothing to chance: His FOX News Channel is doing all it can to help.

It looked like Powell, backed by the Bush White House and with Republican control of Congress, would have no trouble ramming through these historic rule changes. The broadcast industry left nothing to chance: Between 1998 and 2004, broadcasters spent a boggling $249 million lobbying the federal government, including spending $27 million on federal candidates and lawmakers.

This would normally be called bribery. At the FCC, it`s just business as usual.

You would think that FCC deregulation, affecting millions of Americans, would get major play in the media. But the national networks knew that if people found out about how one media mogul could own nearly everything you watch, hear and read in a city, there would be revolt. The solution for them was simple: They just didn`t cover the issue for a year. The only thing the networks did was to join together — and you thought they were competitors? — in a brief filed with the FCC to call for media deregulation.

And then, something remarkable happened: Media activists — an unlikely coalition of liberals and conservatives — mounted a national campaign to defeat Powell and stop the corporate sell-off. The FCC received 2 million letters and e-mails, most of them opposing the sell-off. The Prometheus Radio Project, a grass-roots media activism group, sued to stop the sale of our airwaves, and won in federal court last June. These are hopeful signals that the days of backroom deals by media titans are numbered.

Powell announced his resignation as chairman of the FCC in January. Arguably the worst FCC chairman in history, Powell led with singular zeal the effort to auction off the public airwaves to the highest corporate bidder. In so doing, he did us all a favor: For a brief moment, he pulled back the covers on the incestuous world of media ownership to expose the corruption and rot for all to see.

Kevin Martin, Bush`s newly appointed FCC chairman, will, according to an FCC insider, be even worse than Powell. Leading conservative and right-wing religious groups have been quietly lobbying the White House for Martin to chair the FCC. Martin voted with Powell on key regulations favoring media consolidation, and in addition has been a self-appointed indecency czar. The indecency furor conveniently grabs headlines and pushes for the regulation of content, while Martin and the media moguls plan sweetheart deregulation deals to achieve piecemeal what they couldn`t push through all at once. This is the true indecency afflicting media today.

The major media conglomerates are among the most powerful on the planet. The onrush of digital convergence and broadband access in the workplaces and homes of America will radically change the way we work, play and communicate. Fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) from the regional Bells, Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony, bundled services from cable companies, and increased capacity in satellite and wireless technologies will transform the platforms on which we communicate.

Who owns these platforms, what is delivered over them and, fundamentally, in whose interest they work are critical issues before us now. Given the wealth of the media companies and their shrewd donations into our political process, the advocates for the public interest are in far too short a supply.

A blow against media ownership consolidation — now or in the future — will have far-reaching implications, as critical information gains exposure to a caring, active public. Instead of fake reality TV, maybe the media will start to cover the reality of people struggling to get by and of the victories that happen every day in our communities, and in strife-torn regions around the globe.

When people get information, they are empowered. We have to ensure that the airwaves are open for more of that. Our motto at "Democracy Now!" is to break the sound barrier. We call ourselves the exception to the rulers. We believe all media should be.

Amy Goodman, host of the award-winning radio and TV news show "Democracy Now!," and her brother David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother Jones, are authors of "The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them," which was just released in paperback by Hyperion.

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This President Is Right Indeed
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=99967
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But when this President says, “My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats.” he is to be believed, Goering tactics be damned. For his unmatchable past record of telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, there is every reason to believe that this President is right indeed.

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On 20th January 2005 the President of United states of America, in his inaugural address, spoke to his people and the world. He said;

"Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world."...“At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders.”

That certainly is the truth and nothing but the truth. As the US President was speaking those words, the United States maintained well over 700 foreign military outposts spread over a total of 140 countries around the world, including Asia, Europe and Africa. At least 60 of these are considered permanent. More are coming up. 85% of all foreign troops present within the Middle East are American. This President is right indeed.

“Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom.”… "Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

America, without a doubt, has been very busy in the pursuit of this ideal in the period the President mentions. She is estimated to have gone to war in no less than 23, some say 67, places on the globe since WW II. In the great liberating tradition, the United States has, by some estimates, dropped over a hundred million tons of bombs on foreign lands over the last 50 years, bringing freedom to millions of innocent human beings from the clutches of their wretched existences. For some reason, not necessarily oily ones, the Iraqis have been favorite candidates of this great liberating tradition.The benevolent sequence of bombs-sanctions-bombs has, thus, brought an enduring freedom to just about 1.5 million Iraqis, around 50% of whom were Iraqi children less than 5 years old. This President is right indeed.

To make this freedom a permanent success story, 2500 tons of depleted uranium munitions is reported to have been fired upon these Iraqis in 2004 alone. With a radio-active equivalent of thousands of Nagasaki bombs, and a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Iraqis are finally assured of an everlasting freedom. The great liberating tradition will live on eternally in generation after generation of deformed Iraqis. The world in general, and the Iraqis in particular, should be grateful to the Americans for helping them find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way. This President is right indeed.

When this President says "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” and that "The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: `Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it`." there is no cause to disbelieve him. For in the pursuit of this noble ideal, the United States of America befriended some of the world`s most fatherly tyrants, torturers, killers, dictators and crooks. To seek and support the growth of democratic movements, America propped up, aided, sustained and rewarded handsomely the most stinking of the rogues the world over. As America did it for the brotherhood of mankind, and with its nose pinched, this President is right indeed.

Here is a small list of rulers of outlaw regimes, with some omissions, of those who denied freedom to others and, thus, deserved it not for themselves;

General Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Idi Amin of Uganda, Colonel Hugo Banzer of Bolivia, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, P.W. Botha of South Africa, General Humberto Brancoof Brazil, Raoul Cedras, Francois Duvalier and Jean Claude Duvalier of Haiti, Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala, Chiang Kai-Shek of Taiwan, Roberto Suazo Cordova of Honduras, Alfredo Christiani and General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez of El Salvador, Ngo Dihn Diemof Vietnam, General Samuel Doe of Liberia, King Fahd bin`Abdul-`Aziz of Saudi Arabia, General Francisco Franco of Spain, Hassan II of Morocco, Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, General Manuel Noriega of Panama, Turgut Ozal of Turkey, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi of Iran, George Papadopoulos of Greece, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Pol Pot of Cambodia, General Zia Ul-Haq of Pakistan of Pakistan, Hale Salassie of Ethiopia, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, Anastasio Somoza Jr. and Anastasio Somoza Sr. of Nicaragua, General suharto of Indonesia, General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina and, hold your breaths, Saddam Hussain of Iraq.

So when this President says, “all who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you”, this President is right indeed.

This President says, “America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.” Yet a huge number of Americans believes that the second coming of this President himself was through rigged elections. As this President, however, has never told a lie in his whole life, this President is right indeed.

When this President says, “that edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people.” he is to be believed. He indeed is a very religious man and not very long back made his troops swear on a holy book before they entered Fallujah with guns blazing and laid waste to all life forms. That book contained the following passage;

I Samuel 15:3, "Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath; spare him not, nor covet any thing that is his; but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

So this President is right indeed.

When this President says, “in the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.” he is to be believed again. The post haste shredding of the Bill of rights, that most hallowed of the US Constitution’s canons, not withstanding. When the world in general, and the Americans in particular, hear him say, “America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home - the unfinished work of American freedom” they needlessly allow cold shards of chill to shoot up their collective spine. For he soon afterwards assures, “in a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty.” The chance of a universal Patriot Act being rammed down the combined throat of the whole world not withstanding, this President is right indeed.

When this President says, “we do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it.” he is to be believed again. For Pol Pot, that great humanitarian, when asked whether he wanted to apologize for the suffering he caused, too said, “No. ... I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country." Similarly, another great leader, General Augusto Pinochet, said, “I would like to be remembered as a man who served his country, who served Chile throughout his entire life on this earth and what he did was always done thinking about the welfare of Chile." As both these outstanding philanthropic leaders of the last century have remained America’s great friends, this President is right indeed.

Therefore, when the world says that the Neocons’ bandwagon of freedom plows over the bones of the dead, the world knows not. And when the world says that the deafening chorus of his sycophantic team is nothing but the howling of a wolf pack, the world is not tuned in to hear the right notes. Hence, when this president says that the world in general, and the Muslims in particular, hate American values, he is to be believed. For the gigantic truths of almost mythical proportions that this President has so far told, it seems this President is right indeed.

When Hermann Goering said, “Naturally, the common people don`t want war.....voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” Hermann Goering knew not. For if he knew better, every one would be living in one huge universal Reich by now.

But when this President says, “My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats.” he is to be believed, Goering tactics be damned. For his unmatchable past record of telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, there is every reason to believe that this President is right indeed.



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Published on Saturday, April 2, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Who is Brain-Dead?
by Alan Kobrin
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0402-21.htm

The passing of Terri Schiavo leaves us much to think about. The event itself. Why we should even be aware of it. Why and how it reached our consciousness and was utilized. Our Congress was sullied (again!), and our attention stolen from us, as the latest neo-con anti-democracy creed, the Unfairness of the Judiciary, was trotted out on the playing field of the American consciousness.

Many of us watched, astonished, dismayed, the TV coverage of the Congress -- the US Congress! -- was staying up late on a Sunday to determine if they would pass emergency legislation to require a twentieth judge to render a decision on the re-insertion of a feeding tube in a single woman in Florida. I can’t help but reflect how far we have gone and how much we have lost in this nation. A nation who sees bombs and bullets as the most efficient means of tough foreign policy changes - but prohibits seeing images of the results. A Congress that thinks nothing of cutting funding for healthcare and education for the rest of the citizens.

I thought, “Welcome to the Bush boys’ backyard barbecue of symbolic Life Values.” The special Congressional session in DC was a re-run of Jeb’s earlier attempt to have the Florida legislature create “Terri’s Law” in order to “save” their poster-child of Life -- and exploit the sad realities of a family’s tough end of life decisions -- as they make a mockery of the very purpose of Law.

You can’t really blame the more reactionary of them. Given their proclivity for pre-emptive war, torture, death penalty and pay-as-you-go healthcare, it’s not easy to make themselves look like Defenders of Life. To cloak themselves in that mantle, they require a helpless victim unable to pronounce her own opinions (and, therefore, a perfect choice for right-wing political razzle-dazzle). They are the champions of the brain-dead and the unborn. The rest, well, they apparently can go to hell. Why the others in Congress went along with this is in some ways more troubling.

The neo-cons and fundamentalists are on the attack. They are swarming, they are gloating. They have dizzied the lackluster opposition with so many punches -- ANWR, bankruptcy, war spending. They see the progressives and liberals as up against the ropes, and want to see the Other Side finally down on the canvas. Now they wanted this trophy: they battled to save Terri`s life. Big, symbolic.

Who really are the brain-dead ones here?

Brain-dead are the neo-con Right and their theocratic minion. They wish to Save the World from Reality and shape it to their own desires, showing neither pity nor respect for Facts, Law, or anyone outside their circle of the Saved. They could care less about such silly human experiments like Democracy, which for them is merely a word, a bullet point on a marketing brochure for Empire. The tens of thousands of Schiavos whose lives hang by a thread? Starve ‘em by pulling the tube on health care, minimum wage, and bankruptcy protection.

But brain-dead, too, are all too many seemingly progressives, liberals and moderates who enable the hijacking of our nation by ignoring it, or by cutting deals with our homegrown Wehrmacht. Brain-dead are those members of Congress who have stood silently by as a procession of would-be war criminals march, nearly unopposed into crucial life-controlling positions of authority and power. Abrams, Rice, Negroponte, Reich, Gonzalez, Bolton. Now they want Wolfowitz heading the World Bank?

Did of them say “No! This is a disgrace!”? Did any say “This is unacceptable!“? Did any of them warn us of the REAL dangers of this neo-con war trust? Where is an alternative vision? Which ones have said, ”Here, follow me! This is the way out.“? Except for Barbara Boxer, who among them even defended democracy and the votes` integrity by seeking a vote recount in Ohio lead by the Green Party`s David Cobb?

Elected. Holding office, Earning salaries. But for all intents and purposes, brain-dead. Enablers, the lot of them. On their best days, they can only hope to slow down the rape of our environment, our society, and our values - not to oppose or prevent it.

Brain-dead, too are the media, most of whom played along with this latest toy of Mass Distraction. Who was talking or thinking about Social Security, the plans for Iran, or the appointment of John Bolton as we were force-fed hourly images of a woman’s end-of-life drama?

We just saw the latest object lesson in how to tie up and gag the progressive community. Air America the year-old progressive media darling upon which so many dreams and hopes have been hung, was simply hijacked for nearly two weeks! All Terri, All the Time! How easy it was to fall into that trap. Without a clear, alternative vision of what progressives should be doing, what else could they talk about.?

Boy, has the Right got this nation hoodwinked. While their media outlets had a field day, do you think Rumsfeld, Cheney, Negroponte and gang stopped their action plans for one second over this? No, and I imagine they rally appreciated the smoke screen it provided.

It was that easy. With the Right`s concentration of money and media power, and progressives’ lack of will and alternative vision, we end up nearly ALL brain-dead, and will remain so until we find a unified vision and leadership to march us away from this brink of national - and planetary - disaster.

We need a rebirth and rededication to democracy and social justice right now. Who is stepping up to the plate?

Alan Kobrin is an activist, web consultant, and visual anthropologist who has been a national co-chair of the Green Party.

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Monday, April 04, 2005

Speaker of Parliament Elected amid Rancor

Two more US servicemen were killed by guerrilla attacks over the weekend, and the Green Zone took mortar fire near the Iraqi parliament again, during a recess, on Sunday. This news comes a day after a car bomb and mortar attack on Abu Ghraib prison, left 44 US troops wounded along with over a dozen Iraqis.

Enough security to allow a meeting of the parliament was achieved, however, only by closing major bridges in and out of Baghdad and placing restrictions on the circulation of drivers in the capital. Member of parliament and cleric, Shaikh Hussein al-Sadr, warned that such measures invonvenience Baghdadi shopkeepers and others and could produce dislike for the parliament if they continued (ash-Sharq al-Awsat). Meanwhile, journalists complained about being locked out of the proceedings. And women deputies, a little less than a third of the total, complained that they were not being offered any important cabinet or executive posts in the negotiations for the formation of a government.

The Guardian reports that the Iraqi parliament finally decided on a Sunni Arab speaker, Hajem al-Hassani, on Sunday. Although this step does break the logjam to some extent, it is not exactly a huge breakthrough in and of itself. It is now forgotten that it was supposed to be a pro forma decision taken the very first time the parliament met. There is also some evidence that the selection of speaker has alienated the Sunni community rather than pleasing them.

If the parliament stays deadlocked very much longer, the intrepid Anthony Shadid reveals, there is serious talk among the grand ayatollahs in Najaf about bringing millions of protesters out into the streets to force the politicians` hands. (Actually the subtext here is that such massive Shiite protests would put pressure on the Kurds to give up some of their maximalist demands and come to a compromise. Such an ultimatum in the streets would be extremely dangerous, especially if it threw Kirkuk into chaos).

The voting patterns for the two deputy speakers are analyzed by Al-Zaman in Arabic. Although the parliament members were supposed to vote for three slots, a Sunni Arab, a Shiite and a Kurd, for speaker and 2 deputy speakers, it appears that many deputies just voted for two candidates, the Sunni and the Shiite, not bothering about the Kurd. The person with the second most votes after al-Hassani was Hussein Shahristani, a Shiite nuclear engineer close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Shahristani only received 171 votes out of the 241 representatives in attendance. He was supported by the United Iraqi Alliance, which has 146 reliable votes. So some proportion of the Kurds, secular Shiites, and Sunni Arabs who make up the rest of parliament declined to support him.

The person with the third greatest number of votes was Arif Tayfur, a member of Massoud Barzani`s Kurdistan Democratic Party, who received 96 ballots in his favor. Since the 77 Kurds in parliament will have voted for him to a person, it seems clear that he got almost no votes from the religious Shiites of the UIA.

As for al-Hassani and the speaker position: The problem is that there are only 17 Sunni Arabs in the parliament. Three of them ran on the largely religious-Shiite United Iraqi Alliance list, and so were unacceptable to the Sunnis. Of the remaining 14, all but two had served in parliament under Saddam Hussein, or had other links to the Baath Party, and they were therefore unacceptable to the Shiites (and probably the Kurds as well).

Despite their Baath connections, two prominent Sunnis from this group made a bid for the position of speaker, backed by Sunni Arab parties and notables. The first was Adnan al-Janabi, supported by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. He was rejected by the UIA on the grounds that his brother had been close to Saddam. Allawi, a secular figure who had been attempting to rehabilitate the more moderate Baathists, was furious at this rebuff.

Then last Wednesday, the Sunni Arab caucus met and put forward Mishaan al-Juburi (Jiburi). The UIA viewed him as having been close to Saddam`s sons, Uday and Qusay, however, and flatly rejected him.

BBC World Monitoring translated an al-Arabiya report on what happened next:


` Text of report by Iraqi Al-Sharqiyah TV on 2 April

Groups supporting Mish`an al-Juburi, member of the Iraqi National Assembly, have continued their popular activities for nominating him for the post of the National Assembly Speaker.

The demonstrators in Tikrit north of Baghdad demanded that their choice of Deputy Mish`an al-Juburi as the candidate for this post be respected. Al-Sharqiyah TV correspondent said that the Iraqi forces provided protection at the demonstration in which thousands of people took part, including political and religious figures, in addition to tribal chiefs in Salah al-Din and other governorates.

This was followed by a two-minute video report on the demonstration by Ahamd Fadil, Al-Sharqiyah TV correspondent in Tikrit, who said: "In response to the objection announced by the United Iraqi Alliance to the nomination of Deputy Mish`an al-Juburi by the national dialogue council which represents Sunnis in Iraq, for the post of Speaker of the National Assembly, a demonstration kicked off in Tikrit in which many of those who demanded that their choice be respected took part."

The report included short interviews with Al-Juburi`s supporters who called for Al-Juburi`s nomination to be endorsed and rejected what they described as partitioning of Iraq.

The correspondent added: "In the slogans they shouted, the demonstrators called for the rejection of sectarianism and urged safeguarding the interests of Iraq in completing the structuring of the National Assembly and moving ahead with serving Iraq." `



Once those 15 were excluded, only two possibilities were left in parliament. They had both been expatriates in the Saddam years, and on the outs with the Baath. One was Ghazi al-Yawir, the interim president, who was at first thought a shoe-in for the job. But he withdrew from consideration, making a play for a position of vice president instead.

That left Hajem al-Hassani. He had been a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a successor of the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood. The Iraqi government web site says of him:



"Minister of Industry & Minerals

Dr. Hajem Al-Hassani

Dr. Al-Hassani was born in Kirkuk in 1954 and graduated from Mosul University. In 1979 he moved to the U.S. to study international trade at the University of Nebraska and earned a doctorate in industrial organization from the University of Connecticut. He has lectured at a number of American universities, managed an Internet company and worked most recently as head of the American Investment and Trading Company in Los Angeles. He has been a member of the board of a number of NGOs. Dr. Al-Hassani worked in the Iraqi Opposition for a number of years and became a member of the Politburo and then official spokesman of the Iraqi Islamic Party. He was elected to the follow up committee of the London Conference and has served as a Deputy Member of the Iraqi Governing Council and the Deputy Chair of its Finance Committee."



Al-Hassani was appointed by Allawi to oversee the disbursement of compensation money to inhabitants of Fallujah who suffered property losses during the American assault on the city in November and December.

Why al-Hassani wasn`t the first choice of the Sunni Arab caucus in parliament is obvious-- he was considered an outsider, a long-term expatriate. The Allawi secular ex-Baathists are no doubt suspicious of him as a Muslim fundamentalist.

As for the Iraqi Islamic Party itself, its leader, Muhsin Abdul Hamid, had angrily withdrawn from the interim government to protest the November assault on Fallujah. Al-Hassani represented the IIP on the cabinet, but he refused to resign. As a result, he was expelled from the party.

Al-Hassani had to run for parliament on the small Iraqiyyun Party of Ghazi al-Yawir, since he had broken with the IIP.

So if ordinary politics were happening in Iraq, al-Hassani would be the skunk at the tea party as far as Sunni Arabs were concerned. He declined to do anything practical to protest the attack on Fallujah, and flagrantly disregarded party discipline in his own party.

But as it transpires, al-Hassani is one of only two non-UIA Sunnis in parliament who are acceptable to the Shiites, and the only one of the two who would accept the job.

The whole sorry episode is a matter for some alarm, in my view.

Choosing a speaker of the house should not have taken so long or been so acrimonious.

The punitive attitude of the Shiites toward Sunni Arabs who had had anything at all to do with the Baath Party is scary, since most Sunni Arabs who amount to anything inside the country, did. The rule ought not to be guilt by association but actual guilt of some crime.

Twelve of the Sunni Arab members of parliament have been put on notice by the new deputy speaker, Hussein Shahristani, that they are nothing but Baathist lackeys in his view. That isn`t much incentive for them to reach back out to their community to join them in cooperating with the Shiites and ending the guerrilla war.

The demonstration in Tikrit for al-Juburi shows that Sunni Arabs feel that fanatical Shiite sectarianism is blocking their respected leaders. Since the whole point of giving the Sunnis symbolic posts like speaker of the house was to mollify them and draw them into the new government, I`d say it was counter-productive to drive the Sunnis to popular protest about the process.

For the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, who had been at the pinnacle of government and society, having the post of speaker of the house is not exactly the most thrilling thing to ever happen to them, anyway. That they are represented by a long-time expatriate who has no local grass roots and was expelled by his own party is pretty ominous.

The Allawi secularists and the Kurds may well be a little alarmed at the possibility of a fundamentalist Shiite-Sunni alliance at their expense. Al-Hassani won 215 votes out of 241 deputies present, in a secret ballot. Since he was favored by the United Iraqi Alliance, I am puzzled. Who were the 26 deputies that opposed him? Al-Zaman says that Iyad Allawi was absent for the vote. Did he and the 33 other deputies who were absent deliberately boycott the vote? We know that the Iraqiya list was furious over the rejection of al-Janabi for the post. Did his fellow Sunni Arabs even vote for him? Were any Kurds (75 seats) nervous about a fundamentalist Sunni Arab from Kirkuk? Since the ballot was secret, there is no way of knowing.

That is, you might well be able to construct an alternative headline for this story saying "Angry Secularists and Sunni Arabs boycott Shiite Shoe-Horning of Fundamentalist Expatriate Sunni in as Speaker."

So all the celebratory prose you will read on Monday from Western analysts about how this election of a Sunni Arab speaker is such a great leap forward and a sign of building communal harmony will need to be leavened with a little realism if the development is to be understood in its Iraqi context. Not everything in Iraq can be reduced to the issue of whether it is good or bad for the Bush administration or the Blair government.

posted by Juan @ [url4/4/2005 06:26:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/speaker-of-parliament-elected-amid.html[/url]

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April 4, 2005
EDITORIAL: AN INSECURE NATION
Guns for Terrorists
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/04/opinion/04mon1.html

If a background check shows that you are an undocumented immigrant, federal law bars you from buying a gun. If the same check shows that you have ties to Al Qaeda, you are free to buy an AK-47. That is the absurd state of the nation`s gun laws, and a recent government report revealed that terrorist suspects are taking advantage of it. There are a few promising signs, however, that the federal government is considering injecting some sanity into policies on terror suspects and guns.

The Government Accountability Office examined F.B.I. and state background checks for gun sales during a five-month period last year. It found 44 checks in which the prospective buyer turned up on a government terrorist watch list. A few of these prospective buyers were denied guns for other disqualifying factors, like a felony conviction or illegal immigration status. But 35 of the 44 people on the watch lists were able to buy guns.

The encouraging news is that the G.A.O. report may be prodding Washington to act. The F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller III, has announced that he is forming a study group to review gun sales to terror suspects. In a letter to Senator Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat, Mr. Mueller said that the new working group would review the national background check system in light of the report. We hope this group will take a strong stand in favor of changes in the law to deny guns to terror suspects.

In the meantime, Senator Lautenberg is pushing for important reforms. He has asked the Justice Department to consider making presence on a terrorist watch list a disqualifying factor for gun purchases. And he wants to force gun sellers to keep better records. Under a recent law, records of gun purchases must be destroyed after 24 hours, eliminating important information for law enforcement. Senator Lautenberg wants to require that these records be kept for at least 10 years for buyers on terrorist watch lists.

Keeping terror suspects from buying guns seems like an issue the entire nation can rally around. But the National Rifle Association is, as usual, fighting even the most reasonable regulation of gun purchases. After the G.A.O. report came out, Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.`s executive vice president, took to the airwaves to reiterate his group`s commitment to ensuring that every citizen has access to guns, and to cast doubt on the reliability of terrorist watch lists.

Unfortunately, the N.R.A. - rather than the national interest - is too often the driving force on gun policy in Congress, particularly since last November`s election. Even after the G.A.O.`s disturbing revelations, the Senate has continued its work on a dangerous bill to insulate manufacturers and sellers from liability when guns harm people. If it passes, as seems increasingly likely, it will remove any fear a seller might have of being held legally responsible if he provides a gun used in a terrorist attack.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Endlich mal jemand, der beschreibt was der Papst wirklich war.

The Pope has blood on his hands

The Pope did great damage to the church, and to countless Catholics
Terry Eagleton
Monday April 4, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1451484,00.ht…

Guardian
John Paul II became Pope in 1978, just as the emancipatory 60s were declining into the long political night of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. As the economic downturn of the early 70s began to bite, the western world made a decisive shift to the right, and the transformation of an obscure Polish bishop from Karol Wojtyla to John Paul II was part of this wider transition. The Catholic church had lived through its own brand of flower power in the 60s, known as the Second Vatican Council; and the time was now ripe to rein in leftist monks, clap-happy nuns and Latin American Catholic Marxists. All of this had been set in train by a pope - John XIII - whom the Catholic conservatives regarded as at best wacky and at worst a Soviet agent.

What was needed for this task was someone well-trained in the techniques of the cold war. As a prelate from Poland, Wojtyla hailed from what was probably the most reactionary national outpost of the Catholic church, full of maudlin Mary-worship, nationalist fervour and ferocious anti-communism. Years of dealing with the Polish communists had turned him and his fellow Polish bishops into consummate political operators. In fact, it turned the Polish church into a set-up that was, at times, not easy to distinguish from the Stalinist bureaucracy. Both institutions were closed, dogmatic, censorious and hierarchical, awash with myth and personality cults. It was just that, like many alter egos, they also happened to be deadly enemies, locked in lethal combat over the soul of the Polish people.

Aware of how little they had won from dialogue with the Polish regime, the bishops were ill-inclined to bend a Rowan-Williams-like ear to both sides of the theological conflict that was raging within the universal church. On a visit to the Vatican before he became Pope, the authoritarian Wojtyla was horrified at the sight of bickering theologians. This was not the way they did things in Warsaw. The conservative wing of the Vatican, which had detested the Vatican Council from the outset and done its utmost to derail it, thus looked to the Poles for salvation. When the throne of Peter fell empty, the conservatives managed to swallow their aversion to a non-Italian pontiff and elected one for the first time since 1522.

Once ensconced in power, John Paul II set about rolling back the liberal achievements of Vatican 2. Prominent liberal theologians were summoned to his throne for a dressing down. One of his prime aims was to restore to papal hands the power that had been decentralised to the local churches. In the early church, laymen and women elected their own bishops. Vatican 2 didn`t go as far as that, but it insisted on the doctrine of collegiality - that the Pope was not to be seen as capo di tutti capi, but as first among equals.

John Paul, however, acknowledged equality with nobody. From his early years as a priest, he was notable for his exorbitant belief in his own spiritual and intellectual powers. Graham Greene once dreamed of a newspaper headline reading "John Paul canonises Jesus Christ". Bishops were summoned to Rome to be given their orders, not for fraternal consultation. Loopy far-right mystics and Francoists were honoured, and Latin American political liberationists bawled out. The Pope`s authority was so unassailable that the head of a Spanish seminary managed to convince his students that he had the Pope`s personal permission to masturbate them.

The result of centring all power in Rome was an infantilisation of the local churches. Clergy found themselves incapable of taking initiatives without nervous glances over their shoulders at the Holy Office. It was at just this point, when the local churches were least capable of handling a crisis maturely, that the child sex abuse scandal broke. John Paul`s response was to reward an American cardinal who had assiduously covered up the outrage with a plush posting in Rome.

The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in this cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned - as a "culture of death" - condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the developing world from an agonising Aids death. The Pope goes to his eternal reward with those deaths on his hands. He was one of the greatest disasters for the Christian church since Charles Darwin.

· Terry Eagleton is professor of cultural theory at Manchester University
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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RONALD BROWNSTEIN | WASHINGTON OUTLOOK
Democrats Are Lost in the Shuffle While GOP Holds All the Cards
Ronald Brownstein
Washington Outlook
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-outl…

April 4, 2005

On almost every major question in Washington today, the choice isn`t whether to move in a Republican or Democratic direction, but how far in a Republican direction to move.

This is the grim reality of political life for Democrats at a time when the GOP controls the White House and both chambers of Congress.

This situation creates obvious problems for Democrats. But it`s also produced surprising risks for Republicans, measured in skidding approval ratings for President Bush and Congress.

The dynamic is more complex than it might seem.

From Social Security, to intervention in the sad case of Terri Schiavo, to the appointment of conservative federal judges, every major debate positions the parties in the same way: Republicans are on offense, Democrats on defense.

The debate on the federal budget isn`t about whether to raise taxes to reduce the deficit, it`s over how much more to cut taxes. Washington isn`t examining how to expand coverage for those without health insurance, but whether to cut the Medicaid program that provides the central strand in our society`s safety net.

Democrats are furiously laboring to prevent Bush from carving out private investment accounts from Social Security, but even if they succeed — which increasingly appears likely — they only will have preserved the status quo. Because Republicans embraced the cause of Schiavo`s parents, her case commanded public attention for weeks, while hardly anyone suggested the mass school shooting in Red Lake, Minn., deserved a policy response.

It`s like watching a baseball game where one team is always at bat, or a basketball game where one team always has the ball. The best Democrats can do is hold down the Republican score; the Democrats have found virtually no opportunities to advance their own ideas or to steer the discussion onto their strongest terrain.

Former Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. Bill Bradley last week suggested that the party faced this problem because it had not developed enough compelling ideas.

There`s some truth to that; congressional Democrats, for instance, have made a tactical decision not to offer an alternative to Bush`s Social Security initiative.

But a lack of ideas isn`t the Democrats` largest problem. Although the party hasn`t embraced an alternative Social Security proposal, some of its leading thinkers, such as Gene Sperling and Peter Orszag, have put serious alternatives on the table. On healthcare, Democratic thinkers have generated innovative plans to reduce malpractice claims, expand access and control costs.

The Democrats` biggest problem is that they don`t have a viable means to spotlight or forge a party consensus behind these ideas. Unless they can recruit Republican defectors, Democrats can`t force the serious legislative debate on their initiatives that would attract news coverage and public attention.

Democrats simply have failed to woo enough Republicans to create such opportunities. That`s meant congressional Democrats have been able to express their beliefs almost solely by blocking Bush proposals. As a party, they have had few opportunities to explain what they are for, only what they are against.

That pattern exposes Democrats to substantive and political risks. The substantive danger is that Republicans will push through policies that undermine core Democratic beliefs (like preserving Social Security as a universal safety net) or weaken Democratic constituencies (like trial lawyers squeezed by GOP changes to tort law), or both.

The most immediate political danger is that Republicans can portray Democrats as obstructionists, a dangerous label in the "red" Bush states. The larger problem is that the Democrats` inability to sustain attention on their ideas encourages a public sense that they have none. In the latest poll from Democracy Corps, a project of leading Democratic consultants, Republicans held a crushing 30-percentage-point advantage when voters were asked which party knows what it stands for.

That`s one measure of the Republican advantage in defining the debate. Yet that advantage creates its own risks. Politicians are usually most successful when they can contrast themselves with an opponent. President Clinton made himself look more centrist by effectively portraying congressional Republicans as extreme. Bush appeared stronger by defining Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) as indecisive in last year`s White House race.

The danger for the GOP is that the political dialogue is being structured less as a choice between Republican and Democratic ideas than as a referendum on Republican ideas alone. And some of those aren`t faring so well.

An overwhelming majority of Americans opposed congressional and White House intervention in the Schiavo case; Bush`s Social Security plan is lagging in the polls too. And it`s difficult to imagine that many Americans outside the GOP`s conservative base applauded House Majority Leader Tom DeLay`s (R-Texas) fevered rant against the courts last week following Schiavo`s death.

Republican strategists like Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, believe that even with these near-term reversals, the central focus on Republican ideas will benefit the party over time. "In the long term, this is the way you win in politics," he says. "You plant the seeds of your ideas, and you effectively blockade the other side from advancing any of its ideas."

Conversely, Democratic thinkers like veteran pollster Stanley B. Greenberg believe Republicans are planting the seeds for a voter backlash by overreaching. "Democrats have an opportunity in pushing off this agenda, which may seem extreme to many," he says.

Only future elections will settle that debate. But both analyses point to the same conclusion: The fate of both parties hangs mostly on the public`s verdict about Republican ideas.


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Apr 5, 2005
Vor dem Artikel zur Entwicklung im Irak möchte ich auf einen anderen Beitrag aus der heutigen Asia Times aufmerksam machen. Es geht um die Papstnachfolge. Dieser Artikel ist geschrieben von dem eigenwilligsten Kommentar, den ich kenne, Spengler, und hat natürlich wieder eine sehr ausgefallene Sicht der Dinge:
[urlRatzinger`s mustard seed]http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GD05Aa01.html[/url]
[urlThe Complete Spengler]http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/Spengler.html[/url]



Compromise or time-bomb?
By Bashdar Ismaeel
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD05Ak02.html

The euphoria surrounding the Iraqi elections of January 30 has fast evaporated over the past months, with politicians bogged down in protracted negotiations over the shape of the government, and the key characters who will head it.

In the first breakthrough on Sunday, delegates to the National Assembly chose Hajim al-Hasani, a US-educated Sunni economist who currently holds office as minister of industry, as Speaker of parliament. His two deputies will be Dr Husayn al-Shahristani (Shi`ite), one of the most prominent opposition leaders under Saddam Hussein, and Arif Tayfour, a Kurd.

The deputies are due to meet again on Wednesday to name a president and two vice presidents. After that they will select the premier, and the National Assembly is then charged with writing a new constitution by mid-August.

Wrangling over the past weeks has been intense and highly frustrating, with predominantly bilateral negotiations between the two main benefactors of the elections, the Kurds and the majority Shi`ite group.

The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and masterminded by the influential and most powerful figure in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, won a principal majority, with just over half of the seats in the new National Assembly - 146 of the 275 seats available. The Kurdistan Alliance scored 26% of the electoral turnout, representing 77 seats, and find themselves in the prime position of kingmakers. The strong turnout in the Kurdish-dominated areas of Iraq gave them a prized if not resented wild card that effectively means that no government can be formed without their approval and cooperation.

A union between the Kurdish and Shi`ite lists is logical, given that between them they control 223 seats or almost 81% of the overall quota. If an agreement can be struck between the long oppressed groups on the Iraqi mosaic, then the required two-thirds majority will never be in danger, although seemingly oppression and brutality under Saddam`s disposed regime and a newly found status of power is all they have in common.

In principle, a high-level deal on the future makeup of Iraq was struck even before the advent of the Second Gulf War among the many exiles now in the assembly. However, the finer implementation of any agreement is much harder than a vague common concord, that Iraq will be governed by a constitution that will be democratic, federal and pluralistic. The protracted negotiations, and even the lack of overall representation, with the main Sunni group forming less than 5% of the assembly, is an ominous step for Iraq - the real political jostling and fiery dealings have just begun and must be negotiated successfully to ensure that progress continues.

Protracted negotiations
Negotiations to date have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many, with the see-sawing situation highlighting restlessness and frustration, with each group at times blaming the other for stalling. Crucially, the US, clearly still jubilant from the apparent success of the first Iraqi elections in 50 years, decided to opt out as an influencing factor in the negotiations, and smartly left the Iraqis to sort it out themselves.

The impact of the negotiations on the Iraqi geographical, political and ethnic showground is the obvious reason why they have became so protracted. In theory, the US-sponsored Transitive Administrative Law (TAL) should have set the wheels and basis for these negotiations in motion, however, somewhat ironically, the TAL, which was reviled by many and only signed after days of delays and US pressure, was a debating factor and a hindrance.

The TAL in principle was most notorious for the " Kurdish veto" , where a majority in three provinces can reject a constitution, effectively allowing the Kurds the ability to reject any article that is not deemed in their best interest. However, how a group that only composes 20% of the Iraqi population can be granted such power, where 65% of the population is Shi`ite, clearly left many a politician questioning the dominant and power-broking role of the Kurds. Conversely, however, many of the secularist groups within Iraq, and significantly the US, are quietly pleased with the lack of an authoritative Shi`ite grip on power, thus diluting demands, such as Sharia law, which the US feared would align the Shi`ites in Iraq closely with the Iranian theocracy only a short drive across the border.

The Kurdish wild card
The UIA candidacy for prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, was announced shortly after the elections. However, forming an agreement with the Kurds has proved a touch more elusive. The Kurds, conscious that their new historical role of power-broker won`t last, are keen to maximize their gains, and for the first time in their less than colorful history, imprint their mark on the new Iraq.

Coupled with the virtual de-facto independence they have been enjoying since 1991 under a US military umbrella, they are very reluctant to bow down to the pressures of the greater Iraq once more. This is an Iraq that most of the new generation in the north have not seen, and that only reminds them about their oppressive and bitter past. Clearly, as two referendums have shown, most Kurds aspire to independence, which is widely acknowledged in the present climate as political suicide, with hostile neighboring countries ready to pounce. The second best for them would be a form of federalism that is close to their current status, and in reality very close to outright independence. However, this has been a crucial stumbling block in the negotiations, with the Shi`ite`s adopting a line that either the Kurds are partners in the new Iraq or not.

This leads on to the logical question in any so-called voluntary union; how far does decentralization go, and what will federalism constitute? The answer to this in turn determines just as importantly how disparate each federation becomes, for example, will the regional resources be a property of the federal region or the central administration, in other words, will distribution of natural resources be based on geography or ethnicity?

Circular negotiations have at times been common, perhaps most evident in the TAL on the role of Islam in the constitution. Although Islam is deemed " a source of legislation" , more problematically, it is not the source. Furthermore, under the interim constitution, no legislation can be adopted which may go against the principles of Islam. This is effectively an Islamic veto on legislation. Yet there appears to be a counter veto to that handed to the Islamists - no law can be adopted which contravenes democratic principles or civil rights.

The Kurds have spearheaded the negotiations with a number of principle demands. Kirkuk is to be instated in the Kurdish-administered region straight away, with the resettlement of Arabs who came under the infamous Arabization policy to be expedited. Furthermore, resources of the Kurdish area, including Kirkuk, are to come under the restrain of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). The Kurdish paramilitary force and the protectorate force in Iraqi Kurdistan, the peshmerga, will remain under the authority of the KRG, and the Iraqi army is prohibited to enter without prior consent of the Kurdistan parliament.

Significantly, for the secular-minded Kurds who are predominantly Sunni in origin, the government must not be Islamist in orientation. This was augmented by the Kurdish desire to bring on board the more secular Shi`ite list, the Democratic Alliance of interim premier Iyad Allawi, to dilute Shi`ite Islamist demands. Above all else, the Kurds, who are still distrustful of the greater Iraq, want written guarantees on any agreement.

The Shi`ite demands are slightly more clear-cut than that of the Kurds. It is more of a case of Shi`ites meeting Kurdish demands than the other way round. In reality, the Kurds will not hesitate to agree on demands by the Shi`ites, as long as their federal region incorporates their key demands, and the center does not have an influential control over the area. The main demand of the UIA is that Islam should be the overriding source, if not the source of legislation. For the Shi`ites, Iraq is to remain as much of a centralized unit as possible, where the government in Baghdad will drive resource management and its distribution, foreign policy and defense, among others. They, as the majority, believe that in turn they should have the biggest influence on the makeup of the new Iraq and the subsequent constitution.

Elusive compromise
Compromise is the classical element of any democracy, where those around the negotiating table can ascertain some median ground for cooperation and agreement. However, this principle is foreign to an Iraq that hosted a brutal dictatorship for almost 35 years. And even when compromises arise, it is doubtful that the principles will be all-enchanting and wide-reaching. Many elements are likely to be swept under the political rug at the new assembly for the sake of driving the process forward and thwarting the thriving insurgents who have experienced a field day of late as the politicians bicker.

For example, in reality, to resolve the internal-security question in Kurdistan, the peshmerga will in effect remain intact, with only a handful joining the new army, where they will be referred to differently and as an official unit of the greater Iraqi armed forces. Kirkuk will eventually be returned to the KRG, but according to the terms of the TAL.

Mindful of a Sunni and even Turkmen backlash, the Shi`ites have decreed that Kirkuk will not be returned while the thousands of Iraqis which moved in under the Arabization campaign are still there. This could cause inevitable conflict, and be perceived as breaking to the will of the Kurds among the Sunni clergy already underrepresented and skeptical about their political future.

A number of Kurdish demands will be granted. However, these agreements have to be seen as democratic and not the result of backroom dealings. This will look more justifiable, especially in front of the ever-watchful eyes of bordering Turkey, which has repeated the intervention rhetoric more than once. Conversely, in the eyes of the independent-minded Kurdish population, any agreement must not be seen as a sellout to the Arabic majority. In reality, the Kurds will have more influence from the center than first envisaged, but crucially the Kurdish parties will be mindful to not portray this as a step back for Kurdistan.

As for the crucial question of natural resources, in return for not controlling the abundant oil-fields of Kirkuk in the north, the Kurds will receive a high percentage of oil distribution from the center.

Future repercussions
Even once the elusive first government is formed, the road ahead may be bumpier and rougher than the proportion of the way it has successfully negotiated thus far.

It is important that any agreement is in essence future-proof. If it is formed for the sake of progressing with a new government and utilizing the momentum created by the elections, then problems are sown as opposed to resolved. Any "hot item" postponed on the political agenda has an annoying habit of gaining heat as time goes by, and either way it will burn if precautions are not taken.

The TAL, although a significant agreement, was signed with much reservation and was somewhat even bypassed when, under pressure from Sistani, it omitted any mention of United Nations Resolution 1456, which deals with suppressing terrorism. For some, any agreement in the current climate will not represent a true coalition, but a very loose mutual cooperation.

The consequences of any agreement are obvious if any party, particularly the Kurds, feel that their best interests have not been considered, or that any deal has been reneged; there is the inevitable threat of a breakdown in government and possibly a threat of secession altogether. In turn, no Kurdish participation means that there is no government; the political mind games are far from over.

The problems do not lie just in the formation of a government, but also in the greater Iraqi ethnic landscape. The first Kurdish president in Iraq may not strike well with the Sunni elite, some Shi`ites and surrounding Arabic countries. How a Kurdish president will be perceived at the Arabic League summits remains to be seen. Kurdish control of Kirkuk and the subsequent reaction by the Sunni, and particularly neighboring Turkey, to its annexation to the KRG poses an interesting predicament.

How a common national identity can be placed over the vast Iraqi ethnic mosaic is the most critical of all the key challenges ahead. The official language of Iraq will be both Kurdish and Arabic, but in reality both languages will remain regional-based. It is very likely that essentially Iraq will be composed of disparate if not independent regions. The exact law-making powers of each region remain to be seen. It is unclear if each region will be able to formulate separate trade agreements and foreign alliances; even the proposed international status of the new Arbil airport (KRG capital) became a recent discussion point. An iconic and significant indicator of national identity is the national flag, and even that will cause dispute and controversy in Iraq, as it has in the past.

An overpowering consequence, at this decisive time, will be the non-participation of Sunni Arabs. It is imperative that they are brought on board and given key cabinet positions, despite merely holding 20 seats at the National Assembly, to ensure that elements of the insurgency are appeased and the government is portrayed as incisive and united. The appointment of Hasani will go some way to meeting this requirement. Importantly, the Shi`ite-Kurdish coalition is also eager to carve out a role for outgoing premier Allawi, whose list came in second with 40 seats, to ensure a wider depth to the coalition.

Cabinet posts
The president, along with his two deputies, will be part of the so-called presidential council, which will be formally charged with appointing the prime minister. Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is widely predicted to assume the largely iconic role of president. Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni, will likely assume one of the roles of vice president, with Allawi holding the other vice presidency. Prominent Shi`ite politician Dr Ibrahim Jaafari is the most likely bet for premier.

Of the 30 ministries available, the government will be divided roughly on the basis of a sectarian quota, leaving 16 posts for Shi`ites, six for the Kurds, six for Sunni Arabs and one each for Christians and Turkmen.

Conclusion
The strength and credibility of any new government is going to be open to debate. Some will argue that whatever results are achieved will be nothing short of classic compromise and a sign that Iraqis truly want to work together in shaping their future. However, just as importantly, some will portray any coalition as a time-bomb, which will rear its ugly head in the not too distant future.

Most reassuringly, Iraqis are trying to reconcile their divergent visions via the medium of political dialogue. For this to remain, however, and to stave off any civil war, all groups, regardless of the results of the elections, must be considered, and any agreement must meet the sensitivities of any one group.

One thing that is apparent, Jaafari, as the new prime minister, will certainly be under the spotlight and has tough times ahead. There was even premature pressure in some UIA circles for him to withdraw as their candidate because of the slow progress on forming a coalition, with some in other circles still a touch apprehensive in terms of his apparent Islamist designs on Iraq.

The first National Assembly which convened on March 15 was ominous to future dealings, with the vast ethnic and religious array on show, a great example of the wide spectrum that is Iraq. Even before the government was sworn in, there was disagreement on whether oaths should be read in Kurdish, Arabic, or both.

The "ripple of change" across Iraq and the Middle East, as hailed by Britain`s Prime Minister Tony Blair, and encouraged by the US, as the new dawn of democracy, has not quite materialized in Iraq, but Iraqis have made progress. Iraq has been marked from its early days by a totalitarian grip on power; it is no surprise that negotiations have been onerous and time-consuming. However, having waited almost 35 years to escape the grip of repression and totalitarianism, it is fair to say that the majority of Iraqis are willing to accept the delays.

Bashdar Ismaeel is a London- based freelance writer who also holds first-class bachelor of science degree honors. The focus of his work is primarily on Iraq, the Kurds and Middle Eastern current affairs. He can be contacted at [e-mail].

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Monday, April 04, 2005
War News for Monday, April 4, 2005; 1100GMT

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: US soldier killed by roadside bomb in Bayji.

Bring `em on: A foreigner, with western features, working as a private guard, was killed and others in his convoy were wounded when they were ambushed near Balad.

Bring `em on: Two traffic policemen gunned down in Mosul.

Bring `em on: Bodies of two Iraqi army officers found in Mosul.

Bring `em on: US soldier killed in bomb attack in Hadithah.

Bring `em on: Three people wounded by roadside bomb near Abu Ghraib.

Who is the enemy? It has been established beyond doubt that the March 4 death in Iraq of a Bulgarian soldier, Candidate Officer Gurdi Gurdev, was caused by an exchange of gunfire between Bulgarian and US forces, the Defence Ministry in Sofia announced.

Guerrilla Warfare 101

Because at least some Iraqis were determined to get us out of their country, using guerrilla warfare tactics and terrorism against us and those Iraqis who supported us, we had to use our military forces to set parameters on the issues, the personnel and the form of this expression of freedom. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau long ago advocated, we decided to force men to be free. The fact that, however unfree they were, the elections were held was hailed as a great victory for democracy. I remain unconvinced. I suspect that two fatal flaws will soon become evident: a heightening of the divisive tendencies already inherent in Iraqi society and a devaluation of the very concept of representative government.

Our policies on security are similarly subject to different interpretation. Where we have done most of what we have done in the name of security, our critics in Iraq have sought sovereignty. We believed that security had to come first. A close reading of history leads me to believe that the order is usually the reverse. When foreigners get out, insurgencies stop; they do not stop, no matter how massive the force used against them or how costly in blood and treasure the cost of fighting is, until the foreigners leave. This surely is the lesson of Ireland, Çeçneya, Algeria, and even of our own Revolution. I predict it will be of Iraq too.

War is always unpredictable no matter how powerful the advantages one side seems to have at the beginning; the second is that they are always horrible. Not only are people killed or severely harmed, but whole societies, even of the victors, are brutalized . This was true of the British in Kenya, the French in Algeria, the Americans in the Philippines, the Russians in Central Asia, and the Chinese in Tibet. Finally, guerrilla wars are, at best, unwinnable – lasting as in Ireland for centuries and in Algeria for a century and a half. Çeçneya suffered massacre, deportation, rape and massive destruction for nearly four centuries and still is not “pacified.” No one wins a guerrilla war; both sides lose. The only sensible policy is one that aims to stop them not to win them.

Looting and Bombing Iraqi Heritage

As well as the Malwiya minaret, two other symbols of Iraq have also suffered damage at the hands of the US military. The second is the Arch of Ctesiphon, the 30-metre high gate of a Sassanian palace built in the 4th century and remodelled by the reformist King Chosroes I in the 6th century. The arch is the largest single span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world and is one of its historical wonders. During World War II British troops fighting the Ottomans at Kut were told that the arch was not to be shelled even if the Turks were using the ruins of the palace as a firing or observation post. The arch was damaged in the 1991 Gulf war by US bombing. By the time the US resumed all-out war on Iraq in 2003 the state of the arch seems to have deteriorated seriously, almost certainly due to neglect. In April 2003, a briefing officer of US-allied Australian forces said that "the arch is in such poor condition that even a surgical strike against an individual vehicle [halted beneath the arch] could cause it to fall because of the shock waves from an explosion." Unesco has proposed a plan to stabilise the site but it has been able to implement this plan due to the lack of security in the country.

The third symbol is the famous Ishtar Gate of the ancient city of Babylon. Although the top portion of the portal, covered in glazed bricks decorated with dragons and other mythical creatures, was carted off to Berlin by the Germans, the lower unglazed section remains in place. At least nine of the molded bricks bearing the images of dragons have been damaged, some by a thief trying to prise them out. Since Babylon was being used by US and Polish forces as a military depot and base until mid-January of this year, the officers and men of the contingents concentrated there are responsible for the damage. For nearly two years archaeologists from the Department of Antiquities were not given free access to the site. They only obtained this when it was returned to the Ministry of Culture in January.

WTF! Where has the Iraqi reconstruction money gone?

Wall Street: Of the $18.4 billion that Congess appropriated 16 months ago for postwar reconstruction in Iraq, only $3.6 billion has been spent to date. There has been much head-scratching over this uncharacteristic failure of the Pentagon to spend money promptly.

A recently unearthed portion of a Defense Department memo sheds some light on the issue, suggesting that more than $14 billion earmarked for reconstruction was actually invested on Wall Street. The memo’s author and date are unknown. This portion of the apparently classified document -- marked "page 3" -- was mistakenly sent to Mid-America Seed Savers, a nonprofit organization in Lawrence, Kansas whose members had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the Army’s alleged distribution of genetically engineered wheat seed to farmers in Iraq. The memo fragment is reproduced here in full:

[page heading] Reconstruction fund enhancement - p. 3

[...] that among these, the scenario with greatest potential was investment in a medium-risk portfolio of U.S.-based securities. To accomplish this without incurring excessive and unwarranted scrutiny, the Secretary issued a classified order creating the Office of Special Brokerage Services (OSBS), to which management of the reconstruction funds was assigned. The OSBS, quietly through third parties, purchased approximately $5 billion in stock in February, 2004. Another $9.2 billion was invested the following month. As of December 31, 2004, the fund had shown a net growth of approximately -1.7%.



Thanks to alert reader Bob for this story

Blackwater Tactical Weekly

Dated 7 March and bearing the name of Blackwater`s president, Gary Jackson, the electronic newsletter adds that terrorists `need to get creamed, and it`s fun, meaning satisfying, to do the shooting of such folk.`

Human rights groups said yesterday that the comments raised fresh questions over the role of civilian contractors operating in Iraq and other world flashpoints.

`We are very concerned about the increased use of security companies, there needs to be more inspection and regulation of these companies,` said a spokesman for Amnesty International.

Blackwater has already been the subject of lobbying efforts to introduce tighter regulations on private military operations in Iraq.

It is one of the fastest growing private security firms in the world, and achieved global prominence last year when four of its men were ambushed by a crowd of Iraqis and their bodies mutilated and dragged around the Iraqi city of Falluja.

The controversial wording of the Blackwater bulletin appears to be an attempt to criticise the `righteous outcry` that followed a recent statement from a senior US Marine general who, on returning home from Iraq, claimed it was `fun to shoot some people`. While the views of Lieutenant-General James Mattis drew a frosty response from the Pentagon, others said his observations reflected the harsh realities of war.

Thanks to regular reader Dana for this story

Justification for War

An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq. According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq`s alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as `crazy` by his intelligence handlers and a `congenital liar` by his friends.

The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball`s credibility, his claims were included in the administration`s case for war without caveat.

According to the report, the failure of US spy agencies to scrutinise his claims are the `primary reason` that they `fundamentally misjudged the status of Iraq`s [biological weapons] programs`. The catalogue of failures and the gullibility of US intelligence make for darkly comic reading, even by the standards of failure detailed in previous investigations. Of all the disproven pre-war weapons claims, from aluminium centrifuge tubes to yellow cake uranium from Niger, none points to greater levels of incompetence than those found within the misadventures of Curveball.

The Americans never had direct access to Curveball - he was controlled by the German intelligence services who passed his reports on to the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon`s spy agency.

Redeployment of British troops to Afghanistan

Defence sources have told the Scotsman that Britain is preparing to spearhead a new offensive in Afghanistan next year, sending 5,000 troops into the country to lead the hunt for Osama bin Laden and tackle the country’s opium trade.

Military commanders in Iraq believe the campaign there has "turned the corner" and the country’s own security forces are now able to take on a greater burden of the struggle against the insurgency that has gripped Iraq since the United States-led invasion two years ago.

Tony Blair hopes this will allow some 5,500 of the 9,500 strong British garrison in Iraq to be withdrawn by April next year, with the remaining troops being pulled back out of harm’s way to a small number of remote desert bases away from population centres.

Afghanistan is to be the British military’s "main effort" during 2006, according to army officers who say it is hoped that Iraq will have calmed down enough by the spring next year to allow resources to be switched to the new campaign.

Will someone please remind me why the hunt for Osama Bin Laden was scaled back so that Iraq could be invaded on the intelligence provided by an alcoholic?
# posted by Friendly Fire : 1:11 AM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 03, 2005
Military Fatalities: Total: 1714 , US: 1537 , Apr.05: 3

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Baghdad Burning

Sunday, April 03, 2005

American Media...
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/archives/2005_04_01_riverb…

You wake up in the morning. Brush your teeth. Splash the sleep out of your eyes and head for the kitchen for a cup of coffee or tea and whatever is available for breakfast.

You wander to the living room and search for the remote control. It is in its usual place- stuck inexplicably between the sofa cushions. You turn on the television and stand there flipping from one channel to the other, looking for a news brief or something that will sum up what happened during those six hours you slept. You finally settle on the pleasant face on the screen- the big hair, bright power suit, capped teeth and colorful talons- blandly reading the news. The anchoress is Julie Chan. The program is CBS’s The Early Show (Live from Fifth Avenue!).

Guess the nationality of the viewer above. Three guesses. American? No. Canadian? No. British? Japanese? Australian? No, no and no. The viewer is Iraqi… or Jordanian… or Lebanese… or Syrian… or Saudi… or Kuwaiti… or… but you get the picture.

Two years ago, the major part of the war in Iraq was all about bombarding us with smart bombs and high-tech missiles. Now there’s a different sort of war- or perhaps it’s just another phase of the same war. Now we’re being assailed with American media. It’s everywhere all at once.

It began with radio stations like Voice of America which we could access even before the war. After the war, there were other radio stations- ones with mechanical voices that told us to put down our weapons and remain inside our homes, ones that fed us American news in an Iraqi dialect and ones that just played music. With satellite access we are constantly listening to American music and watching American sitcoms and movies. To be fair- it’s not just Iraq that is being targeted- it’s the whole region and it’s all being done very cleverly.

Al-Hurra, the purported channel of freedom, is the American gift to the Arab world. What they do is show us translated documentaries about certain historical events (American documentaries) or about movie stars (American stars) or vacation spots. Throughout this, there are Arab anchors giving us the news (which is like watching Fox in Arabic). It’s news about the Arab world with the American twist.

Our new “national” channels are a joke. One of the most amusing, in a gruesome sort of way, is Al-Iraqiya. It’s said to be American sponsored but the attitude is decidedly pro-Iran, anti-Sunni. There’s a program where they parade ‘terrorists’ on screen for us to see in an attempt to show us that our National Guard are not only good at raiding homes and harassing people in the streets. The funny thing about the terrorists is that the majority of them have “Sunni” names like Omar and Othman, etc. They admit to doing things such as having sexual intercourse in mosques and raping women and the whole show is disgusting. Iraqis don’t believe it because it’s so obviously produced to support the American definition of the Iraqi, Sunni, Islamic fanatic that it is embarrassing. Couldn’t the PSYOPS people come up with anything more subtle?

Then you have the whole MBC collection. MBC is actually financed by Saudi Arabia, but based in Dubai, as far as I know. They have several different channels. It started out with the original MBC which was a mainly Arabic channel that was harmless enough. It showed some talk shows, debates and Egyptian movies with an occasional program on music or style.

Then we were introduced to MBC’s Al-Arabia- a news channel which was meant to be the Saudi antidote to Al-Jazeera. Simultaneously, we were accessing MBC’s Channel 2, which is a channel that shows only English movies and programs. The programs varied from talk shows like Oprah, to sitcoms like Friends, Third Rock from the Sun and Seinfeld. Earlier this year, the MBC did a mystifying thing. They announced that Channel 2 was going to be made a 24-hour movie channel which would show all sorts of movies- old Clint Eastwood cowboy movies, and newer movies like “A Beautiful Mind”, etc. The programs and sitcoms would be transferred to the new MBC Channel 4.

Personally, I was pleased with the change at first. I’m not big on movies and it was nice to know our favorite sitcoms and programs would all be accessible on one channel without the annoyance of two-hour movies. I could turn on Channel 4 at any time and expect to find something interesting or humorous that would end within 30-60 minutes.

The first time I saw 60 Minutes on MBC 4, it didn’t occur to me that something was wrong. I can’t remember what the discussion was, but I remember being vaguely interested and somewhat mystified at why we were getting 60 Minutes. I soon found out that it wasn’t just 60 Minutes at night: It was Good Morning, America in the morning, 20/20 in the evening, 60 Minutes, 48-Hours, Inside Edition, The Early Show… it was a constant barrage of American media. The chipper voice in Arabic tells us, “So you can watch what *they* watch!” *They* apparently being millions of Americans.

The schedule on MBC’s Channel 4 goes something like this:

9 am – CBS Evening News
9:30 am – CBS The Early Show
10:45 am – The Days of Our Lives
11:20 am – Wheel of Fortune
11:45 am – Jeopardy
12:05 pm – A re-run of whatever was on the night before – 20/20, Inside Edition, etc.

And the programming continues…

I’ve been enchanted with the shows these last few weeks. The thing that strikes me most is the fact that the news is so… clean. It’s like hospital food. It’s all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned and you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention to the portions- 2 minutes on women’s rights in Afghanistan, 1 minute on training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All the reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person manages to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once.

About a month ago, we were treated to an interview on 20/20 with Sabrina Harman- the witch in some of the Abu Ghraib pictures. You know- the one smiling over faceless, naked Iraqis piled up to make a human pyramid. Elizabeth Vargus was doing the interview and the whole show was revolting. They were trying to portray Sabrina as an innocent who was caught up in military orders and fear of higher ranking officers. The show went on and on about how American troops never really got seminars on Geneva Conventions (like one needs to be taught humanity) and how poor Sabrina was being made a scapegoat. They showed the restaurant where she worked before the war and how everyone thought she was “such a nice person” who couldn’t hurt a fly!

We sat there watching like we were a part of another world, in another galaxy. I’ve always sensed from the various websites that American mainstream news is far-removed from reality- I just didn’t know how far. Everything is so tame and simplified. Everyone is so sincere.

Furthermore, I don’t understand the worlds fascination with reality shows. Survivor, The Bachelor, Murder in Small Town X, Faking It, The Contender… it’s endless. Is life so boring that people need to watch the conjured up lives of others?

I have a suggestion of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters and throw them in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least 14 days. We could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of electricity, the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the bombings, and- oh yeah- the ‘insurgents’. We could watch their house bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight of cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could see them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the equivalent of $150)…

I’d not only watch *that* reality show, I’d tape every episode.

- posted by river @ 1:08 AM

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Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons

Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?

By Deborah Davies

They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4 . It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

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Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons

Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?

By Deborah Davies

They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4 . It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. ‘Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.’

If a prisoner doesn’t drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There’s a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.

Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can’t crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes.

Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cellblock while the guards stand over them shouting, prodding and kicking.

Second by second, their humiliation is captured on a video camera by one of the guards.

The images of abuse and brutality he records are horrifyingly familiar. These were exactly the kind of pictures from inside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that shocked the world this time last year.

And they are similar, too, to the images of brutality against Iraqi prisoners that this week led to the conviction of three British soldiers.

But there is a difference. These prisoners are not caught up in a war zone. They are Americans, and the video comes from inside a prison in Texas

They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for Channel 4 that will be broadcast next week.

Our findings were not based on rumour or suspicion. They were based on solid evidence, chiefly videotapes that we collected from all over the U.S.

In many American states, prison regulations demand that any ‘use of force operation’, such as searching cells for drugs, must be filmed by a guard.

The theory is that the tapes will show proper procedure was followed and that no excessive force was used. In fact, many of them record the exact opposite.

Each tape provides a shocking insight into the reality of life inside the U.S. prison system – a reality that sits very uncomfortably with President Bush’s commitment to the battle for freedom and democracy against the forces of tyranny and oppression.

In fact, the Texas episode outlined above dates from 1996, when Bush was state Governor.

Frank Carlson was one of the lawyers who fought a compensation battle on behalf of the victims. I asked him about his reaction when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last year and U.S. politicians rushed to express their astonishment and disgust that such abuses could happen at the hands of American guards.

‘I thought: “What hypocrisy,” Carlson told me. ‘Because they know we do it here every day.’

All the lawyers I spoke to during our investigations shared Carlson’s belief that Abu Ghraib, far from being the work of a few rogue individuals, was simply the export of the worst practices that take place in the domestic prison system all the time. They pointed to the mountain of files stacked on their desks, on the floor, in their office corridors – endless stories of appalling, sadistic treatment inside America’s own prisons.

Many of the tapes we’ve collected are several years old. That’s because they only surface when determined lawyers prise them out of reluctant state prison departments during protracted lawsuits.

But for every ‘historical’ tape we collected, we also found a more recent story. What you see on the tape is still happening daily.

It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

In one horrific scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking device called a ‘restraint chair’. His hands and feet are shackled, there’s a strap across his chest, his head lolls forward. He looks dead. He’s not. Not yet.

The chair is his punishment because guards saw him in his cell with a pillowcase on his head and he refused to take it off. The man has a long history of severe schizophrenia. Sixteen hours later, they release him from the chair. And two hours after that, he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment.

The tape comes from Utah – but there are others from Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Arizona and probably many more. We found more than 20 cases of prisoners who’ve died in the past few years after being held in a restraint chair.

Two of the deaths we investigated were in the same county jail in Phoenix, Arizona, which is run by a man who revels in the title of ‘America’s Toughest Sheriff.’

His name is Joe Arpaio. He positively welcomes TV crews and we were promised ‘unfettered access.’ It was a reassuring turn of phrase – you don’t want to be fettered in one of Sheriff Joe’s jails.

We uncovered two videotapes from surveillance cameras showing how his tough stance can end in tragedy.

The first tape, from 2001, shows a man named Charles Agster dragged in by police, handcuffed at the wrists and ankles. Agster is mentally disturbed and a drug user. He was arrested for causing a disturbance in a late-night grocery store. The police handed him over to the Sheriff’s deputies in the jail. Agster is a tiny man, weighing no more than nine stone, but he’s struggling.

The tape shows nine deputies manhandling him into the restraint chair. One of them kneels on Agster’s stomach, pushing his head forward on to his knees and pulling his arms back to strap his wrists into the chair.

Bending someone double for any length of time is dangerous – the manuals on the use of the `restraint chair’ warn of the dangers of ‘positional asphyxia.’

Fifteen minutes later, a nurse notices Agster is unconscious. The cameras show frantic efforts to resuscitate him, but he’s already brain dead. He died three days later in hospital. Agster`s family is currently suing Arizona County.

His mother, Carol, cried as she told me: ‘If that’s not torture, I don’t know what is.’ Charles’s father, Chuck, listened in silence as we filmed the interview, but every so often he padded out of the room to cry quietly in the kitchen.

The second tape, from five years earlier, shows Scott Norberg dying a similar death in the same jail. He was also a drug user arrested for causing a nuisance. Norberg was severely beaten by the guards, stunned up to 19 times with a Taser gun and forced into the chair where – like Charles Agster – he suffocated.

The county’s insurers paid Norberg’s family more than £4 millions in an out-of-court settlement, but the sheriff was furious with the deal. ‘My officers were clear,’ he said. ‘The insurance firm was afraid to go before a jury.’

Now he’s determined to fight the Agster case all the way through the courts. Yet tonight, in Sheriff Joe’s jail, there’ll probably be someone else strapped into the chair.

Not all the tapes we uncovered were filmed by the guards themselves. Linda Evans smuggled a video camera into a hospital to record her son, Brian. You can barely see his face through all the tubes and all you can hear is the rhythmic sucking of the ventilator.

He was another of Sheriff Joe’s inmates. After an argument with guards, he told a prison doctor they’d beaten him up. Six days later, he was found unconscious of the floor of his cell with a broken neck, broken toes and internal injuries. After a month in a coma, he died from septicaemia.

‘Mr Arpaio is responsible.’ Linda Evans told me, struggling to speak through her tears. ‘He seems to thrive on this cruelty and this mentality that these men are nothing.’

In some of the tapes it’s not just the images, it’s also the sounds that are so unbearable. There’s one tape from Florida which I’ve seen dozens of times but it still catches me in the stomach.

It’s an authorised ‘use of force operation’ – so a guard is videoing what happens. They’re going to Taser a prisoner for refusing orders.

The tape shows a prisoner lying on an examination table in the prison hospital. The guards are instructing him to climb down into a wheelchair. ‘I can’t, I can’t!’ he shouts with increasing desperation. ‘It hurts!’

One guard then jabs him on both hips with a Taser. The man jerks as the electricity hits him and shrieks, but still won’t get into the wheelchair.

The guards grab him and drop him into the chair. As they try to bend his legs up on to the footrest, he screams in pain. The man’s lawyer told me he has a very limited mental capacity. He says he has a back injury and can’t walk or bend his legs without intense pain.

The tape becomes even more harrowing. The guards try to make the prisoner stand up and hold a walking frame. He falls on the floor, crying in agony. They Taser him again. He runs out of the energy and breath to cry and just lies there moaning.

One of the most recent video tapes was filmed in January last year. A surveillance camera in a youth institution in California records an argument between staff members and two ‘wards’ – they’re not called prisoners.

One of the youths hits a staff member in the face. He knocks the ward to the floor then sits astride him punching him over and over again in the head.

Watching the tape you can almost feel each blow. The second youth is also punched and kicked in the head – even after he’s been handcuffed. Other staff just stand around and watch.

We also collected some truly horrific photographs.

A few years ago, in Florida, the new warden of the high security state prison ordered an end to the videoing of ‘use of force operations.’ So we have no tapes to show how prison guards use pepper spray to punish prisoners.

But we do have the lawsuit describing how men were doused in pepper spray and then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals. Photographs taken by their lawyers show one man has a huge patch of raw skin over his hip. Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A third has deep burns on his buttocks.

‘They usually use fire extinguishers size canisters of pepper spray,’ lawyer Christopher Jones explained. ‘We have had prisoners who have had second degree burns all over their bodies.

‘The tell-tale sign is they turn off the ventilation fans in the unit. Prisoners report that cardboard is shoved in the crack of the door to make sure it’s really air-tight.’

And why were they sprayed? According to the official prison reports, their infringements included banging on the cell door and refusing medication. From the same Florida prison we also have photographs of Frank Valdes – autopsy pictures. Realistically, he had little chance of ever getting out of prison alive. He was on Death Row for killing a prison officer. He had time to reconcile himself to the Electric Chair – he didn’t expect to be beaten to death.

Valdes started writing to local Florida newspapers to expose the corruption and brutality of prison officers. So a gang of guards stormed into his cell to shut him up. They broke almost every one of his ribs, punctured his lung, smashed his spleen and left him to die.

Several of the guards were later charged with murder, but the trial was held in their own small hometown where almost everyone works for, or has connection with, the five prisons which ring the town. The foreman of the jury was former prison officer. The guards were all acquitted.

Meanwhile, the warden who was in charge of the prison at the time of the killing – the same man who changed the policy on videoing – has been promoted. He’s now the man in charge of all the Florida prisons.

How could anyone excuse – still less condone – such behaviour? The few prison guards who would talk to us have a siege mentality. They see themselves outnumbered, surrounded by dangerous, violent criminals, so they back each other up, no matter what.

I asked one serving officer what happened if colleagues beat up an inmate. ‘We cover up. Because we’re the good guys.’

No one should doubt that the vast majority of U.S. prison officers are decent individuals doing their best in difficult circumstances. But when horrific abuse by the few goes unreported and uninvestigated, it solidifies into a general climate of acceptance among the many.

At the same time the overall hardening of attitudes in modern-day America has meant the notion of rehabilitation has been almost lost. The focus is entirely on punishment – even loss of liberty is not seen as punishment enough. Being on the restraint devices and the chemical sprays.

Since we finished filming for the programme in January, I’ve stayed in contact with various prisoners’ rights groups and the families of many of the victims. Every single day come more e-mails full of fresh horror stories. In the past weeks, two more prisoners have died, in Alabama and Ohio. One man was pepper sprayed, the other tasered.

Then, three weeks ago, reports emerged of 20 hours of video material from Guantanamo Bay showing prisoners being stripped, beaten and pepper sprayed. One of those affected is Omar Deghayes, one of the seven British residents still being held there.

His lawyer says Deghayes is now permanently blind in one eye. American military investigators have reviewed the tapes and apparently found ‘no evidence of systematic abuse.’

But then, as one of the prison reformers we met on our journey across the U.S. told me: ‘We’ve become immune to the abuse. The brutality has become customary.’

So far, the U.S. government is refusing to release these Guantanamo tapes. If they are ever made public – or leaked – I suspect the images will be very familiar.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo – or even Texas. The prisoners and all guards may vary, but the abuse is still too familiar. And much is it is taking place in America’s own backyard.

Deborah Davies is a reporter for Channel 4 Dispatches. Her investigation, Torture: America’s Brutal Prisons, was shown on Wednesday, March 2, at 11.05pm.

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Published on Monday, April 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Wolfowitz Coup
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0404-21.htm

Although many thought it was a cruel practical joke when Paul Wolfowitz`s name was first floated to head the World Bank, this was no April Fool`s prank: Last Thursday, the executive directors of the World Bank approved the key architect of the Iraq war as president of what is supposed to be the world`s largest development agency.

For decades, the World Bank has veered out of control with a corporate-led development model. The Bank has pushed mega-development projects that have displaced millions of people, failed to improve national well-being and thrown countries into a downward debt spiral. Simultaneously, it has pushed market fundamentalist policies -- including blind support for privatization, deregulation, and marketization and commodification of social services and public goods -- that have benefited multinational corporations, but impoverished hundreds of millions.

Periodically, the Bank acknowledges its past failures -- devastatingly obvious upon objective review of its record -- and promises to start anew. With each renewal, however, the institution manages to repeat the mistakes of the previous era, yet again.

If the Bank is going to continue to exist, it does need a new start, but not the kind that Paul Wolfowitz`s nomination portends.

Wolfowitz assumes the presidency of the Bank thanks to colonialist tradition and craven geopolitical calculation.

By tradition, but for no conceivably justifiable reason and without any legal requirement, the United States picks the head of the Bank. Sneering at the rest of the world, the Bush administration chose a man who symbolizes U.S. unilateralism and contempt for the rule of law.

Although tradition says the rest of the world accedes to the U.S. choice, Europe does have the votes to block a U.S. selection, and organized opposition from developing countries would have made it very hard for the Wolfowitz nomination to succeed.

But Europe wasn`t willing to force a confrontation with the United States -- it being perfectly clear that the Bush administration knew how distasteful the nomination would be in Europe, where there is continuing and overwhelming opposition to the Iraq war.

Instead, the Europeans opted for horse-trading. France hopes to win U.S. support for its candidate to run the World Trade Organization. Germany is seeking a seat on the UN Security Council. And the Europeans reportedly extracted a commitment for a new number two position at the Bank, to be reserved for a European.

The developing countries also chose to sit on their hands. There was some Machiavellian calculation here, too -- Brazil also hopes for a Security Council seat -- but generally the poor countries had a better defense for staying quiet. Unlike the Europeans, they actually borrow from the World Bank and are subject to its dictates, so challenging a presidential contender, with the likelihood of failing, would be a major gamble.

While the Europeans cut deals, Wolfowitz quickly launched what all labeled a "charm offensive." He noted his concern for the poor, and repeated that he understood the Bank chieftain to be a civil servant responsible to all nations, not just his friends in the Bush administration. He added that he understands he will have to tamp down his zealous advocacy of democracy.

Restrain his fervent commitment to democracy?! Are you serious?

Paul Wolfowitz does not have a record of promoting democracy.

He helped sell the Iraq war to the U.S. public on false pretenses of the threat of weapons of mass destruction, a major betrayal of democratic principle.

But it wasn`t as if bringing democracy to Iraq was the hidden agenda. In fact, after occupying Iraq, the United States resisted elections in the country, until Iraqis forced the United States to accede.

Wolfowitz`s allies say he worked to promote democracy and human rights in Indonesia when he was U.S. ambassador there. But as Northwestern University Professor and Indonesia expert Jeffrey Winters notes, there is no available press account of Wolfowitz mentioning democracy or human rights while ambassador -- but an extensive record of apologetics for the despotic Suharto regime. Indonesian human rights activists say Wolfowitz never met with them.

Wolfowitz comes to the World Bank presidency with no relevant development experience but for his oversight of the reconstruction of Iraq -- a project beset by corruption, cronyism and incompetence, and which has failed miserably at delivering water, health, security and other basic services promised to the Iraqi people.

Everything about Wolfowitz`s career, including his time in Indonesia and overseeing Iraqi reconstruction, suggests he is likely to intensify rather than reform the failed World Bank corporate-led model of development.

Perhaps the only positive note about his assumption of the Bank presidency is that he brings a skepticism about the institution`s effectiveness, and perhaps a willingness to shrink its controlling powers, including by getting poor countries off of the loan treadmill. (In an endless cycle, loans generally end up requiring more loans to be repaid -- and so make borrowing countries especially vulnerable to conditions attached to the provision of subsequent loans. Debt payments also drain vital financial resources from poor countries, with deadly consequences.) Wolfowitz has indicated interest in substituting grants for loans, and, especially if prodded by a mobilized, global civil society movement, may be ready to embrace full and immediate cancellation of the debts owed by the world`s poor countries.

The first chance to help achieve this long-overdue goal will be at the protests accompanying the World Bank and International Monetary Fund`s annual meetings, April 16-17 in Washington, D.C. For more information on these activities, see .

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, . Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. Weissman maintains the blog www.nowaywolfowitz.org, and is a member of the Mobilization for Global Justice, which is sponsoring the April protests at the World Bank and IMF meetings. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2005). This article is posted at http://www.corporatepredators.org

© 2005 Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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Curveball der Stolz des BND!

US relied on `Drunken liar` to justify war

`Crazy` Iraqi spy was full of misinformation, says report
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8456.htm

Edward Helmore

04/03/05 "The Observer" - - New York - - An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq. According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq`s alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as `crazy` by his intelligence handlers and a `congenital liar` by his friends.

The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball`s credibility, his claims were included in the administration`s case for war without caveat.

According to the report, the failure of US spy agencies to scrutinise his claims are the `primary reason` that they `fundamentally misjudged the status of Iraq`s [biological weapons] programs`. The catalogue of failures and the gullibility of US intelligence make for darkly comic reading, even by the standards of failure detailed in previous investigations. Of all the disproven pre-war weapons claims, from aluminium centrifuge tubes to yellow cake uranium from Niger, none points to greater levels of incompetence than those found within the misadventures of Curveball.

The Americans never had direct access to Curveball - he was controlled by the German intelligence services who passed his reports on to the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon`s spy agency.

Between January 2000 and September 2001, Curveball offered 100 reports, among them the claims of mobile biological weapons labs that were central in the US evidence of an illicit weapons programme, but subsequently turned out to be trucks equipped with machinery to make helium for weather balloons.

The commission concluded that Curveball`s information was worse than none at all. `Worse than having no human sources,` it said, `is being seduced by a human source who is telling lies.`

Although the defector has never been formally identified, it appears he was an Iraqi chemical engineer who defected after UN inspectors left the country in 1998.

In the aftermath of the US-led invasion, Iraqis whom Curveball claimed were co-workers in Saddam`s alleged biological weapons programme did not know who he was. He claimed he`d witnessed a deadly biological weapons accident when he was not even in Iraq when it was meant to have happened. After September 2001, his claims were given greater credibility despite the fact that he was not in Iraq at the time he claimed to have taken part in illicit weapons work. His information was central to an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq `has` biological weapons, and was widely used by President Bush and Dick Cheney to make their case for war.

It now appears there were problems with Curveball from the start, but the intelligence community was willing to believe him `because the tales he told were consistent with what they already believed.`

In May 2000 doubts about his credibility surfaced when he was examined for signs that he had been exposed to biological agents. While the results were inconclusive, a US official was surprised to find Curveball had a hangover and said he `might be an alcoholic.` By early 2001, the Germans were having doubts of their own, telling the CIA their spy was `out of control`.

But warnings were dismissed. Intelligence analysts who voiced concern were `forced to leave` the unit mainly responsible for analysing his claims, the commission found. At every turn analysts were blocked by spy chiefs and their warning never passed on to policy-makers.

The commission`s report is unlikely to renew confidence in America`s intelligence network as it attempts to uncover evidence of WMDs in Iran and elsewhere. The report concludes that US intelligence agencies remain poorly coordinated, have resisted reform and produce `irrelevant` work.

Copyright: The Observer.

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Informed Comment Juan Cole

Monday, April 04, 2005

Wesley Clark Conference Call

Wesley Clark held a conference call on the situation in Iraq with some bloggers Monday afternoon, in advance of testifying in Washington on the situation.

He began by pointing out that the US military made an assessment in September of 2002 that it could hold Iraq with 70,000 troops.

[I had not heard this before, and if it is true, and if the assessment came from the officer corps, it means that the typical opposition set up between Gen. Shinseki and others who wanted more troops, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who wanted a small force--might actually reflect a dispute within the officer corps itself, with Rumsfeld siding with the minimalist faction in the brass.]

I asked Gen. Clark how the US attains a "soft landing" in Iraq. I pointed out that the conventional wisdom is that if we just stay the course we will eventually be able to put down the guerrilla insurgency and stand up an Iraqi force that can keep them down.

But the problem is that if we over-stay our welcome, and if we do in fact weaken the Sunni guerrillas sufficiently, there is a danger that at that point the Shiites (no longer afraid of the Sunnis and by then very tired of our military presence) will just toss us out unceremoniously.

Clark replied with words to this effect:



He said that this way of posing the problem suggests the need to bring in Arab troops from regional countries, to have Arab advisers in the field with the Iraqi troops, and to continue train the Iraqi forces.

But the success of this enterprise requires that the government in Iraq have political legitimacy.

He went on to imply that it also requires the cooperation of Iraq`s neighbors. He saw a key contradiction in Bush administration policy in Iraq, which is that the operation in Iraq was seen as only a stepping stone to also overthrowing the regimes in Syria and Iran.

He located this policy in part in the Neoconservative circle of Richard Perle and Douglas Feith (Undersecretary of Defense for Policy).

He said the aim was to punish Asad`s regime and topple it, and likewise with Iran.

The problem with this idea of using Iraq as a springboard to finish off the regimes in Damascus and Tehran is that Bush has given Syria and Iran every reason to interfere with a soft landing of the US-- indeed, there is a danger of a wider entanglement of the US in the region. [This is all loose paraphrase, not verbatim, but I think I`ve caught the implications.]



I said I saw no evidence that the guerrilla war was winding down.



Clark: You can`t tell where you are with this. If there is a way out, this is the way [i.e. that the Sunni Arabs would gradually give allegiance to the new elected government in Iraq]. There is no basis for the administration to crow that the guerrilla war is winding down.

Clark also made clear that he is not seeing military reports from the ground in Iraq, is not speaking from there, and so his assessment of the military situation is from a distance and not that of an insider. He did insist, nevertheless, that the Iraq crisis differs significantly from Vietnam in that the guerrillas in Iraq are so over-matched that they can never hope to engage in more than hit-and-run operations.
Those operations, however, could go on a long time if the political situation is not handled well.



Cole: I thought Clark put his finger on a key contradiction in the Bush administration "forward policy" in the Middle East, of targeting the governments of Syria and Iran for destruction even while the US needs their cooperation to avoid widening disaster in Iraq. This policy is not rational if it were intended solely for the benefit of the United States, and he thinks it derives from a concern to bolster regional allies even at the expense of US interests.

Clark was asked if this conference call was a sign of his interest in a 2008 presidential bid. He replied that he had supported John Kerry and John Edwards.

If the Democratic Party has any sense, it will indeed go for someone like Clark (who you could imagine winning Arkansas and West Virginia against the Republican candidate) in 2008. If the Dems go for Hilary or someone else with that profile, the red/blue split will look in 2008 exactly as it did in 2004, barring some huge disaster that befalls the Bush administration in the meantime. Plus Hilary has started giving that disgusting standard AIPAC stump speach that Fritz Hollings told us is distributed to you as soon as you get elected to Congress. Now that AIPAC is under investigation for espionage for the Likud Party, maybe someone in the US political establishment can finally start standing up to them and pointing out that what`s good for Likud isn`t necessarily good for Peoria (or even for Israel, more to the point).

Addendum:

Other bloggings of the confernce call:

[urlDaily Kos.]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/4/161053/1412[/url]

[urlMyDD]http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/4/4/161610/3227[/url]

Jonathan Singer.

posted by Juan @ [url4/4/2005 04:30:00 PM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/wesley-clark-conference-call-wesley.html[/url]

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IRAQ: Compensation for Fallujah residents slow - locals
04 Apr 2005 16:36:14 GMT
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/c120fe064e7e7a…


Source: IRIN
FALLUJAH, 4 April (IRIN) - Compensation for residents of Fallujah city, some 60 km from the Iraqi capital, is happening at a slow pace, local people say.

Government studies suggest that 70 percent of buildings were destroyed in the city during the last conflict between US troops and insurgents.

This left thousands of families still encamped on the outskirts of the city, waiting for a government solution to their problem.

Two-thirds of the city`s population is said to have fled when the fighting started between November 2004 and January 2005. Based on studies, each family will receive a sum of money, depending on the damage and size of their property.

"I cannot return to my home because it has been totally devastated and the government told me that I have to be patient and wait for my name to come up on the list for compensation. But it is going very slowly and my family need a roof over their heads," Kareem Aydan, a resident from Fallujah, camped on the outskirts of the city, told IRIN.

Muhammad Abdul al-A`ani, deputy minister for industry, told IRIN that of the total number of houses damaged in the city, only 90 families had received compensation of around US $1,500 each so far.

He added that $100 million from the Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Funds (IRRF) had been set aside by the government to compensate and help families to return to their homes.

"We have found that $500 million is required for total compensation in the city but the US [-led] Coalition has just offered us $100 million so far, but they have promised that soon the rest will come into our hands," al-A`ani added.

Doctor Hafid al-Dulaimi, director of the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah Citizens (CCFC), established by the government, told IRIN that a study had been carried to assess the scale of destruction. He reported 36,000 destroyed homes in all districts of Fallujah, along with 8,400 shops.

Al-Dulaimi pointed out that 60 children`s nurseries, primary and secondary schools and colleges were destroyed and 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries were almost demolished by the attack, with 13 government buildings requiring new infrastructure.

"Most of the houses need to be rebuilt from scratch and the government should offer much more for families to enable them to return to their homes and [go back] to what it was like before the conflict started. Some shops have even disappeared and we hope that they stop discussing who will take the new government seats and remember that they have a lot to do here in Fallujah," al-Dulaimi urged.

However, there are some signs of normality returning to the stricken city, as basic facilities such as water pipes and sewage treatment plants are being repaired. Damaged schools are being renovated and new ones are being built by either the Coalition or the government.

According to Ahmed Salah, a senior officer from the public works ministry, two electricity substations, three water purification plants and two train stations were badly damaged, along with the sewage and surface water drainage subsystems throughout the city.

He explained that they were trying hard to meet basic needs. "Families in the city can find potable water in each corner of the city in tanks and through that we can guarantee healthy water until we have finished all our work and we believe that it won`t take too long," Salah added.

A retired father of five, Abu Youssef received $1,500, but he said he needs five times more to repair his house and bring back everything they have had before inside it.

"Thank God I have received something. There are thousands of families that are still waiting for the compensation. But still, this amount of money is not enough to rebuild my house again," he told IRIN.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) said that people in Fallujah had at least started to receive their monthly ration parcels, including those still camped in areas around the city.

Nearly 90,000 people had returned to the city, with another 200,000 families still waiting to enter, according to Lt. Gen. John Satler, a senior officer in the US Marines.

"Some families have started to be compensated and hospitals and schools have started to be opened. Soon Fallujah will be open to the people [in a] much better [condition] than before," Satler told IRIN.

IRIN news

© 1998-2001 Reuters Limited.

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U.S. Drones Crowding the Skies to Help Fight Insurgents in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/international/middleeast/0…

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The Predator, with a 49-foot wingspan, is among the remotely piloted aircraft sending data from Iraq
and Afghanistan back to crews in Nevada.
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By ERIC SCHMITT

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev., March 30 - In the skies over Iraq, the number of remotely piloted aircraft - increasingly crucial tools in tracking insurgents, foiling roadside bombings, protecting convoys and launching missile attacks - has shot up to more than 700 now from just a handful four years ago, military officials say.

As the American military continues to shift its emphasis to counterinsurgency and antiterrorism missions, the aircraft are in such demand that the Pentagon is poised to spend more than $13 billion on them through the end of the decade.
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The aircraft are being put into service so quickly that the various military and intelligence branches are struggling to keep pace with the increased number of operators required and with the lack of common policy and strategy on how to use them.

There are nearly a dozen varieties in service now, from the 4.5-pound Ravens that patrol 100 feet off the ground to the giant Global Hawks that can soar at 60,000 feet and take on sophisticated reconnaissance missions. And while much of the appeal of the aircraft is that they keep aircrews out of the line of fire, there are now so many of them buzzing around combat zones that, in fact, the airspace can get dangerously crowded.

In November, for example, a tiny Army Raven surveillance aircraft plowed into a Kiowa scout helicopter, causing no injuries or serious damage, but raising safety concerns.

Army officials insist that it was an isolated case, and cite tighter flight procedures and the addition of strobe lights to smaller aircraft since then. But other military officials have noted several near misses.

"What it shows is we`ve got to make sure the lack of control of the airspace and the separation of these things doesn`t contribute to disasters of these things hitting one another," Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said about the November accident in an interview.

Never before has the American military used so many remotely piloted aircraft in such diverse missions, and many officers call them the wave of the future.

At a command hub spread among a half dozen dimly lit trailers at this air base just off the Las Vegas Strip, the future is now. Small teams of remote-control warriors nudge joysticks to fly armed Predator aircraft 7,500 miles away. Once the Predators take off in Iraq or Afghanistan for missions, the air crews here take over.

The Predator, which can carry Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, is the best-known of the remotely piloted fleet. It is an ungainly, propeller-driven craft that flies as slowly as 80 miles per hour, and can loiter continuously for 24 hours or more at 10,000 to 15,000 feet above the battlefield.

In each trailer, a pilot and co-pilot , who operate the Predator`s zoom lens, radar and infrared sensors, sit side-by-side before an array of consoles and computer screens that let them see what the Predator sees while they talk to troops on the ground by radio or e-mail. Soldiers and ground spotters can receive live video images from the Predator on specially equipped laptop computers.

"I can watch the rear of a building for a bad guy escaping when troops go in the front, and flash an infrared beam on the guy that our troops can see with their night-vision goggles," said Maj. John Erickson, 33, an F-16 fighter pilot who has spent 18 months in a stationary cockpit here.

Commanders say the aircraft have played a pivotal role recently by attacking insurgent mortar positions and warning convoys of suspicious roadblocks that could be ambushes. To bury roadside bombs, insurgents often douse the street with gasoline, ignite it, and dig up the heat-softened asphalt to lay the explosive. The Predator heat sensors detect the hot strips, and warn nearby troops, military officials said.

Predators are also a weapon of choice for the Central Intelligence Agency. Hellfire missiles launched from a Predator three years ago destroyed a car in Yemen, killing an operative of Al Qaeda and five other occupants inside. Last August, the United States secretly deployed a new version, a bigger, faster and more heavily armed model called Predator B, for the C.I.A. to use in the Middle East, administration officials said.

With every commander clamoring for a bird`s-eye view of the battlefield, the 24-hour operations are putting strains on the aircraft and their operators. In just the past week, two $5 million Predators crashed near their base north of Baghdad, bringing to 25 the number that have been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan to storms, pilot error, enemy fire or mechanical failure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Air Force said.

The Air Force is steadily training new Predator pilots and sensor operators at a desert base 45 miles northwest of here. But Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Goldfein, the air warfare center commander here, said he has only about half the Predator pilots he needs, and he worries about the stresses that the eight-hour-a-day, six-day-a week job puts on them.

Moreover, the Air Force announced last month that it was adding 15 new Predator squadrons to the three existing ones.

In Washington, a fierce competition has erupted among the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force over which will take the lead in coordinating the military`s policy and strategy involving unmanned aircraft. The Joint Chiefs of Staff met twice in the last week to discuss these sensitive decisions and to underscore the need to set aside rivalries and streamline the flow of information to troops.

A new report by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, warns that planning in the Defense Department has failed to keep pace with the rapid development and fielding of remotely piloted aircraft.

"D.O.D. still lacks a viable strategic plan and oversight body to guide U.A.V. development efforts and related investment decisions," said the report, issued on March 9. It said a Pentagon task force created to address these issues has limited authority and no enforcement power over programs.

Between 750 and 800 remotely piloted aircraft are operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a vast majority in Iraq, two military officials said. About two dozen of the Air Force`s 58 Predators are flying in the two countries, officials said. In the battle of Falluja and surrounding areas last November, Predators fired about 40 Hellfire missiles. One Global Hawk operates in the Persian Gulf region.

In addition to these aircraft, the Marine Corps is flying 100 aerial vehicles in Iraq, including Pioneers and Dragon Eyes. The Army is flying hundreds of Ravens, as well as larger Shadow, Hunter and I-Gnat aircraft. "We`re flying the wings off it," Lt. Col. Stephen K. Iwicki, a senior Army intelligence officer, said of the Hunter, which will soon be armed with a small, laster-guided explosive called viper strike.

While some pilots in Iraq express concern over sharing airspace with the remotely piloted aircraft, they are proving popular with ground troops. Sgt. Rowe Stayton, who just finished a stint as an infantry fire-team leader in northern Baghdad, is a booster for the Raven, in particular. He recalled one incident where the aircraft tracked some suspected insurgents after they had dug up something and put it into a vehicle. Troops later seized the vehicle and found it full of mortar tubes and rounds.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Ende der Globalisierung?

April 4, 2005
US launches probe into Chinese textile imports
By FT.COM
http://www.nytimes.com/financialtimes/business/FT20050404_29…

The US on Monday took the first step towards reimposing quotas on some clothing imports from China, as the Commerce Department announced it would launch its own probe into whether China`s burgeoning sales were disrupting the US market. The action makes it almost certain that the US will impose new quotas on cotton trousers, shirts and underwear, just three months after the global quota system for textiles and apparel was abolished. Chinese sales of those goods in the US were worth about $625m last year, but in the first month of this year alone they totalled $160m. While World Trade Organisation rules allow the US, Europe and other importing nations to re-establish quotas if there is a flood of imports, Monday`s action marked the first time Washington had launched such a probe on its own rather than waiting for a formal application from US textile companies. Carlos Gutierrez, US Commerce Secretary, said the decision is "the first step in a process to determine whether the US market for these products is being disrupted and whether China is playing a role in that disruption". The move comes after sustained pressure from the US textile industry since the elimination of quotas on January 1. The industry has been calling for such "self-initiation" by the government since figures released last month showed a surge of Chinese sales in January. Their case was reinforced by Friday`s release of preliminary US data for the first three months of the year, the first time Washington has published such figures so promptly. They showed that the volume of cotton shirt sales rose 1,250 per cent from the same period last year, while cotton trouser shipments were up nearly 1,500 per cent and underwear shipments rose by 300 per cent. US importers of Chinese clothing called the move "an unjustified act", saying such preliminary data was unreliable, and might indicate only that China was gaining US market share at the expense of other exporters. "There is no reason to believe that imports from China are causing market disruption," said Laura Jones, executive director of the US Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel. The government`s decision to launch the case will shorten the time for any investigation, meaning that Washington could decide to reimpose quotas as early as next month, and must come to a final decision within 150 days. The National Council of Textile Organisations applauded the move yesterday, saying it expected to see quotas back in place in as little as five weeks. The US and China will also try to reach a negotiated settlement, though the US industry has in the past dismissed Chinese pledges to restrain exports. If a deal cannot be struck, the US will limit China to 7.5 per cent annual growth in such exports.

© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2005.

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Nach der Übernahme der ersten beiden Gewalten versuchen die TheoCons nun auch die Gerichte unter ihre Gewalt zu bekommen.
Dann steht einem `christlich` geprägten Faschismus nichts mehr im Wege.
Hallo Duce wir kommen.
Bush fliegt noch schnell in Rom vorbei, um nachzuschauen, ob John Paul II auch wirklich tot ist.
Denn bei allen Vorbehalten gegenüber dem verstorbenen Papst, dieser war, im Gegensatz zu Bush, wenigstens konsequent im Durchsetzen seiner Ziele, insbesondere im Bezug auf den Schutz des Lebens.
Bush sah nach seinem letzten Besuch beim Papst ziemlich gerupft aus.
Er war Bush und den TheoCons im Weg.
Joerver


April 5, 2005
EDITORIAL
Attacking a Free Judiciary
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05tue1.html

The low point in the politicking over Terri Schiavo came last week when the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, threatened the judges who ruled in her case. Saying they had "thumbed their nose at Congress and the president," Mr. DeLay announced that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today." Coming so close to the fatal shooting of one judge in his courtroom and the killing of two family members of another, those words were at best an appalling example of irresponsibility in pursuit of political gain. But they were not an angry, off-the-cuff reaction. Mr. DeLay`s ominous statements were a calculated part of a growing assault on the judiciary.

Through public attacks, proposed legislation and even the threat of impeachment, ideologues are trying to bully judges into following their political line. Mr. DeLay and his allies have moved beyond ordinary criticism to undermining the separation of powers, not to mention the rule of law. The Schiavo case was the starkest example of their determination to have things their own way, regardless of the constitutional cost. Conservative elected officials and advocates repeatedly attacked the judiciary`s right to decide the legal issues. When they were unhappy with the decisions of the Florida state courts, they rushed a bill through Congress that authorized the federal courts to rule on her case, but not on other cases like it. The bill also told the federal courts not to apply the time-honored legal doctrines that might have led them to stay out.

When the federal courts took the case but ended up agreeing with Florida`s courts, federal judges became the next target. Mr. DeLay issued a veiled threat, saying: "Congress for many years has shirked its responsibility to hold the judiciary accountable. No longer." Asked whether the House would consider impeachment charges against the judges involved, he responded, "There`s plenty of time to look into that."

Several bills pending in Congress seek to tell the courts how do their jobs. House Republicans have introduced a resolution declaring that international law should not be taken into account in interpreting the Constitution, something the Supreme Court did just last month in striking down the death penalty for offenders younger than 18. Last year, during a controversy over the "Ten Commandments judge" in Alabama, Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, introduced a bill to bar the federal courts from applying the First Amendment when officials cross the boundaries between church and state.

Last week, Judge Stanley Birch Jr., a conservative member of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, declared that in the Schiavo case, "the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers` blueprint for the governance of a free people - our Constitution."

Judge Birch is right, but he should not be such a lonely voice. The founders established a system of government in which the three branches - legislative, executive and judicial - act as checks and balances for one another. Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration, unhappy with some rulings of the judiciary, are trying to write it out of its constitutional role. The courts will not always be popular; they will not even always be right. But if Congress succeeds in curtailing the judiciary`s ability to act as a check on the other two branches, the nation will be far less free.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 5, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
An Academic Question
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05krugman.html

It`s a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that?

Conservatives see it as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion. And they say that new "academic freedom" laws will simply mitigate the effects of that bias, promoting a diversity of views. But a closer look both at the universities and at the motives of those who would police them suggests a quite different story.

Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider. But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?

One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.

But there`s also, crucially, a values issue. In the 1970`s, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the "party of ideas." Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the "party of theocracy."

Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren`t respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on "leftists" struggling against "mainstream society," professors who act as "dictators" and turn the classroom into a "totalitarian niche." His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact.

In its April Fools` Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution just because it`s "the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time," saying that "as editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence." And it conceded that it had succumbed "to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do."

The editorial was titled "O.K., We Give Up." But it could just as well have been called "Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days." Thirty years ago, attacks on science came mostly from the left; these days, they come overwhelmingly from the right, and have the backing of leading Republicans.

Scientific American may think that evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, but President Bush declares that "the jury is still out." Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a "gigantic hoax." And conservative pundits like George Will write approvingly about Michael Crichton`s anti-environmentalist fantasies.

Think of the message this sends: today`s Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn`t respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn`t be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.

Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they`re seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses` content.

And it wouldn`t just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don`t give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.

If it got that far, universities would probably find ways to cope - by, say, requiring that all entering students sign waivers. But political pressure will nonetheless have a chilling effect on scholarship. And that, of course, is its purpose.

E-mail: [e-mail]

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Schlafwandelnd in die Iran-Katastrophe
von Scott Ritter
http://www.zmag.de/artikel.php?id=1394

ZNet 01.04.2005
Ende letzten Jahres, kurz nach der Präsidentschaftswahl in den USA, nahm eine der Bush-Regierung nahestehende Person Kontakt zu mir auf. Es ging um die Situation im Irak. Innerhalb der Bush-Administration, so die Quelle, mache sich wachsende Besorgnis breit über die Art, wie sich die Besatzung entwickle. Es sei der Regierung Bush sehr daran gelegen, im Irak vor Juni 2005 den Anschein von Stabilität zu erwecken. Warum gerade Juni 2005, fragte ich. Meine Quelle ließ die Bombe platzen: Bis dahin habe das Pentagon Zeit, sich auf einen massiven Luftangriff gegen den Iran - zur Vernichtung des iranischen Atomprogramms - vorzubereiten. Der Iran ist der östliche Nachbar des Irak. Aber warum ausgerechnet Juni 2005, fragte ich weiter. “Die Israelis sind besorgt - sollten die Iraner es nämlich schaffen, ihr nukleares Anreicherungsprogramm zum Funktionieren zu bringen, gebe es keine Möglichkeit mehr, die Iraner vom Bau einer Atomwaffe abzuhalten. Juni 2005 sei das entscheidende Datum”. Ich möchte betonen, dass meine Quelle nicht behauptet hat, Präsident Bush habe den Bombardierungsplänen für Juni 2005 bereits zugestimmt - wie dies allgemein berichtet wird. Aber der Präsident sei entsprechende Pläne des Pentagon durchgegangen, um bis Juni 2005 die militärischen Voraussetzungen für einen solchen Angriff (vorausgesetzt, der Präsident gibt den Befehl dazu) zu schaffen. US-Außenministerin Condi Rice hatte den europäischen Verbündeten Amerikas im Februar 2005 mitgeteilt: “Die Frage (eines Militärschlags) steht an diesem Punkt einfach nicht auf der Agenda - wir verfügen über diplomatische Mittel...”. So Rices Antwort auf Presseberichte zu einem möglichen US-Angriff auf den Iran im Juni 2005. Präsident Bush reagierte auf die Rice-Stellungnahme mit der Bemerkung: “Die Vorstellung, dass die USA sich auf einen Angriff auf den Iran vorbereiten, ist einfach lächerlich” - fügte aber rasch hinzu, “nachdem dies nun gesagt ist, (ergänze ich), alle Optionen liegen auf dem Tisch”.

Da ist dieses unausgesprochene ‘Aber’: Was aber, wenn die Vereinigten Staaten nicht voll und ganz hinter der diplomatischen Initiative der EU stehen? Wenn sie kein Interesse an kurzfristigen Inspektionen der IAEA (Internationale Atomaufsichtsbehörde) haben? Wenn der Präsident und die Außenministerin ehrlich und doch wieder nicht ehrlich sind? Ehrlich, es gibt keine Pläne für einen US-Militärschlag - das heißt, nicht vor Juni 2005. Interessant, dass niemand in den US-Medien den Präsidenten bzw. seine Außenministerin mit dem Datum (Juni 2005) konfrontiert hat bzw. mit der Tatsache, dass sich der Präsident im Oktober 2004 mit Militärplänen für einen Angriff auf den Iran im Juni 2005 befasste. Die amerikanischen Medien taumeln schlafwandelnd in einen US-Krieg gegen den Iran. Sie erweisen sich als ebenso inkompetent und unaufrichtig wie in der Vorphase zum derzeitigen Irakkrieg, sie folgen demselben Trampelpfad. Oberflächlich betrachtet ist natürlich nichts dabei, wenn der US-Präsident das Pentagon anweist, sich auf einen Militärschlag gegen Iran im Juni 2005 vorzubereiten. Schließlich ist es kein Geheimnis, dass der Iran sich im Sucher der Bush-Ideologen befindet: Präsident Bush selbst hatte den Iran 2002 in die “Achse des Bösen” aufgenommen. Die Welt wäre ein besserer Ort, so Bush, wenn die jetzige iranische Regierung in der Mülltonne der Geschichte verschwände. Die Regierung Bush zeigt sich besorgt über die iranischen Atomprogramme, eine Besorgnis übrigens, die von Israel und der EU - wenn auch in unterschiedlichem Maß - geteilt wird. Im September 2004 wies der Iran den Appell der Internationalen Atomaufsichtsbehörde (IAEA) zurück, sein Atomenergieprogramm zu stoppen (von dem viele in den USA und Israel glauben, es sei an ein geheimes Nuklearwaffenprogramm gekoppelt). Dann testete der Iran auch noch eine Trägerrakete - mit der man Ziele in Israel bzw. US-Militäranlagen im Irak und andernorts im Nahen/Mittleren Osten angreifen kann. Diese Reaktion des Iran hat in Israel wie in den Vereinigten Staaten zu einer ernsthaften Überprüfung der bisherigen Politik geführt. Dabei spielte für Israel sowohl die Handlungsweise des Iran als auch die Einschätzung des israelischen Geheimdienstes zum iranischen Atomprogramm die ausschlaggebende Rolle. Die Einschätzung des israelischen Geheimdienstes datiert vom August 2004 und kommt zu folgendem Schluss: Den Iran trennt “weniger als ein Jahr” von einem Programm zur nuklearen Anreicherung. Sollte der Iran diese Schwelle überschreiten, heißt es weiter, sei dies der “point of no return” bezüglich des iranischen Atomwaffenprogramms. Als Datum für diesen Punkt, ab dem es angeblich kein Zurück mehr gibt, wird Juni 2005 genannt. Der israelische Verteidigungsminister Shaul Mofaz erklärt: “Unter keinen Umständen wird es Israel möglich sein, Atomwaffen in iranischem Besitz zu dulden”. Seit Oktober 2003 liegen Pläne für einen Präventivschlag gegen die wichtigsten iranischen Nuklearanlagen (inklusive des Atomreaktors in Busher, der 2005 anlaufen soll) in Israels Schubladen. Diese Pläne werden ständig aktualisiert - was auch dem Weißen Haus und Bush nicht verborgen blieb. Aber wenn es darum geht, das iranische Atomprogramm zu stoppen, hat die israelische Politik von jeher die Führungsrolle der Amerikaner akzeptiert. “Der richtige Weg, den Iran zu stoppen”, so ein hoher israelischer Offizieller, “führt über eine Führungsrolle der USA, die europäischen Länder sollten unterstützend wirken, das Thema sollte vor die UN gebracht werden, unter Einbeziehung diplomatischer Kanäle - mit Sanktionen und sehr intensiven Inspektionen und völliger Transparenz”. Was die Zielsetzung ihrer Iranpolitik angeht, scheinen Tel Aviv und Washington nicht weit voneinander entfernt. Erinnern wir uns an das unausgesprochene ‘Aber’: Was aber, wenn die USA die diplomatischen Initiativen, die aus Europa kommen, nicht voll unterstützen? Was, wenn sie kein Interesse daran haben, dass IAEA-Inspekteure ihrer Arbeit nachgehen können? Wenn UN-Sanktionen für sie kein Mittel sind, den Iran zur Kooperation zu bringen und sein Nuklearprogramm zu eliminieren, vielmehr ein Mittel, das Teheraner Regime langfristig unter Kontrolle zu halten, bis ein Regimewechsel erfolgt? Tatsache ist - unabhängig von den jüngsten warmen Worten von Präsident Bush und Condi Rice - die USA stehen nicht voll hinter der Iran-Diplomatie der EU. Dies sei ein Programm, das “zum Scheitern verurteilt ist”.

Im November 2004 veröffentlichte die IAEA ihren offiziellen Bericht. Bei ausführlichen Inspektionen in den angegebenen Atomanlagen des Iran, so wurde erklärt, hätten sich keine Beweise für ein iranisches Atomwaffenprogramm gefunden. Die Bush-Administration reagierte prompt, indem sie versuchte, Mohammed al-Baradei, den IAEA-Chefwaffeninspekteur, zu stürzen. Die Regierung Bush drängt auf UN-Sanktionen - die möglichst umfassend, schmerzhaft und langfristig sein sollen. Interessant ist das Datum - an dem die Bush-Administration UN-Sanktionen gegen Iran fordern will, nämlich Juni 2005. Ende letzten Monats zirkulierte in Wien ein amerikanisches Positionspapier. Darin heißt es, die USA geben den Gesprächen zwischen EU und Iran noch Zeit bis Juni 2005, um den Konflikt mit dem Iran zu lösen. “Nur ein vollständiger Stopp und die Zerstörung der Produktionsmöglichkeiten für spaltbares Material im Iran gäben uns letztendlich ein gewisses Vertrauen, dass der Iran seine Atomwaffenpläne aufgibt”, so das US-Positionspapier. Der Iran hingegen sagt, die Bush-Regierung “halluziniert”.

Wie Schlafwandler taumeln die US-Medien einem amerikanischen Krieg gegen den Iran entgegen. Wirtschaftssanktionen und ein Militärschlag - das ist nicht dasselbe. Aber vielleicht will der Architekt der amerikanischen Iran-Politik Ersterem ja gar keine Chance geben. John Bolton - früherer Unterstaatssekretär für Rüstungskontrolle und internationale Sicherheit im Bush-Außenministerium - zeichnet als Architekt verantwortlich für die jetzige US-Politik gegenüber dem Iran. Im Februar 2004 legte Bolton den Fehdehandschuh auf den Tisch: Der Iran besitze ein “geheimes Nuklearwaffenprogramm”, von dem die Internationale Atomaufsichtsbehörde nichts wisse. “Kein Zweifel, der Iran hat ein geheimes Programm zur Produktion von Nuklearwaffen”, so Bolton. Woher er diese Information hatte, sagte er nicht. Wir erinnern uns: Derselbe Bolton hatte Kuba vorgeworfen, über ein offensives biologisches Waffenprogramm zu verfügen. Selbst die Hardliner in der Bush-Administration sahen sich damals genötigt, sich von der Aussage Boltons zu distanzieren. John Bolton war jener Bush-Offizielle, der von den EU-Anstrengungen im Iran sagte, sie seien “zum Scheitern verurteilt”. Und John Bolton ist auch jener Offizielle der Bush-Administration, der die Vorwürfe gegen al-Baradei von der Internationalen Atomaufsichtsbehörde erhoben hat - Vorwürfe, mit denen al-Baradei aus der Behörde entfernt werden sollte. Bolton hat eine Strategie für die USA entworfen, wie man den UN-Sicherheitsrat dazu bringen kann, Wirtschaftssanktionen gegen den Iran zu beschließen. Gleichzeitig fordert er vom Pentagon, sich auf einen “robusten” Militäreinsatz gegen den Iran vorzubereiten - falls die UN doch keine Sanktionen beschließen. Bolton ist sich wie kaum ein anderer bewusst, wie gering die Chancen für ein von den USA ausgehandeltes Sanktionenregime gegen den Iran im Sicherheitsrat sind. Haupthindernis ist Russland - permanentes Mitglied im Sicherheitsrat. Russland besitzt nicht nur ein Vetorecht, sondern ist auch Hauptanwalt (und Zulieferer) des iranischen Nuklearprogramms. Seit Oktober 2003 hat Israel einen Präventivschlagsplan gegen die wichtigsten Nuklearanlagen des Iran in der Schublade.

John Boltons Karriereziel scheint es zu sein, die Russen zu ärgern - war er doch eine der Schlüsselfiguren bei den Verhandlungen zum Abrüstungsvertrag zwischen Präsident George W. Bush und Präsident Wladimir Putin, den diese im Mai 2002 in Moskau unterzeichneten. Der Vertrag sieht vor, die Atomarsenale Amerikas und Russlands innerhalb von 10 Jahren um 2/3 zu reduzieren. Der Vertrag scheint sich aber als zahnloser Tiger zu erweisen. Die Regierung Bush hatte - sehr zum Verdruss Russlands - ein rechtliches Schlupfloch in den Vertragstext eingebaut. Dieses Schlupfloch war die Idee Boltons. John Bolton ist sich bewusst, Russland wird keine UN-Sanktionen gegen den Iran dulden. Dadurch kommt den militärischen Planspielen des Pentagon noch größere Bedeutung zu. Dass John Bolton nun zum neuen amerikanischen Botschafter bei den Vereinten Nationen ernannt werden soll, ist merkwürdig und gefährlich zugleich. Wir erinnern uns, wie Bolton im Jahr 1994 auf einer von der World Federalist Association gesponserten Podiumsdiskussion sagte: “There is no such thing as the United Nations” (so etwas wie die Vereinten Nationen gibt es nicht). In einem Artikel für den Weekly Standard im Jahr 1999 schrieb Bolton: Würden sich die USA dem Willen des Sicherheitsrats beugen, hieße dies, “ihr umsichtiger Umgang mit Gewalt, wenn es um die Förderung ihrer nationalen Interessen geht, würde wahrscheinlich künftig gehemmt sein”. Aber John Bolton ist keiner, der zulässt, dass Vertragsverpflichtungen - etwa die von den USA unterzeichnete und ratifizierte Charta der Vereinten Nationen - einem in die Quere kommen. “Verträge sind nur dann Gesetz, wenn es um innenpolitische Angelegenheiten geht”, schrieb er am 17. November 1997 in einer Op-Ed für das Wall Street Journal. “Im internationalen Betrieb erfüllen Verträge lediglich politische Funktion”. Bolton ist der Meinung, der Iran sollte mittels UN-Sanktionen isoliert werden - und falls er sein Atomprogramm nicht aufgibt, sollte man ihm mit militärischen Drohungen kommen. Diese Drohungen müssten natürlich möglichst echt und real wirken, Wille und Entschlossenheit, die Drohungen auch umzusetzen, müssten erkennbar sein - das hat uns die Bush-Regierung schon früher verdeutlicht, besonders im Irak. Das amerikanische Drängen auf UN-Sanktionen lässt darauf schließen, dass diese möglichst schmerzhaft, tiefgreifend und langfristig ausfallen sollen. Denn Bolton und andere in der Bush-Administration sind der Meinung, auch wenn keine Beweise vorliegen, die atomaren Pläne des Iran seien offensichtlich. Mohammad al-Baradei reagierte mit dem Hinweis, es fehle die “smoking gun” - der Beweis für ein iranisches Atomwaffenprogramm. “Wir sind nicht Gott”, so al-Baradei, “wir wissen nicht, was in den Köpfen vor sich geht”. Andererseits sind Amerikas Iran-Pläne - angesichts der Geschichte, der Persönlichkeit der Akteure und (vergleichbarer) Präzedenzfälle - glasklar und offensichtlich: Die Bush-Administration hat vor, den Iran zu bombardieren. Die einzige Frage, die noch bleibt: Erfolgt der Angriff schon im Juni 2005 - wenn das Pentagon anweisungsgemäß seine Vorbereitungen abgeschlossen haben wird -, oder erst später, wenn auch alle weiteren Vorbereitungen abgeschlossen sind. Nein, es bleibt noch eine Frage: Werden die Journalisten der amerikanischen Mainstream-Medien weiter schlafwandeln - und so den Weg ebnen für eine neue Katastrophe im Mittleren Osten?

Anmerkungen

Scott Ritter war zwischen 1991 u. 1998 UN-Chefwaffeninspekteur im Irak. Sein neues Buch heißt: ’Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America’s Intelligence Conspiracy’. Auf Deutsch erhältlich: ’Krieg gegen den Irak’ von Scott Ritter und Pitt Rivers

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The end of the world as we know it

The fight against extreme poverty can be won, but only if Bush recognises that military might alone won`t secure the world
Jeffrey Sachs
Tuesday April 5, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1452240,00.ht…

Guardian
The end of poverty is a choice, not a forecast. There are a billion people on earth fighting daily for their survival. The world has committed, in the Millennium Development Goals, to cut extreme poverty by half by 2015. By 2025, extreme poverty can be banished. By dint of interest and calendar, the next step rests with Downing Street.

Tony Blair has dramatically raised the stakes. Now, he must deliver. The Blair Africa Commission is a masterful display of diagnosis and politics. Africa`s leading development thinkers and Britain`s political leaders are aligned on a sound diagnosis and course of action. Blair has promised that Africa and development aid will be at the core of this year`s G8 summit, which he will host in Scotland in July. Africans are daring to hope that this time offered help is not just empty words.

The ways out of the poverty trap can be found. The financial costs of the needed development aid are utterly manageable, just 70p per £100 (0.7%) of the national incomes of the donor nations.

Yet will the rich countries follow through? While the UK has raised the banner of fighting poverty in Africa, the US has armed only for its war against terror. Bush never even mentions the Millennium Development Goals. The US spends just 0.15% of its national income on aid, while devoting nearly 5% to the military. Is a superpower that devotes 30 times more in spending to the military than to development aid a reliable partner in the fight against extreme poverty?

The money, including the US contribution, needs to be Blair`s focus in the lead up to the July summit, since the fight against extreme poverty cannot be won on rhetoric alone. The barriers to development in Africa are not in the mind, but in the soils, the mosquitoes, the vast distances over difficult terrain, the unsteady rainfall.

Africa faces three pressing and distinctive problems that were overcome in Asia 40 years ago. The first is growing enough food. Asia had its green revolution, Africa has not. The biggest difference is biophysical. Asia`s breadbaskets are in the great river systems flowing from the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau. The Indus, Ganges, Mekong and their vast floodplains have enabled monsoon Asia to develop the world`s finest systems of irrigated, high-input farming. Asia`s green revolution was built on the combination of irrigation, fertiliser, and high-yield variety seeds.

African agriculture, by contrast, is overwhelmingly rain-fed, without the floodplains and monsoons to underpin large-scale irrigation. The African savannah, with its long dry seasons and irregular rainy seasons, is home to hundreds of millions of poor subsistence farmers and their families. Nor can these impoverished farm households afford fertilisers or improved seed varieties, especially in view of the vagaries of water availability.

Yet modern science now points the way to a 21st-century African green revolution. Improved water management combined with proven methods of replenishing Africa`s soil nutrients, and improved seeds adapted to African conditions, now make it possible for Africa to achieve the same agricultural breakthrough that Asia achieved two generations ago.

Powerful and practical solutions similarly exist for Africa`s great second challenge, the control of killer diseases. Africa`s children are dying of malaria, diarrhoea, respiratory infection, chronic under-nutrition, and the lack of neonatal care. In many places, 200 of every 1,000 children die before their fifth birthday. With modern public health and medical practices, these children can be saved. And when they are saved, parents will choose to have fewer children, secure in the knowledge that they will survive. Reduced child mortality and slower population growth, surprisingly enough, go hand in hand.

The most immediate campaign should be against malaria, a disease that will claim perhaps 5,000 African children today. As the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has long shown, insecticide-treated bed nets to keep mosquitoes away, combined with effective medicines, can cut child mortality decisively. By 2008, it would be possible to halve the malaria deaths. But we would have to help Africa to finance the effort.

Africa`s third distinctive challenge is the lack of basic transport, power, and communications infrastructure. Africa`s farm families need all-weather roads to get fertiliser into the villages and crops out to the market. Africa`s villages need trucks to rush a dying child or mother in complicated labour to a district hospital. Africa`s small businesses need mobile phones to get the latest market quote. The necessary investments are clear, and not particularly complex.

Ending poverty is a grand moral task, and a geopolitical imperative, but at the core, it is a relatively straightforward investment proposition. And the investment plans are actually on the table, or more accurately, on the shelves gathering dust, since Africa`s leaders have been told at least until now that their ambitious investment plans cannot be funded. Of course, ambitious investment plans require responsible government: the kind we see in Ghana, Senegal, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and many other places. Zimbabwe, alas, would not be a credible partner.

The fight against extreme poverty can be won in Gleneagles this summer. Most importantly, Tony Blair needs to bring his friend George Bush back to reality, to an understanding that the US military alone will never secure a world beset by hunger, disease, and deprivation. If the United States and a united Europe will honour their long-standing - and long-neglected - pledge of 0.7% of GNP, then Africans and other impoverished people on the planet will roll up their sleeves and get to work saving themselves and their families, and ultimately helping to save all of the rest of us as well.

· Jeffrey D Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of The End of Poverty

www.earth.columbia.edu/endofpoverty
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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I`m with Wolfowitz

Liberal handwringing over the World Bank simply reflects a failure to recognise the role it exists to fulfil
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 5, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1452430,00.ht…

Guardian
It`s about as close to consensus as the left is ever likely to come. Everyone this side of Atilla the Hun and the Wall Street Journal agrees that Paul Wolfowitz`s appointment as president of the World Bank is a catastrophe. Except me.

Under Wolfowitz, my fellow progressives lament, the World Bank will work for America. If only someone else were chosen, it would work for the world`s poor. Joseph Stiglitz, the bank`s renegade former chief economist, champions Ernesto Zedillo, a former president of Mexico. A Guardian leading article suggested Colin Powell or, had he been allowed to stand, Bono. But what all this hand-wringing reveals is a profound misconception about the role and purpose of the body Wolfowitz will run.

The World Bank and the IMF were conceived by the US economist Harry Dexter White. Appointed by the US Treasury to lead the negotiations on postwar economic reconstruction, White spent most of 1943 banging the heads of the other allied nations together. They were appalled by his proposals. He insisted that his institutions would place the burden of stabilising the world economy on the countries suffering from debt and trade deficits rather than on the creditors. He insisted that "the more money you put in, the more votes you have". He decided, before the meeting at Bretton Woods in 1944, that "the US should have enough votes to block any decision".

Both the undemocratic voting arrangement and the US veto remain to this day. The result is that a body that works mostly in poor countries is controlled by rich ones. White demanded that national debts be redeemable for gold, that gold be convertible into dollars, and that exchange rates be fixed against the dollar. The result was to lay the ground for what was to become the dollar`s global hegemony. White also decided that the IMF and the bank would be sited in Washington.

At the time, no one doubted that these bodies were designed as instruments of US economic policy, but all this has been airbrushed from history. Even the admirable Stiglitz believes the bank was the brainchild of the British economist John Maynard Keynes (he was, in fact, its most prominent opponent). When Noreena Hertz wrote on these pages last month that "the Bush administration is a very long way from the bank`s espoused goals and mandate", she couldn`t have been more wrong.

From the perspective of the world`s poor, there has never been a good president of the World Bank. In seeking contrasts with Wolfowitz, it has become fashionable to look back to the reign of that other Pentagon hawk, Robert McNamara. He is supposed to have become, in the words of an Observer leader, "one of the most admired and effective of World Bank presidents". Admired in Washington, perhaps. McNamara was the man who concentrated almost all the bank`s lending on vast prestige schemes (highways, ports, dams) while freezing out less glamorous causes such as health, education and sanitation. Most of the major projects he backed have, in economic or social terms or both, failed catastrophically.

It was he who argued that the bank should not fund land reform because it "would affect the power base of the traditional elite groups". Instead, as Catherine Caufield shows in her book Masters of Illusion, it should "open new land by cutting down forests, draining wetlands and building roads to previously isolated areas". He bankrolled Mobutu and Suharto, deforested Nepal, trashed the Amazon and promoted genocide in Indonesia. The countries he worked in were left with unpayable debts, wrecked environments, grinding poverty and pro-US dictators.

Except for the language in which US demands are articulated, little has changed. In the meeting last Thursday at which Wolfowitz`s nomination was confirmed, the bank`s executive directors decided to approve the construction of the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos. This will flood 6,000 people out of their homes, damage the livelihoods of a further 120,000, destroy a critical ecosystem and produce electricity not for the people of Laos but for their richer neighbours in Thailand. It will also generate enormous construction contracts for western companies. The decision was made not on Wolfowitz`s watch but on that of the current president, James Wolfensohn. There will be little practical difference between the two wolves. The problem is not the bank`s management but its board, which is dominated by the US, the UK and the other rich nations.

The nationality of the bank`s president, which has been causing so much fuss, is of only symbolic importance. Yes, it seems grossly unfair that all its presidents are Americans, while all IMF presidents are Europeans. But it doesn`t matter where the technocrat implementing the US Treasury`s decisions comes from. What matters is that he`s a technocrat implementing the US Treasury`s decisions.

Wolfowitz`s appointment is a good thing for three reasons. It highlights the profoundly unfair and undemocratic nature of decision-making at the bank. His presidency will stand as a constant reminder that this institution, which calls on the nations it bullies to exercise "good governance and democratisation" is run like a medieval monarchy.

It also demolishes the hopeless re formism of men such as Stiglitz and George Soros who, blithely ignoring the fact that the US can veto any attempt to challenge its veto, keep waving their wands in the expectation that a body designed to project US power can be magically transformed into a body that works for the poor. Had Stiglitz`s attempt to tinker with the presidency succeeded, it would simply have lent credibility to an illegitimate institution, enhancing its powers. With Wolfowitz in charge, its credibility plummets.

Best of all is the chance that the neocons might just be stupid enough to use the new wolf to blow the bank down. Clare Short laments that "it`s as though they are trying to wreck our international systems". What a tragedy that would be. I`d sob all the way to the party.

Martin Jacques argued convincingly on these pages last week that the US neocons are "reordering the world system to take account of their newly defined power and interests". Wolfowitz`s appointment is, he suggested, one of the "means of breaking the old order".

But this surely illustrates the unacknowledged paradox in neocon thinking. They want to drag down the old, multilateral order and replace it with a new, US one. What they fail to understand is that the "multilateral" system is in fact a projection of US unilateralism, cleverly packaged to grant other nations just enough slack to prevent them from fighting it. Like their opponents, the neocons fail to understand how well Roosevelt and Truman stitched up the international order. They are seeking to replace a hegemonic system that is enduring and effective with one that is untested and (because other nations must fight it) unstable. Anyone who believes in global justice should wish them luck.

www.monbiot.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Das ist der große gedankliche Fehler der USA, dass sie meinen, dass Demokratie einfach nur so übergestreift werden kann, und dann werde sie schon passen.


PENTAGON: MUSLIM SOCIETY DOES NOT SEEK FREEDOM
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2005/april/04_04_4.html

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- A U.S. Defense Department study has determined that Muslims in the Middle East do not yearn for freedom.

A Pentagon advisory board has released a report that asserted that Muslims in dictatorial regimes do not seek freedom as those in countries that had been dominated by the Soviet Union after World War II. The board said that unlike those who lived in East Bloc states, Muslims do not see the United States as their liberator.

"There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies -- except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends," the Pentagon board said in a report.

The 102-page report by the Defense Science Board reviewed U.S. information policy toward the Arab and Muslim world as part of an effort to stem the tide of anti-Americanism. The board concluded that Washington has failed to adequately explain its diplomatic and military policy to Muslims around the world.

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`Curveball` the `Drunken liar` der Liebling der NeoCons bleibt in aller Munde.

ROBERT SCHEER
Bush Threw Us a `Curveball`
Report shines a light on `crazy` Iraqi informant.
Robert Scheer


April 5, 2005

Last October, just weeks before the presidential election, I wrote a column stating that the acting director of the CIA was suppressing a report to Congress that was potentially embarrassing to President Bush`s campaign. The report had been completed by the CIA`s own independent inspector general four months before the election, yet the agency rebuffed Congress` request that it be made public.

Now, thanks to last week`s release of another report, that of the Bush-appointed Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, we learn that the embargoed CIA report centered on the outrageous case of the now-infamous Iraqi informant known by the code name, "Curveball."

Unfortunately for the American people, we were to an embarrassing extent persuaded to go to war based on the fantasies of this known liar, the main source of the administration`s claim that Saddam Hussein had a functioning biological weapons program. It was Curveball, an Iraqi chemical engineer who defected, who was the inspiration for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell`s statements before the United Nations that the U.S. knew Iraq possessed mobile bio-weapons labs.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the presidential commission`s finding that Curveball`s unreliability was withheld from the unwitting Powell, even as the administration was pushing him out onto the world stage to trade his prodigious credibility for world support for the invasion.

Ironically, Powell`s U.N. sales job, which had the U.S. press raving about his statesmanlike bearing and brilliant mind, was aimed squarely at rebutting the conclusions of U.N. weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq, who were not finding the weapons and weapons-making facilities that U.S. intelligence agencies had pinpointed.

Yet, as the commission`s report makes indelibly clear, the U.N. inspectors — who exercised extraordinary access in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion — were right. From the aluminum tubes debunked by the U.S. Energy Department to the Africa uranium story debunked by Ambassador Joe Wilson, from the anthrax-laden drone aircraft that White House briefers told senators threatened Florida to Curveball`s futuristic-sounding mobile bio-weapons labs that have never been found, Powell and the White House were, as the president`s commission has just unanimously concluded, "dead wrong."

The case of Curveball was relevant to the election because it went to the heart of the administration`s competency in managing national security. At best, what emerges from the presidential commission`s report is a picture of an American leadership in total disarray on national security; at worst, it shows widespread complicity at the top in a concerted effort to deceive the electorate on matters of war.

Recall that then-CIA Director George Tenet, later rewarded by Bush with the Medal of Freedom, provided the basic briefing and final vetting of Powell`s disastrously false presentation of the case against Iraq. According to the commission`s report, Tenet was working with Powell the night before the U.N. speech when he spoke on the phone to a high-ranking CIA official who warned him not to rely on Curveball`s information. That warning had been issued by others in the agency, but Tenet claims that he cannot recollect hearing it.

In fact, the CIA had long harbored strong doubts concerning Curveball`s veracity. The foreign government holding him had even informed the U.S. that the Iraqi exile was a "fabricator" who had suffered a "nervous breakdown" and was "crazy." But his words were spirited all the way to the top of the administration because they conveniently supported its vision to use 9/11 as an excuse to create a compliant Middle East through aggressive use of U.S. military power.

After the occupation of Iraq in spring 2003, the massive U.S. Iraq Survey Group confirmed that Curveball was either hallucinating or lying, finding no WMD or WMD facilities. It turns out the informant wasn`t even in Iraq at the time he claimed to be working on biological weapons.

The Curveball case was definitively closed when the CIA gained access to the Iraqi defector in March 2004 and categorically repudiated his story. That was half a year before the U.S. presidential election, however, and clearly the White House didn`t want the CIA inspector general to blow the whistle and embarrass the president as he fought for his political survival.

To squelch the exposure of such widespread incompetence and deadly manipulation of national security intelligence is a betrayal of democracy.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Der vergessene Link zu dem vorherigen Posting:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer5…

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Arab report sees little reform, faults U.S. action
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04234698.htm

05 Apr 2005 08:30:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO, April 5 (Reuters) - In a long-awaited report contested by the United States and Egypt, Arab intellectuals and reformers said they saw no significant advances towards democracy in the Arab world in the year after October 2003.

The third Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), released on Tuesday under U.N. auspices, says most reforms were "embryonic and fragmentary" and did not amount to a serious effort to end repression in the region, which has some of the world`s most authoritarian governments.

The United States, which says its policy is to promote democracy in the region, contributed to an international context which hampered progress, through its policy towards Israel, its actions in Iraq and security measures affecting Arabs, it said.

"Overall, there has been no significant easing of the human development crisis in the Arab region," it said.

The report was written before elections in Iraq in January and the recent street protests in Lebanon -- events which the Bush administration has cited as evidence of change.

The U.S. and Egyptian governments had criticised parts of an early draft of the U.N. report, leading to a dispute which held up its release for at least three months.

But the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) eventually decided to put it out under its logo, with a disclaimer in the preface.

"The very process of writing this AHDR has been a source of significant public and, unfortunately, highly politicised and often inaccurate speculation," wrote Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator at the time it was written.

"Some of the views expressed by the authors are not shared by UNDP or the UN... (But) This report clearly reflects a very real anger and concern felt across the region," he added.

The most controversial parts of the report, subtitled Towards Freedom in the Arab World, describe the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies as violations of freedom and obstacles to human development there and in the region.

It says that the occupations gave Arab governments an excuse to postpone democratisation, forced Arab reformers to divert some of their energies away from reform and strengthened extremist groups which advocate violence.

The United States also undermined the international system by repeatedly using or threatening to use its U.N. Security Council veto, enabling Israel to build new Jewish settlements and continue with its barrier in the West Bank, it adds.

INCREASED SUFFERING IN IRAQ

"This has pushed many people in the region to lose hope of obtaining justice from global governance and could exacerbate a tendency towards extremism," the report said.

In Iraq, the occupation has increased human suffering and, because the United States has failed to meet its obligations to protect citizens, the country has seen "an unprecedented loss of internal security", it said.

"After dismantling the old state, the U.S.-led authorities made little progress in building a new one. Despite the optimistic reports published by the Occupation forces and the U.S. Administration their performance continued to be deficient," it added.

In its analysis of the roots of authoritarianism in the Middle East, the intellectuals cited the discovery of oil, the creation of Israel, the phenomenon of client states during the Cold War and the fragile and unnatural nature of most of the Arab states created during the decolonisation period.

The U.S. response to the September 2001 attacks on the United States added to the ambiguity in the Western attitude to human rights in the Middle East, it said.

"The `war on terror` has cut into many Arab freedoms... An unfortunate by-product in some countries has been that Arabs are increasingly the victims of stereotyping, disproportionately harassed or detained without cause," it said.

"The fact that some Western countries ... have taken steps widely perceived to be discriminatory and repressive, has weakened the position of those reformers calling for Arab governments ... to change their course," it added.

The report notes an increase in activity by civil society groups pressing for changes inside Arab countries, some reform initiatives by Arab governments, some improvements in education and some empowerment of women in the Arab world.

But it added: "There is a near-complete consensus that there is a serious failing in the Arab world, and that this is located specifically in the political sphere."

It says that if the current repressive situation continues, more intense social conflict is likely to follow.

"Disaster can be averted. The alternative is to pursue an historic, peaceful and deep process of negotiated political alternation ... The desired outcome is a redistribution of power within Arab societies, restoring sovereignty to its rightful owners, the vast majority of people in the Arab world."


© 1998-2001 Reuters Limited.

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April 5, 2005
EDITORIAL
Opium vs. Democracy in Afghanistan
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05tue2.html

A huge boom in opium traffic is threatening to reverse the recent spate of encouraging progress in Afghanistan. Last year, the country provided an estimated 87 percent of the world`s illegal opium crop. Apart from the damage that opium, transformed into heroin, inflicts on users worldwide, the trafficking also lines the pockets of armed militia leaders and corrupt local officials, giving them the means to resist President Hamid Karzai`s efforts to promote security, development and democracy.

Washington is finally treating the issue with the seriousness it deserves. Finding effective answers will take time, money and local Afghan community involvement. Quick fixes, like aerial spraying, don`t permanently solve the problem, and they undermine efforts to revive the rural economy. Afghanistan is one of the world`s poorest countries. Making its economy function again and resettling its returning refugees depend on providing poor farmers with less destructive ways to make a living than growing opium poppies. That requires the rebuilding of local roads and irrigation works so rural industries and alternative crops, like wheat, can become viable. For many small farmers today, the only available credit comes from drug traffickers who offer down payments against the next opium harvest.

For the first three years after the United States invaded Afghanistan, combating the drug trade was low on Washington`s priority list. The problem was largely left to British troops, who had neither the numbers nor the financial backing to handle it successfully. But now they will be getting some help from the American military, which previously operated under orders to ignore the drug traffickers, except for those accidentally encountered during military operations against the Taliban. Under new rules being finalized by the Pentagon, American soldiers will be permitted to provide direct support to anti-narcotics operations. The Defense Department is asking for a more than fourfold increase in its funds for anti-narcotics work in Afghanistan.

Just last month, Afghanistan`s repeatedly delayed parliamentary elections were set for September. Unlike last year`s presidential vote, these elections can succeed only if most of the country is secure and firmly under central authority. Curbing the drug traffickers` wealth and power is crucial to a successful vote.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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[urlSenator Links Violence To `Political` Decisions.]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26236-2005Apr4.html[/url]

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Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Der ganze Text über den Link:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

War News for Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Two civilians killed and 13 wounded in bomb attack on café in Talafar. One US soldier killed, one wounded by gunfire in Talafar.

Bring ‘em on: Five people, including three policemen, wounded and bomber killed in suicide tractor attack on Abu Ghraib prison. One Iraqi motorist badly wounded when “foreign security guards” shot him for failing to make way for their vehicles on a bridge in Baghdad. Offices of the Iraq Communist Party in Sadr City ransacked and torched by masked gunmen.

Bring ‘em on: Prison riot at Camp Bucca confirmed by International Committee of the Red Cross after initial denial by US military.

Bring ‘em on: Four guards and twelve prisoners injured in riot cited above.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi civilian killed and two wounded in a roadside bombing targeting an Iraqi military convoy in Amiriya.

Bring ‘em on: US Marine killed in an explosion during combat operations in Al-Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi general commanding the Interior ministry’s 1,600 strong armored brigade and an undetermined number of bodyguards kidnapped in Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. Three men and a six-year-old girl wounded in bomb attack on a US military convoy in the Dura neighborhood, one US Humvee reported in flames.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi civilians killed in car bomb attack near Baghdad’s international airport. Two civilians and one US soldier reported killed in the explosion in the Dura neighborhood referenced in the entry above, and one civilian reported hospitalized. One Iraqi soldier and two US soldiers killed in “intense battle” northeast of Baghdad (This may be the Talafar attack referenced in the first entry above). Corpses of 10 Iraqi soldiers found buried in the Jurf al-Sakhr area south of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Member of the Babil provincial council assassinated by gunmen in Hilla, two suspects arrested. Government translator wounded and her father killed in drive-by shooting in Baquba. One prisoner evacuated from an unnamed facility to the 115th field hospital died of gunshot wounds suffered in an attack on coalition forces two weeks ago.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi soldier apparently executed in video posted on internet. Sunni cleric gunned down in drive-by shooting as he entered his mosque in the New Baghdad neighborhood of Baghdad. Kurdistan Democratic Party official killed in Mosul. An explosion was heard in Mosul and American soldiers sealed off an area where a plume of smoke could be seen. One Iraqi policeman killed and two wounded in roadside bombing in Basra.

Numbers: Guerrillas and criminal gangs have killed 6,000 Iraqi civilians over the past two years and wounded 16,000, according to the first comprehensive government estimate of the toll from the insurgency.

"These people in the insurgency are involved in looting, terrorism, killing, kidnapping, drug dealing, beheading and all that," Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin told Reuters.

"There are around 6,000 Iraqis who have been killed by these people and 16,000 who have been wounded," he said, citing figures compiled from records kept by the health, human rights, interior and other ministries.

"We have also found that around 5,000 Iraqis have been kidnapped since the fall of the regime, which does not include those cases that have gone unreported," he said.

Iraq Body Count, a website run by academics and peace activists and based on reports from two media sources, estimates between 17,316 and 19,696 Iraqis have been killed since the war.

A household survey done in Iraq by U.S. scientists, which was rejected by the British government as unreliable, put war-related civilian deaths at about 100,000 since the invasion -- a figure Iraq`s health ministry also dismissed.

Few gains: Intensified military raids in Iraq over the past few months have significantly battered the ranks of mid-level insurgents but have scored few gains against the 30 or so most wanted rebels, according to senior U.S. military officers here.

As much as a third of this group is thought to move in and out of Iraq with some frequency, the officers said. Many have eluded U.S. and Iraqi forces by a combination of moving constantly, avoiding use of telephones and receiving protection from family or tribal connections.

After a lull in the days after the Jan. 30 elections, insurgents have resumed bombings, suicide attacks and assassinations, an increasing share of them directed against Iraqi civilians and security forces. There are now an average of about 60 attacks each day, close to the rate before the elections, according to U.S. military tallies, and most remain concentrated in Sunni Muslim-populated provinces of central and northwestern Iraq.

Gee, d’ya think?: In London, a British parliamentary committee issued a report Tuesday saying excessive use of force by U.S. troops had antagonized Iraqis and made the process of rebuilding the country more difficult. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which scrutinizes Britain’s foreign policy, also suggested that Iraq had replaced Afghanistan as a training ground for international terrorists.

Iraqi Politics

Still no government: A meeting of Sunni Arabs in Baghdad to propose a candidate for vice president in Iraq`s next coalition government ended in shouts and curses, underlining the divisions among the community after its loss of power.

"We must be tough, Kurds and Shiites want everything!" shouted one of those in attendance as they took turns to speak.

Shiites and Kurds who dominated the January elections but are still trying to form a government, are trying to reach out to the embittered community, which is accused of leading the relentless insurgency.

Parliament was set to meet again on Wednesday to try to elect a presidency council, made up of a vice president and two deputies.

Rumblings: The protracted delay in naming a new Iraqi government has alarmed the country`s powerful Shiite Muslim clergy, who worry that growing popular frustration may endanger the government`s legitimacy, senior clerics and their representatives say. As a last resort, some said they may support mass protests as a way to break the impasse.

For now, the clerics are urging patience, and many said they expect a limited breakthrough as early as this week, perhaps Sunday. But one senior representative, echoing the suspicions of others, suggested the United States was at least partially at fault for the deadlock and warned of more forceful intervention by the most senior clergy, collectively known as the marjaiya, if delays persist.

"In the event they cannot form a leadership for the assembly and a government, the marjaiya will not remain with its hands shackled. It will not simply stand and watch. It must do something," said Ali Rubaii, the spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ishaq Fayadh, one of the four most senior clerics in Najaf who operate under the leadership of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

"If there was a choice for protests, the protests wouldn`t be typical. They would be protests in the millions," Rubaii said Saturday from Fayadh`s headquarters in this sacred city.

Walkouts: Iraqi state television said Sunday an unspecified number of legislators have either pulled out or resigned from the National Assembly.

The channel quoted a member of the Shiite bloc in parliament, Hammam Hammoudi, as saying the legislators resigned either for security reasons or to protest their exclusion from the government being formed.

He said the National Assembly would discuss finding others to replace them.

Fallujah

90 families: Compensation for residents of Fallujah city, some 60 km from the Iraqi capital, is happening at a slow pace, local people say.

Government studies suggest that 70 percent of buildings were destroyed in the city during the last conflict between US troops and insurgents.

This left thousands of families still encamped on the outskirts of the city, waiting for a government solution to their problem.

Muhammad Abdul al-A`ani, deputy minister for industry, told IRIN that of the total number of houses damaged in the city, only 90 families had received compensation of around US $1,500 each so far.

Doctor Hafid al-Dulaimi, director of the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah Citizens (CCFC), established by the government, told IRIN that a study had been carried to assess the scale of destruction. He reported 36,000 destroyed homes in all districts of Fallujah, along with 8,400 shops.

Al-Dulaimi pointed out that 60 children`s nurseries, primary and secondary schools and colleges were destroyed and 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries were almost demolished by the attack, with 13 government buildings requiring new infrastructure.

The War To Spread Democracy In The Middle East

Embryonic and fragmentary: In a long-awaited report contested by the United States and Egypt, Arab intellectuals and reformers said they saw no significant advances toward democracy in the Arab world in the year after October 2003.

The third Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), released on Tuesday under U.N. auspices, says most reforms were "embryonic and fragmentary" and did not amount to a serious effort to end repression in the region, which has some of the world`s most authoritarian governments.

The United States, which says its policy is to promote democracy in the region, contributed to an international context which hampered progress, through its policy toward Israel, its actions in Iraq and security measures affecting Arabs, it said.

"Overall, there has been no significant easing of the human development crisis in the Arab region," it said.

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Apr.05: 8

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
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Tomgram: The Bush Administration`s Afghan Spring

Drugs, Bases, and Jails
The Bush administration`s Afghan Spring
By Tom Engelhardt
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2303

If Iraq has been the disaster zone of Bush foreign policy, Afghanistan is still generally thought of as its success story -- to the extent that anyone in our part of the world thinks about that country at all any more. Before the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan experienced a relative flood of American attention. It was, after all, the liberation moment. Possibly the most regressive and repressive regime on Earth had just bitten the dust. The first blow had been struck against the 9/11 attackers. The media rushed in -- and they were in a celebratory mood.

As Bush administration efforts quickly turned Iraqwards, however, so did media attention. By June 2003, just two months after the invasion of Iraq, the American Journalism Review tells us, "only a handful of reporters remained in the struggling country on a full-time basis, while other news organizations floated correspondents in and out when time and resources permitted." More recently, just Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and possibly the New York Times (which seems to have Carlotta Gall back on the beat) consider Afghanistan -- the devastated land that has been the crucible for, and breeding ground for, so many of the crises and problems of our era -- important enough to have full-time reporters assigned to it.

There was a burst of media attention last October for the Afghan presidential election, won by Hamid Karzai. It was a demonstration of something we`ve seen since in Iraq and elsewhere -- that people everywhere feel understandable enthusiasm at the thought of determining their own fates with their own hands (however limited their ability to do so may be in reality). It was, in fact, with the Afghanistan election that the Bush administration`s "Arab Spring" blitz, its present success story about spreading democracy worldwide, with an emphasis on the Middle East, really began.

Since then, what news Americans have gotten about Afghanistan has consisted largely of infrequent reports on the deaths of small numbers of American troops there; statements, interviews, and press conferences by various American generals or officials on the ever-improving situation in the country, or on the Pentagon`s sudden willingness to tackle the drug problem there; pieces on "abuses" of Afghan prisoners by American troops or CIA agents; or statements about how we must stay in the country until a struggling new democracy truly takes root in that impoverished land. Throw in the odd propaganda visit by an American dignitary and you more or less have Afghan news as it exists in this country. After all, in most of Afghanistan there are no reporters. Even the 5,000 European troops guarding the capital, Kabul, under the NATO banner have but recently begun to make it beyond Kabul`s bounds. The Americans alone have given themselves the run of the country and they have generally preferred to keep the news to themselves.

The last wash of Afghan news came when, after a year of planning, Laura Bush made it there for six hours last week to "offer support for Afghan women in their struggle for greater rights," to meet President Hamid Karzai, and to have a meal with American troops at Bagram Air Base. (Headlines were of the "Laura Bush Pledges More Aid for Afghanistan," "Laura Bush in Afghanistan to Back Women`s Education," "First Lady Drops in on Afghanistan" variety.) Standing next to an Afghan woman, shovel in hand, she also had her picture taken and disseminated in the American press. The caption in my hometown paper says she was "posing for a photograph at a women`s dorm at Kabul University and planting a tree." As a photo, nationalities aside, it might easily have graced the pages of Soviet Life magazine and come from a distant imperial era.

Drugs

So Afghanistan has once again become the land that time forgot. Given the present Bush democracy blitz and given the country`s "success" -- a "struggling" or "nascent" democracy or "semi-democracy," liberated from one of the worst regimes on Earth and helped back onto its feet by 17,000-plus American troops stationed on its territory, it seems a case worth revisiting. What follows is the best assessment I can offer -- from this distance -- based at least to some extent on more fulsome reporting done for media outlets outside the United States.

When you begin to look around, you quickly find that just about everyone -- Bush proponents and critics alike -- seems to agree on at least some of the following when it comes to the experiment in "democracy" in Afghanistan: The country now qualifies, according to the Human Development Index in the UN`s Human Development Report 2004, as the sixth worst off country on Earth, perched just above five absolute basket-case nations (Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone) in sub-Saharan Africa. The power of the new, democratically elected government of Hamid Karzai extends only weakly beyond the outskirts of Kabul. Large swathes of Afghanistan are still ruled by warlords and drug lords, or in some cases undoubtedly warlord/drug lords; and while the Taliban was largely swept away, armed militias dominate much of the country as they did after the Soviet withdrawal back in 1989. In addition, a low-level guerrilla war is still being run by elements of the former Taliban regime for which, in areas of the South, there is a growing "nostalgia."

Women, outside a few cities, seem hardly better off than they were under the Taliban. As Sonali Kolhatkar, co-Director of the Afghan Women`s Mission, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!:

"We hear… about [how] five million girls are now going to school. It is wonderful. When I was in Afghanistan, I noticed that in Kabul, certainly schools were open, women were walking around fairly openly with not as much fear. Outside of Kabul, where 80% of Afghans reside, totally different situation. There are no schools. I visited the Farah province, which is a very isolated, remote province in western Afghanistan and there were no schools except for the one school that Afghan Women`s Mission is funding that is administered by our allies, the members of RAWA. Aside from that one school for girls, there are no schools in the region. And so we hear all of these very superficial things about how great Afghan women are, you know, the progress they`re making. The U.N. just released a report recently on Afghanistan where they described Afghanistan`s education system as, quote, `the worst in the world.` And, you know, we never hear that. Our media, when they covered Laura Bush`s trip, will not mention, will not do their homework, and will not mention these facts."

According to the UN report, "Every 30 minutes a woman in Afghanistan dies from pregnancy-related causes… 20 percent of children die before the age of five… [and] the poorest 30 percent of the population receive only 9 percent of the national income, while the upper 30 percent receive 55 per cent."

Reconstruction throughout the country has been faltering; funds promised by international bodies and states have not been delivered in anything like the amounts agreed upon; the new Afghan National Army, being trained by the Americans, is a weak reed when it comes to national (or local) security; most nongovernmental aid organizations, many of which largely abandoned the country because it was so perilous for their workers, have yet to return or are just barely testing the waters again; and what economic growth there is seems to exist largely thanks to the drug trade, which is said to account for 60% of the country`s gross domestic product.

Having cornered most of the world`s supply of opium poppies and a growing slice of its heroin-production facilities, Afghanistan seems to be well on the way to becoming the globe`s narco-state par excellence. It has "bumper harvests that far exceed even the most alarming predictions," according to "senior Pentagon officials" quoted by Thom Shanker of the New York Times.

Paul Rogers, the canny geopolitical analyst for the openDemocracy website, sums the situation up this way:

"Afghanistan is returning to levels of production typical of the chaotic period after the withdrawal of Soviet military forces in 1989. According to United Nations sources, opium poppy cultivation from 2003-04 increased by 64%; around 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres) are now under cultivation. The most recent UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, Afghanistan: Opium Survey 2004, finds that Afghanistan now accounts for 87% of the world`s illegal production of opium… On the basis of the 2004 estimate, 2.3 million people in over 330,000 households are involved in production, 10% of the Afghan population."

According to the Times` Shanker, "One military officer who has served in Afghanistan gave a more pointed assessment: `What will be history`s judgment on our nation-building mission in Afghanistan if the nation we leave behind is Colombia` of the 1990`s?" It`s an apt analogy, though economically Colombia looks like paradise compared to Afghanistan. Until recently, the Pentagon actively resisted in any way interfering in the burgeoning drug trade -- in part, undoubtedly, because it was funding local warlords involved in the trade. The recent organized murder (on the eve of his departure from the country) of a British development specialist, Steven MacQueen, who had been involved in a small-scale project to wean Afghan farmers from opium growing was but one ominous sign of the direction the new democracy seems to be taking.

The Karzai government is weak indeed. Parliamentary elections have just been postponed for the third time -- until September. Warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, the new defense minister, is probably a bona fide war criminal (and former American ally) with 30,000 militia under his command. And this is but to scratch the surface of a nearly lawless land destroyed by decades of war against the Soviets, of civil war among warlords, of war and rule by the Taliban, and of bombing and invasion by the United States (which paid the Northern Alliance and other warlords to do most of its war-fighting work for it and has been dealing with the results of that decision ever since).

The Afghan story may, in many ways, be the saddest tale on Earth today, which, given the role of the country in our recent history, may also make it the most dangerous story around. Who now remembers a time in the 1950`s and early 60`s when, in peaceful Cold War competition for influence with the Soviets, we were building ranch-style houses near Kandahar in a country that had a middle class and was reasonably prosperous. Today, it`s as if that took place on the other side of the moon. But let`s not assume that everyone other than the drug lords in Afghanistan is unhappy. Take the Bush administration and the Pentagon, for example.

Bases

Just the other day, Air Force Brigadier General Jim Hunt gave an interview in which he announced an $83 million upgrade for the two main U.S. bases in Afghanistan: Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, and Kandahar Air Field in the South. A new runway to be built at Bagram will be part of a more general effort, said Hunt: "We are continuously improving runways, taxiways, navigation aids, airfield lighting, billeting and other facilities to support our demanding mission."

The general offered some other figures relating to that mission: "150 U.S. aircraft, including ground-attack jets and helicopter gunships as well as transport and reconnaissance planes, were using 14 airfields around Afghanistan. Many are close to the Pakistani border. Other planes such as B-1 bombers patrol over Afghanistan without landing."

Strange, those 14 airfields, since in Iraq the U.S. has reportedly been building up to 14 permanent bases (or "enduring camps"). You have to wonder whether there`s something in that number. In certain numerological systems, 14 is evidently associated with "addiction." The question is: What exactly are America`s air-field upgraders and base builders addicted to?

Gen. Hunt typically explains the addiction, or mission, this way: "We will continue to carry out the… mission for as long as necessary to secure a free and democratic society for the people of Afghanistan." But here`s the curious thing: We`re ramping up our air bases in Afghanistan at the very moment when our generals are also claiming that the left-over guerrilla war being carried out by Taliban remnants is on the wane. After another of those American drop-ins on Hamid Karzai and his country, General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs recently announced from the relative safety of Kabul airport that Afghanistan was "secure" ("Security is very good throughout the country, exceptionally good"), even as he suggested that "the United States is considering keeping long-term bases here as it repositions its military forces around the world." In the process, he also discussed what he and others politely call a future "strategic partnership" between the Pentagon and Karzai`s Afghanistan (which is a little like saying that a lion and a mouse are considering forming an alliance).

In recent months, guerrilla attacks had indeed fallen off radically, though a particularly fierce Afghan winter may in part have been responsible. As spring arrives, the pace of the fighting seems again to be picking up somewhat. Still, if you were considering Afghanistan in isolation, the logic of our generals and officials might seem to indicate that, as the war against Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants winds down, so should American troop strength and base positioning. That on bases at least, the opposite seems to be happening might lead you to scratch your head -- especially if your only source of information was our largely demobilized press in which the news is reported (when it is) more or less country by country and days can pass before you run across a piece that includes, say, three or four countries, no less discusses the actual geo-political look of things. Throw in the fact that Pentagon basing policy is considered an inside-the-paper story for policy wonks and that U.S. bases -- wherever located -- are not considered subjects worthy of significant coverage.

But, of course, our strategists in Washington pay notoriously little attention to the press and, from the beginning, they`ve been thinking in the most global of terms as they plan various ways to garrison the parts of the world -- essentially, its energy heartlands -- that matter most to them. And if you turn, for instance, to a striking piece in the Asia Times by Ramtanu Maitra, US scatters bases to control Eurasia, you can get a sense of what all this Pentagon basing activity really adds up to. Maitra reports that a decision to set up new U.S. military bases in Afghanistan -- up to 9 scattered across in six different provinces -- was taken during Donald Rumsfeld`s drop-in on Kabul Airport in December. These small bases, expected to be small and "flexible," are to be part of a new American global-basing policy that "can be used in due time as a springboard to assert a presence far beyond Afghanistan."

As Maitra points out, Sen. John McCain, the number two Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, while on a Kabul drop-in of his own and after talks with Karzai, proclaimed himself committed to a "strategic partnership that we believe must endure for many, many years" and assured reporters that the "partnership" should include "permanent bases" for U.S. military forces. (He later backtracked on the bases, his statement perhaps being a bit too blunt for the moment.)

For our Afghan bases to make much sense, you have to consider as well, those fourteen (or so) permanent bases in Iraq, our many other Middle Eastern bases, our full-scale access to three or more Pakistani military bases, our penetration of the once off-limits former SSRs of Central Asia, including the use of an air base in Uzbekistan and the setting up of a base for up to 3,000 U.S. troops at Manas in impoverished Kyrgyzstan (where "the Tulip Revolution" has just ejected a corrupt pro-Russian regime). In fact, you have to see that from Camp Bondsteel in the former Yugoslavia to the Manas base at the edge of China, the United States now effectively garrisons most of the heartland energy regions of the planet.

As Maitra comments,

"Media reports coming out of the South Asian subcontinent point to a US intent that goes beyond bringing Afghanistan under control, to playing a determining role in the vast Eurasian region. In fact, one can argue that the landing of US troops in Afghanistan in the winter of 2001 was a deliberate policy to set up forward bases at the crossroads of three major areas: the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. Not only is the area energy-rich, but it is also the meeting point of three growing powers -- China, India and Russia.

"On February 23, the day after McCain called for `permanent bases` in Afghanistan, a senior political analyst and chief editor of the Kabul Journal, Mohammad Hassan Wulasmal, said, `The US wants to dominate Iran, Uzbekistan and China by using Afghanistan as a military base.`"

Throw in our access to potential bases in the former Eastern European satellites of the former Soviet Union (Rumania and Bulgaria in particular) and you have the Pentagon positioned in quite remarkable ways not just in relation to the oil lands of the planet, but also in relation to our former superpower adversary. People ordinarily say that the Soviet Union "fell" in 1990 as the Berlin Wall came down, but in fact the Soviet Union has never stopped "falling." Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker, until recently Moscow bureau chiefs for the Washington Post, quote "analysts" as now speaking of "`the second breakup of the Soviet Union.` Some were even daring to ask the ultimate question: Could Russia itself be next?"

Just in the last year, we`ve seen "the Rose Revolution" in Georgia, "the Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, and now "the Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan, all heavily financed and backed by groups funded by or connected to the U.S. government and/or the Bush administration. As Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times writes:

"The whole arsenal of US foundations -- National Endowment for Democracy, International Republic Institute, Ifes, Eurasia Foundation, Internews, among others -- which fueled opposition movements in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, has also been deployed in Bishkek [Kyrgyzstan]… Practically everything that passes for civil society in Kyrgyzstan is financed by these US foundations, or by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). At least 170 non-governmental organizations charged with development or promotion of democracy have been created or sponsored by the Americans. The US State Department has operated its own independent printing house in Bishkek since 2002 -- which means printing at least 60 different titles, including a bunch of fiery opposition newspapers. USAID invested at least $2 million prior to the Kyrgyz elections -- quite something in a country where the average salary is $30 a month."

American policy-makers have been aided greatly by the harsh and heavy-handed rule of corrupt local leaders and by the crude politics of Russian President Vladimir Putin who, in his attempt to protect the Russian "near abroad," has positioned himself to fail in country after country. As Ian Traynor of the British Guardian writes, "He has managed to manoeuvre himself into the unenviable position of being identified as a not very effective supporter and protector of unsavoury regimes throughout the post-Soviet space." And, of course, they have been aided by the genuine urge of peoples from Kyrgyzstan to Ukraine not to be under the thumb of various Putin-style semi-autocrats -- or worse.

(You could say, in a way, that the "near abroads" of both former superpowers have been falling away for years now; for, in a similar manner, an urge to break away and implement new forms of democratic and economic independence from Washington`s diktats has been evident in our former Latin American "backyard" -- from Argentina to Bolivia, Brazil to Venezuela -- the difference being that the Latin American version of this has lacked the funds from a distant superpower.)

The result of all this has been that, with the exception of Belarus and Siberia, Russia has been pushed back into something reminiscent perhaps of its borders several centuries ago. This has to be a dream result for former anti-Soviet cold warriors like Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. After all, they`ve accomplished what even the most rabid cold warriors of the early 1950s could only have dreamed of. They have turned "containment" into "rollback."

In the meantime, the Pentagon, firmly ensconced in an ever expanding set of bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, has Iran militarily encircled. With approximately 160,000 troops (not counting mercenaries) and all those planes and helicopters, it now occupies two countries right in the oil and natural gas heartlands of the planet.

In fact, though their situations are many ways different, there are certain (enforced) similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan. In neither country, did we arrive with an exit strategy, because in neither case did we plan on departing. Both countries are ruled by exiles, effectively installed by us. Realistically speaking, both the government in Baghdad`s Green Zone and the one in Kabul are, in the kindest of terms, "wards" of the United States. Both lack the ability to defend themselves. The Iraqi government is essentially installed inside a vast American military base and, as Maitra points out, "the inner core of Karzai`s security is run by the US State Department with personnel provided by private contractors." (As a little thought experiment, try to imagine this in reverse. What would we make of an American president whose Secret Service was made up of foreigners hired by the government of Hamid Karzai?)

In both countries, democratic elections of a sort were conducted not just under the gaze of, but under the actual guns of, the occupiers (though when it comes to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the Bush administration quite correctly insists that democratic elections shouldn`t be run in an occupied country). Above all, in both countries, the Bush administration is eager for a "strategic partnership," which means that its officials are eager to remain free to act beyond anyone`s laws, in any manner of their choosing, and with almost complete imperial impunity.

Jails

In recent months, the best news reporting on Afghanistan has focused on the detention and jailing practices of Americans in that country and has been based largely on limited investigations conducted by one or another part of our government. A December Washington Post piece by R. Jeffrey Smith (General Cites Problems at U.S. Jails in Afghanistan), while discussing "a wide range of shortcomings in the military`s handling of prisoners in Afghanistan," managed to mention that we have "roughly two dozen" (count `em: 24) prisons in that country. Smith`s piece began:

"A recent classified assessment of U.S. military detention facilities in Afghanistan found that they have been plagued by many of the problems that existed at military prisons in Iraq, including weak or nonexistent guidance for interrogators, creating what the assessment described as an "opportunity" for prisoner abuse."

In such pieces, there are always "shortcomings" in American practices or dangerous "opportunities" still available for "abuse." (The word torture is seldom used in the U.S. media in such situations). The major abuses almost invariably turn out to have been largely over by the time the investigation being reported on took place. The Smith piece ends typically: "U.S. forces have `tightened up procedures for training up our people to handle and care for the prisoners,` Keeton said. They now have standard operating procedures in place, she said, and mechanisms to enforce them." All of which proves true until the next batch of horrors pours out.

A recent Dana Priest piece for the Post (CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee Treatment) on long past crimes against Afghans has a similar flavor. ("The CIA`s inspector general is investigating at least half a dozen allegations of serious abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, including two previously reported deaths in Iraq, one in Afghanistan and the death at the Salt Pit, U.S. officials said. A CIA spokesman said yesterday that the agency actively pursues allegations of misconduct.") Such acts (or crimes) are normally dealt with in the American press as individual cases -- just as recently stories of the various "extraordinary renditions," global kidnappings of terror suspects, and the like, many of whom then passed through Afghan jails, have trickled out largely as individual tales of terror and mistreatment, even if sometimes then toted up. They are essentially part of what really is the "bad apple" school of journalism, largely based on various military or official investigations of what the military, intelligence agencies, and the Bush administration have done.

To see the larger patterns in this you usually have to look elsewhere. For instance, Emily Bazelon of Mother Jones magazine had this to say (From Bagram to Abu Ghraib):

"Hundreds of prisoners have come forward, often reluctantly, offering accounts of harsh interrogation techniques including sexual brutality, beatings, and other methods designed to humiliate and inflict physical pain. At least eight detainees are known to have died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, and in at least two cases military officials ruled that the deaths were homicides. Many of the incidents were known to U.S. officials long before the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted; yet instead of disciplining those involved, the Pentagon transferred key personnel from Afghanistan to the Iraqi prison… Even now, with the attention of the media and Congress focused on Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the problems in Afghanistan seem to be continuing."

As it turns out, the problems are indeed continuing and in a form that simply cannot be read about in the mainstream media in this country. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark went to Afghanistan for the British Guardian and traveled the country investigating American detention practices to produce a piece, "One huge US jail", that really should be read in full by every American. They do what any good reporter should do: They attempt to put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, take in the overall picture, and then draw the necessary conclusions.

They start by saying, "Washington likes to hold up Afghanistan as an exemplar of how a rogue regime can be replaced by democracy. Meanwhile, human-rights activists and Afghan politicians have accused the US military of placing Afghanistan at the hub of a global system of detention centres where prisoners are held incommunicado and allegedly subjected to torture." Then, based on their own investigations, Levy and Scott-Clark lay out the geography of detention in America`s Afghanistan:

"Prisoner transports crisscross the country between a proliferating network of detention facilities. In addition to the camps in Gardez, there are thought to be US holding facilities in the cities of Khost, Asadabad and Jalalabad, as well as an official US detention centre in Kandahar, where the tough regime has been nicknamed `Camp Slappy` by former prisoners. There are 20 more facilities in outlying US compounds and fire bases that complement a major `collection centre` at Bagram air force base. The CIA has one facility at Bagram and another, known as the `Salt Pit,` in an abandoned brick factory north of Kabul. More than 1,500 prisoners from Afghanistan and many other countries are thought to be held in such jails, although no one knows for sure because the US military declines to comment."

They conclude that -- U.S. courts having made Bush administration detention centers in Guantanamo, Cuba, vulnerable to potential prosecution, "what has been glimpsed in Afghanistan is a radical plan to replace Guantanamo Bay… [as an] offshore gulag -- beyond the reach of the US constitution and even the Geneva conventions." They add:

"However, many Afghans who celebrated the fall of the Taliban have long lost faith in the US military. In Kabul, Nader Nadery, of the Human Rights Commission, told us, `Afghanistan is being transformed into an enormous US jail. What we have here is a military strategy that has spawned serious human rights abuses, a system of which Afghanistan is but one part.` In the past 18 months, the commission has logged more than 800 allegations of human rights abuses committed by US troops."

The Great Game

In the current Great Game of armed geopolitical chess the Bush administration is playing, it`s not quite clear who is on the other side. Is it Vladimir Putin and his desire to create a new, more modest version of the Soviet Union? Is it China – or rather, the anticipation of a future oil-crazed Chinese move into the region? Is it largely to isolate Iran and finally create American-style regime change there? Or is it all of the above?

Speaking of Russian-American competition, it has, it seems, become modish for American officials from our Secretary of Defense to assorted generals to brag that, in Afghanistan, we did in weeks what the Soviets couldn`t do in years. What the Soviets couldn`t do in years, of course, was successfully conquer Afghanistan. (Despite present appearances, needless to say, it`s not yet clear that the Bush administration has done so either.)

This seems to me a bizarre, yet telling expression of American imperial pride; even a reasonable description of Afghan realities, as seen from Washington. After all, the Soviets too swore they were "liberating" the Afghans from an oppressive way of life as they staked their imperial claim on the country back in the late 1970`s. In fact, the largest American base in Afghanistan, Bagram Air Base, is often referred to in the press as "the former Soviet base." If, to put this in context, we went back to the Soviet period and observed Soviet troops in Afghanistan doing what American troops are now doing (as, in fact, they did, right down to the grim detention centers), we would certainly have employed other terms than "democracy" or even "strategic partnership" to describe what was going on.

It may be the case that Afghanistan will prove the perfect Bush "democracy." It had an election and sooner or later will undoubtedly have more of them. Its resulting government remains weak, malleable, and completely dependent on American forces. The U.S. military and our intelligence services have had a free hand in setting up various detention centers, prisons, and holding camps (where anything goes and no law rules) that add up to a foreign mini-gulag stuffed with prisoners, many not Afghan, beyond the reach of any court. Our fourteen airfields and growing network of bases and outposts are now to be "upgraded" as part of a `strategic partnership" with an Afghan government that we put into power and largely control. These bases, in turn, should serve as a launching pad for controlling the larger region, and the detention and torture centers as suitable places for the unruly of the area. Afghanistan, in short, is in the process of becoming an electoral-narco-gulag-permanent-base dependency, and so qualifies as a model democracy, suitable to be spread far and wide.

If you wanted to come up with a little formula for what`s happened you might put it this way:

Afghan Spring
American freedom of action

Afghan democracy
American air bases

So the Afghanis go to hell while making drugs their export of choice; the Bush administration gets its bases; and if you happen to be one of the American conquerors of that benighted land, you don`t return home to parade down a major thoroughfare in your chariot with your war booty and slaves before you (and a slave by your ear whispering about the vanity of conquerors) à la the Romans, but you do get an American version of the same. You can go out on the lecture circuit and make a fortune, or become a play-by-play TV commentator for the next American war to come down the pike, or if you`re Tommy Franks, former Centcom commander and victorious general in our Afghan border war, you might be "tabbed to join the board of directors of Outback Steakhouse Inc." with a modest $60,000 annual compensation (plus expenses and fees). Could life be sweeter -- or meatier? Could Outback Franks be next? Will Outback open a Bagram outlet? Stay tuned as geopolitics meets the chain restaurant.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute`s Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War.

Copyright 2005 Tom Engelhardt

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Published on Tuesday, April 5, 2005 by the Independent/UK
China Leads Death List as Number of Executions Around the World Soars
by Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story…

Executions around the world are nearing record levels, and the Unites States is among the four countries which account for 97 per cent of the total, a report has found.

At least 3,797 people were executed in 25 countries in 2004, according to a report released today by Amnesty International.

The report says China easily operates the most stringent capital punishment regime, with an estimated 3,400 executions last year. In second place, Iran executed at least 159, Vietnam at least 64, and 59 prisoners were put to death in the US.

The number of executions worldwide last year was the highest since 1996, when 4,272 were carried out.

No official figures are available for China`s execution rate, and Amnesty has changed the method it uses to calculate the number of executions there. According to Amnesty`s report for 2003 China carried out at least 726 executions. The much higher figure of 3,400 executed last year is an estimate based on internet reports of trials, although it is still described as the "tip of the iceberg".

Kate Allen, Amnesty International`s UK director, said China`s record was "genuinely frightening". Amnesty quoted a delegate at the National People`s Congress in March last year, who said that "nearly 10,000" people were executed every year in China. Corruption is among the crimes which carries the death penalty.

Ms Allen said: "It is deeply disturbing that the vast majority of those executed in the world last year did not even have fair trials, and many were convicted on the basis of `evidence` extracted under torture.

"The death penalty is cruel and unnecessary, does not deter crime, and runs the risk of killing the wrongly convicted. It is time to consign the death penalty to the dustbin of history." Yet the figures conceal a trend that shows a general move towards abolition. "The world continued to move closer to the universal abolition of capital punishment during 2004," the report says.

Five countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes last year - Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal and Turkey. This means that 120 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

Although the US has become accustomed to being named in the grim league table alongside states such as Iran, which it has branded an "outpost of tyranny," there were fewer executions compared with 2003, when 65 were held. Two prisoners with long histories of mental illness were put to death in the US, but the Supreme Court ruled that imposing death sentences against child offenders contravened the US constitution.

In several of the 38 American states where the death penalty is still legal, the lawfulness of lethal injection has been challenged on the grounds that one of the chemicals used may mask a prisoner`s suffering.

Amnesty says that six prisoners on death row in the US were released last year after they were found innocent.

Kenny Richey, a Scotsman, whose conviction for murder and arson was overturned on appeal earlier this year, is still at risk of execution because Ohio prosecutors are trying to have the decision overturned.

Ms Allen said: "Last year I visited Scotsman Kenny Richey on death row in Ohio and saw the true wretchedness of a system that can condemn someone to years of calculated cruelty as they await death at the hands of the state.

"Even now Kenny is effectively suspended between life and death. We want to see Ohio prosecutors accept the senior state court`s decision and release Kenny immediately," Ms Allen said.

In some countries, such as Vietnam, it remains a state secret to reveal the number of executions carried out. Video evidence of North Korea`s execution of defectors was produced last week in a video released by a Japanese non-governmental organization.

MOST EXECUTIONS

Total in 2004

1 China 3,400*

2 Iran 159*

3 Vietnam 64*

4 United States 59*

5 Saudi Arabia 33*

6 Pakistan 15*

7 Kuwait 9*

8 Bangladesh 7*

9= Egypt 6*

= Singapore 6*

= Yemen 6*

*Minimum

© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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April 5, 2005
Major Parties in Iraq Agree on President and 2 Vice Presidents
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/international/middleeast/0…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 5 - The major political parties of Iraq agreed this evening to appoint a president and two vice presidents at a meeting of the national assembly on Wednesday, breaking a two-month deadlock and taking the first significant step in forming a new government.

The presidency council will have two weeks from its appointment to name a prime minister, who would select a cabinet. The new government would then have to be approved by a majority vote of the assembly, according to the interim constitution.

The main Shiite and Kurdish political blocs have agreed to name Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, as president; Adel Abdul Mehdi, a prominent Shiite Arab politician as vice president; and Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, the Sunni Arab president of the interim government, as the other vice president, said Hussein al-Shahristani, a vice speaker of the assembly.

The agreement breaks an enormous impasse between the main parties that had threatened to wreck the confidence built up during the Jan. 30 elections, when Iraqis defied insurgent threats to walk in droves to polling stations. A two-thirds vote by the 275 members is required to install the presidency council, and so the Shiite and Kurdish blocs, which together can meet the two-thirds requirement, haggled for weeks over a range of issues, from control of oil revenues to the role of Islam in the new government. More recently, the two blocs argued with Sunni Arab parties over who should get the top jobs in the government.

Until all those issues were settled, the parties were unwilling to agree to vote in a presidency council. But the bickering has been eroding the trust of ordinary Iraqis, who, amid continuing violence and tough living conditions, have been demanding that a government be appointed soon. American commanders have also been warning that the lack of a government could lead to an increase in violence.

Dr. Shahristani, a nuclear physicist and prominent member of the Shiite bloc, said the presidency council could officially appoint the prime minister as soon as late Wednesday or Thursday. The leading candidate for that job is Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the head of the Dawa Islamic Party, a religious Shiite party.

The political deadlock ended as American and Iraqi officials reported a wave of violence that resulted in the deaths of four American troops and at least one Iraqi Army officer.

Two of the Americans and the Iraqi officer were killed in a pitched battle on Monday with dozens of insurgents in eastern Iraq, the American military said. The battle began at 4 p.m., when two battalions of the Iraqi Army came across the guerrillas during a search operation for weapons in a remote part of Diyala Province, the military said. American forces sent in air support and troops from the 278th Regimental Combat Team.

The battle was the most recent in a string of engagements in which American and Iraqi troops fought large bands of insurgents. Last Saturday, 40 to 60 insurgents made a coordinated assault on Abu Ghraib prison. Last month, Iraqi and American forces raided a lakeside training camp that housed at least 80 insurgents north of Baghdad. That came days after an American convoy repelled an attack by dozens of insurgents in the town of Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad.

American military officials say it is unclear whether the insurgents have changed their tactics and begun organizing large-scale operations and setting up big encampments.

The military said a soldier with Task Force Baghdad died this morning when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb while on patrol in the southern part of the capital. A marine died on Monday from an explosion in Anbar Province, the restive desert region dominated by Sunni Arabs west of Baghdad.

An Interior Ministry official said that about 50 armed Shiite Arabs blocked off a road southeast of Baghdad today and detained 40 Sunni Arabs in retaliation for a kidnapping incident the previous day, in which seven Shiites were abducted by extremist Sunnis. Someone reported the presence of the roadblock to the police, who sent officers to scour the area, the official said. The police found 13 of the detained Sunnis in nearby homes, he added.

The incident underscored the increasingly sectarian nature of the violence taking place throughout the country.

Officials in Babil Province, south of Baghdad, said today that police from the town of Musayyib had found a mass grave in their area. In the grave were the corpses of 10 police officers and Iraqi Army officers, all blindfolded and with their hands tied. They were killed with several bullets to their heads, the officials said.

Two different insurgent groups posted Internet videos today showing the separate killings of an Iraqi soldier and an Iraqi man whom guerrillas accused of being a spy for the for the Iraqi police, The Associated Press reported.

Leaders of the main Shiite Arab and Kurdish political blocs have been saying it is crucial to bring the former governing Sunni Arabs into the political process in order to dampen the insurgency. In recent days, the leaders have been negotiating with Sunni Arab politicians over who should take the vice presidential slot that the parties have agreed should go to a Sunni. This evening, three Sunni groups each presented a list of three candidates to the Shiite and Kurdish blocs, and the one name that appeared on all the lists was that of Sheik Yawar, Dr. Shahristani said.

The Shiites and Kurds had already agreed more than a week ago that Mr. Talabani should be president and Mr. Mehdi should be one of the vice presidents. After reviewing the lists, they settled on Sheik Yawar as the other vice president, finalizing the selection process, Dr. Shahristani said. "We have looked at the various options this evening," he added.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Nachrichtenfotografie: Pulitzer für Associated Press
PULITZERPREISE FÜR L.A. TIMES UND AP

Bilder des Schreckens

Die "Los Angeles Times" hat ihren Ruf als eine der besten Zeitungen der USA verteidigt. Sie erhielt gleich zwei der begehrten Pulitzerpreise. Die Nachrichtenagentur Associated Press erhielt einen Preis für ihre Bilder aus dem Irak. SPIEGEL ONLINE zeigt die dramatischen Fotos, mit denen AP-Reporter das Grauen dokumentierten.
http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,349752,00.h…

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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/
Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Talabani President

The Iraqi National Assembly is set to announce the formation of a presidential council on Wednesday, selecting Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president, Adil Abdul Mahdi as a vice president, and Ghazi al-Yawar as the other vice president. Abdul Mahdi is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq who has gravitated toward a faith in the free market (he is rumored to have been a Maoist in his youth). Yawir is the current president, and is from the powerful Shamar tribe.

Reuter adds


` A U.S. soldier was killed in Baghdad when guerrillas ambushed a patrol with a roadside bomb and then opened fire, the American military said. On Tuesday, the military announced that four U.S. soldiers had been killed in attacks in Iraq.`



[urlThe tactics of the guerrillas in Iraq continue to evalve.]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/06/wirq06.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/06/ixworld.html[/url]

posted by Juan @ [url4/6/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/talabani-president-iraqi-national.html[/url]

Huhn? The Real Iraq

The unfortunate tendency in the United States to evaluate all statements about Iraq with regard to whether they are "optimistic" (i.e. pro-Bush) or "pessimistic" (i.e. anti-Bush) makes it difficult for those who just want to understand what is going on. I get slammed by the Jeff Jarvis`s for reporting bad news (shouldn`t it be reported?) or I get cited by rightwing bloggers when I say things like that the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement cannot win.

If you spend any time reading Arabic newspapers, the main conclusion you draw about Iraq is that it just isn`t like the typical American imagination of it. I`ve extracted a few paras. (from a long set of summaries) from the BBC World Monitoring for April 3 and 4 from the Iraqi press below. Each of the entries has a "what in the world?" factor as I read them, just because you don`t see this sort of thing in the US media.

April 4:


Al-Furat publishes on page 3 a 1,200-word report citing a number of people expressing their opinion on the "occupation" of Iraq at its 2nd anniversary. Most people interviewed believe that the "occupation" forces plan to remain in Iraq as long as possible and that disputes among Iraqis prolong their presence in the country.



When and if the divisions lessen, I expect to see a popular movement to get US troops out of Iraq.

Al-Ufuq reveals that there was a serious assassination attempt on Jalal Talabani (the new president) on March 9.

April 3:


`Al-Da`wah publishes on the front page a 300-word report on the statement issued by the Al-Da`wah Party, Iraq Organization, on the 40th anniversary of the Imam Al-Husayn martyrdom saying that our people are being subjected to a large scale conspiracy by the US allies and agents in the region . . .`



The new prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, is the leader of the Dawa Party. He is well spoken in English, and says mollifying things to the US and the UK, but the Dawa Party which he leads is an old-time revolutionary Shiite Party, and here is the statement of the Party organization itself, on the front page of the party newspaper. I don`t think they like us very much. If you read between the lines, they are clearly afraid that the Kurds have a tacit alliance wit the Israelis.


`Al-Ufuq publishes on the front page a 250-word follow-up report citing the Association of Muslim Scholars denying that it has issued a fatwa permitting recruitment in the Iraqi Army and police . . .`



Well, we saw the original announcement in the US press, prominently displayed alongside talking head comments about tipping points. But somehow we missed the subsequent disavowal (no doubt by a different section of AMS).


Al-Ittijah al-Akhar on 2 April publishes on page 4 a 700-word report citing Habib Jabir Habib, an Iranian researcher, as saying, in a seminar organized by the Strategic and Political Researches Gulf Centre in Dubai, that his country still regards Iraq as a possible enemy, adding that it has been working to prevent the US from controlling Iraq . . . `



D`oh.


`Al-Ittijah al-Akhar on 2 April publishes on page 7 a 750-word letter by an Islamic group to National Assembly Sunni member Misha`n al-Juburi accusing him of liberalism and secularism and urging him to adopt Islam teachings . . . `



Ex-Baathists are caught between the hatred for them of religious Shiites and of Kurds, and the hatred of them by Sunni fundamentalists within their own ethnic group.


Al-Manarah publishes on the front page a 750-word editorial by Khalaf al-Munshidi in which he criticizes the British forces in Basra for launching raids on the Tamim Tribe in Basra.



If it can`t be found at google.news, did it happen?


` Al-Bayan carries on page 4 a 1,200-word report citing a number of university professors who returned home after the downfall of the former regime to contribute to the construction of Iraq, complaining that they are unable to find jobs.

Al-Ufuq publishes on page 4 a 150-word report citing an official source at the Health Ministry informing the newspaper that according to the latest survey conducted by his ministry in cooperation with an international organization there are over one million handicapped in Iraq.

Al-Ufuq devotes all of page 6 to a report discussing the poor emergency health care services in Iraq.

Al-Ittijah al-Akhar on 2 April publishes on page 9 a 150-word letter by an Iraqi citizen criticizing the US forces for torturing Iraqi detainees in Mosul. The letter includes pictures of tortured Iraqi prisoners . . .

Al-Bayan publishes on page 4 a 400-word column by Zaynab al-Khafaji commenting on the Pentagon`s recent announcement that it plans to reevaluate the US military presence in Iraq next summer. The writer urges the Iraqi Government to boost the capabilities, training and performance of the Iraqi security forces, which have proved their efficiency in confronting terrorism, in order to provide the appropriate grounds for the departure of foreign forces from Iraq.

Al-Ittijah al-Akhar on 2 April publishes on page 6 a 750-word article by Abd-al-Sattar Ramadan criticizing the US for not punishing the US soldiers responsible for abusing Iraqi detainees in a US-run prison in Mosul . . .

Al-Mashriq runs on page 2 a 1000-word article saying that the "lukewarm" relations between Gulf Cooperation Council member countries and Iraq are due to the fact that these countries have fears from the Shi`i identity of the new Iraqi political system and the prominent role being played by the religious authority in the political life of Iraq.

Al-Mashriq runs on page 2 a 200-word commentary saying that the military experts` emphasis on the current situation in Iraq has created tension in the relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and as the latter fears that Al-Qa`idah may make of Iraq a new bases, thus countering Saudi Arabia`s efforts to destroy Al-Qa`idah . . .

Al-Furat carries on page 5 a 700-word article by Ahmad al-Murshid in which he comments on the US question that has recently been raised: "Why do they hate us in the Arab and Islamic world?" The writer says that not only people in the Middle East hate the United States, but people all over the world.

Al-Zaman publishes on page 13 a 400-word article by Mundir al-A`sam warning against adopting federalism and dividing Iraq into small states. The writer says that this is an "imperialistic and Israeli scheme". `

posted by Juan @ [url4/6/2005 06:08:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/huhn-real-iraq-unfortunate-tendency-in.html[/url]

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April 6, 2005
White House Has Tightly Restricted Oversight of C.I.A. Detentions
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/national/06detain.html?hp&…

WASHINGTON, April 5 - The White House is maintaining extraordinary restrictions on information about the detention of high-level terror suspects, permitting only a small number of members of Congress to be briefed on how and where the prisoners are being held and interrogated, senior government officials say.

Some Democratic members of Congress say the restrictions are impeding effective oversight of the secret program, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency and is believed to involve the detention of about three dozen senior Qaeda leaders at secret sites around the world.

By law, the White House is required to notify the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of all intelligence-gathering activities. But the White House has taken the stance that the secret detention program is too sensitive to be described to any members other than the top Republican and Democrat on each panel.

The issue is expected to be discussed at a hearing scheduled for Thursday, at which Porter J. Goss, the director of central intelligence, is to testify in closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The detention program remains so highly classified that the members of Congress would discuss the restrictions that surround it only in the most general of terms.

"These restricted briefings should be expanded," said Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Since the C.I.A. first took custody of Qaeda members in 2002, other government officials said, the only lawmakers on the House panel and its Senate counterpart whom the White House has permitted to be briefed on the issue have been the chairmen and ranking minority members.

"If we`re going to do our jobs, we have to be informed," Mr. Holt said in an interview. "The two members of Congress who sometimes get briefed on these things have enough to do. It`s too much to expect them to do oversight on things they can`t talk about to anyone else, including other members."

The limited nature of the C.I.A. briefings has not been publicly disclosed. But Mr. Goss and Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, alluded to them in the Armed Services Committee hearing last month in which they defended the practice as having fulfilled the C.I.A.`s obligations.

Mr. Roberts said he believed that Congress "has been fully informed of what the C.I.A. is doing in terms of interrogating captured terrorists," through what he called "our ongoing briefings with staff and members as the classification does permit." But he acknowledged what he called "some of the questions raised by members," some of them on the Intelligence Committee.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Roberts, Sarah Little, said the senator had "occasionally" objected to the degree of access to sensitive information the administration allowed to committee members, and had sometimes won agreement to a change in practice.

A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise, said Mr. Goss, as a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "takes very seriously his responsibility to keep appropriate overseers informed, and we do so."

A White House official said, "The administration takes very seriously our obligation to keep those responsible for intelligence oversight fully informed."

The authority to classify information rests with the White House and its designees, and the tools of Congress to challenge such designations are limited to the power it controls over the federal budget. The restrictions that the White House has imposed on briefings about the C.I.A. detention program were described by Republican and Democratic Congressional officials as particularly severe.

Since the detention program was established in 2002, the officials said, the C.I.A. detention effort has been classified as a "special access program," a category that puts it off limits even to most of those with top secret security clearances. In general, such restrictions have been applied only to covert operations and ongoing espionage investigations, Congressional officials say.

A former senior intelligence official said the main reason for the secrecy was to prevent information about where the prisoners were being held from being publicly disclosed. Such a disclosure, the official said, would almost certainly cause host governments to force the C.I.A. to shut down the detention operations being carried out on their soil.

To date, Congress has not opened any inquiry or held hearings on the C.I.A.`s detention program, despite indications that agency personnel were involved in abuses of some prisoners. That record is in contrast to the public scrutiny that the Congressional armed services committees have imposed on the military`s involvement in interrogation and detention, including the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The restrictions also appear to have had the effect of limiting public discussion about the C.I.A.`s detention program. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last month, Mr. Goss turned aside questions about the detention program on grounds that the C.I.A. had already answered them, through the briefings provided to the leaders of the intelligence panel.

"As far as I know, there has been no question that has been asked that has not been answered to the committee," Mr. Goss said, adding that he knew that the chairman, ranking member and some staff members from each panel "have been briefed in on the aspects of the transfer, the detention, the interrogation and the techniques."

The list of those who have been fully briefed on the program may be limited to the eight members of Congress who have served as the chairmen or ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees since early 2002. That list includes all four members who are currently in those positions: Mr. Roberts and Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairmen of the two committees, and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrats.

In many cases, the Republican and Democratic staff directors from the two panels have been permitted to sit in on the C.I.A. briefings, Congressional officials said. But like the members of Congress, those staff members are also bound by rules that prevent them from discussing the subject with others.

In a telephone interview, Ms. Harman would not comment on specific briefings, but said that "as a general matter" she believed that "many more subjects need to be briefed before the full committee."

In the Senate, Mr. Roberts and his Republican majority have blocked an effort by Mr. Rockefeller to open a formal inquiry into the C.I.A. detention and interrogation practices. That has angered Democrats, who have said that such an inquiry would allow all 15 members of the committee access to information that has been restricted to the limited briefings.

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Die Jagd auf nicht willfährige Richter geht weiter.

April 6, 2005
EDITORIAL
The Judges Made Them Do It
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/opinion/06wed1.html

It was appalling when the House majority leader threatened political retribution against judges who did not toe his extremist political line. But when a second important Republican stands up and excuses murderous violence against judges as an understandable reaction to their decisions, then it is time to get really scared.

It happened on Monday, in a moment that was horrifying even by the rock-bottom standards of the campaign that Republican zealots are conducting against the nation`s judiciary. Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, rose in the chamber and dared to argue that recent courthouse violence might be explained by distress about judges who "are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public." The frustration "builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in" violence, said Mr. Cornyn, a former member of the Texas Supreme Court who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which supposedly protects the Constitution and its guarantee of an independent judiciary.

Listeners could only cringe at the events behind Mr. Cornyn`s fulminating: an Atlanta judge was murdered in his courtroom by a career criminal who wanted only to shoot his way out of a trial, and a Chicago judge`s mother and husband were executed by a deranged man who was furious that she had dismissed a wild lawsuit. It was sickening that an elected official would publicly offer these sociopaths as examples of any democratic value, let alone as holders of legitimate concerns about the judiciary.

The need to shield judges from outside threats - including those from elected officials like Senator Cornyn - is a priceless principle of our democracy. Senator Cornyn offered a smarmy proclamation of "great distress" at courthouse thuggery. Then he rationalized it with broadside accusations that judges "make raw political or ideological decisions." He thumbed his nose at the separation of powers, suggesting that the Supreme Court be "an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people." Avoiding that nightmare is precisely why the founders made federal judgeships lifetime jobs and created a nomination process that requires presidents to seek bipartisan support.

Echoes of the political hijacking of the Terri Schiavo case hung in the air as Mr. Cornyn spoke, just days after the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, vengefully vowed that "the time will come" to make the judges who resisted the Congressional Republicans` gruesome deathbed intrusion "answer for their behavior." Trying to intimidate judges used to be a crime, not a bombastic cudgel for cynical politicians.

The public`s hope must be that Senator Cornyn`s shameful outburst gives further pause to Senate moderates about the threats of the majority leader, Senator Bill Frist, to scrap the filibuster to ensure the confirmation of President Bush`s most extremist judicial nominees. Dr. Frist tried to distance himself yesterday from Mr. DeLay`s attack on the judiciary. But Dr. Frist must carry the militants` baggage if he is ever to run for president, and he complained yesterday of "a real fire lighted by Democrats around judges over the last few days."

By Democrats? The senator should listen to what`s being said on his side of the aisle, if he can bear it.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Longitudes and Attitudes:

"Eminently worth reading . . . It is Friedman`s ability to see a few big truths steadily and whole that makes him the most important columnist in America today." --Walter Russell Mead, The New York Times


About the Author
Thomas L. Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work at The New York Times. He is the author of three best-selling books: From Beiruit to Jerusalem (FSG, 1989), winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction and still considered to be the definitive work on the Middle East, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (FSG, 1999), and Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 (FSG, 2002). He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family.


Product Description:
When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter "Y2K to March 2004," what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world`s two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this "flattening" of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in place, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?

In this brilliant new book, the award-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demystifies the brave new world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering global scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt. The World Is Flat is the timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.

Siehe auch.[urlIt`s a Flat World, After All]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/03DOMINANCE.html[/url]
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THE NATION
Patriot Act Is Called Vital
The attorney general tells senators that to abolish or weaken the disputed law would amount to disarmament in the war on terrorism.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-patriot…
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer

April 6, 2005

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Tuesday launched its campaign to preserve and expand the USA Patriot Act, the much-debated anti-terrorism legislation enacted after Sept. 11.

In unusually strong language before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales defended the administration`s use of the law and warned that any effort to dismantle it would be tantamount to "unilateral disarmament" in the war on terrorism.

The law, portions of which will expire at the end of the year unless Congress acts, has drawn opposition across the political spectrum, including civil liberties groups and libertarian conservatives concerned that it gives the government too much power to intrude into citizens` lives.

Gonzales said the government had used the act`s most hotly debated sections dozens of times to investigate and prosecute terrorism and other crimes.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III — testifying at the same hearing — argued for expanding the bureau`s authority to issue administrative subpoenas in terrorism cases, something that would give it access to a wider range of data without having to go to court.

The FBI has that authority in cases that include drug trafficking, healthcare fraud and child exploitation, Mueller said. But Democratic lawmakers have rejected previous administration requests for broader subpoena authority.

Tuesday`s action marked the beginning of what was expected to be a long and wrenching congressional review of how the Patriot Act operated in practice.

The law was enacted with broad bipartisan support six weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, Congress is about to engage in a debate that could last months. Sixteen of the act`s provisions, including some that U.S. officials consider essential, are set to expire this year.

To critics, the law — which made it easier for the government to investigate and prosecute suspected terrorists — has become a symbol of the abuses immigrants and others have suffered since Sept. 11. But public opinion remains divided, in part because much of the Patriot Act has been shrouded in secrecy.

Some congressional Republicans, including Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have expressed concerns about how the law has operated and indicated that they think revisions are needed.

At the hearing, Gonzales disclosed previously classified information showing how the government had used secret warrants obtained under the Patriot Act to amass a host of business and other personal records in terrorism investigations. The unusual public accounting, and Gonzales` embrace of what he called "technical modifications" in the law, seemed to be an attempt to strike a more conciliatory tone than his predecessor, John Ashcroft, whose support for the law was often viewed in Congress as unyielding.

The new attorney general has agreed to a private meeting to discuss the law with the American Civil Liberties Union, an audience that the group said it never got from Ashcroft.

"It is a grand departure from your predecessor," Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a leading advocate of rolling back portions of the law, said at the hearing. "I think it is the right spirit."

At the same time, Durbin and others indicated that they did not think the changes Gonzales had embraced went far enough. Many of their concerns, while they may seem to be at the legal margins, could become stumbling blocks when it comes to enacting legislation later this year.

Committee members grilled Gonzales over such concerns as the standards the government used in obtaining a new form of search warrant that allowed authorities to delay notifying the target of an investigation, sometimes until weeks after the search had occurred. The authority for that type of warrant under the Patriot Act is one that does not expire this year, but has been targeted for repeal by critics of the act.

Gonzales said the delayed-notification provision — known to critics as "sneak and peek" — had been used 155 times in cases that included drug dealing, murder and terrorism. He said that represented less than 1% of all search warrants the department sought.

Others asked Gonzales about the sweeping way that the law defined terrorism, and about fears among some advocacy groups that they could face prosecution for staging protests that sought political change.

Some of the sharpest questioning came from Specter, who asked whether Gonzales would agree to limits on a provision in Section 215 of the law, targeted by library groups as possibly allowing the government to investigate the reading habits of ordinary citizens.

Gonzales told lawmakers that the government had used Section 215 on 35 occasions — to obtain information about drivers` licenses, apartment leases and telephone subscribers but never against libraries.

But he declined Specter`s request to rein in Section 215, saying that the department should not be penalized for exercising restraint. He said the Justice Department needed tools in its arsenal even when it was not actively using them, comparing the situation to a police officer who carried a firearm for years and never used it.

"I don`t think your analogy is apt," Specter said.

The senator indicated that he thought the legal standards the government must meet under Section 215 might have to be changed. A major feature of the law has been that in terrorism investigations, the government does not have to establish probable cause that a crime was committed to obtain records.

Limiting that feature, Gonzales said, would unnecessarily burden investigators.

The attorney general proposed two changes that would make clear that targets of business-records requests would have the right to consult their lawyers and challenge the requests in court. He also said the law should be clarified so that prosecutors had to prove that the requests were relevant to terrorism cases.

But, he said, the government was carrying out those policies.

Gonzales said that the department had used another section of the Patriot Act in 49 cases to obtain "roving" wiretaps. That allows authorities to track multiple phones being used by a single suspect without having to go back to court each time the suspect gets a phone.

The attorney general acknowledged that the government had used portions of the law in some of its most controversial post-Sept. 11 investigations — including the bungled probe of a Muslim lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, who was detained as a material witness last year in Portland, Ore., in connection with the deadly Madrid train bombing. Mayfield was released after the FBI determined that a fingerprint had been erroneously identified as his.

Gonzales said the department planned to seek legislation that would extend the time that searches and electronic surveillance could be conducted under the Patriot Act without having to go back to court. He said the move would free up thousands of hours for Justice Department lawyers, and was endorsed in the final report of the presidential panel investigating intelligence failures in Iraq.

The House begins its hearings into the Patriot Act today. Gonzales is expected to appear. Specter has set a second hearing for his Senate panel May 10.


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THE NATION
U.S. to Require Passports at Border Entry Points
Under rules to be phased in by 2008, a driver`s license will no longer be sufficient for Americans returning from Mexico or Canada.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-pass…
By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer

April 6, 2005

WASHINGTON — In a move intended to counter terrorism, the U.S. will require by 2008 that Americans show passports or other specialized documents to reenter the country from Mexico and Canada, federal officials said Tuesday.

Under the restrictions, recommended by the Sept. 11 commission, Americans no longer would be allowed to show only a driver`s license or a government-issued photo identification card, officials said. Similarly, Canadians, who have been able to enter the United States with a driver`s license, would need a passport.

Some in the travel industry have opposed the changes, which would make it harder for travelers to take spur-of-the-moment trips. Critics have contended that it would bring an end to a long relationship between the U.S. and Canada that allowed casual cross-border travel as a part of daily life.

But U.S. officials point out that the Algerian man who was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in late 1999 was admitted from Canada without a passport.

U.S. officials decided to tighten the borders to keep out "people who want to hurt us," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Under the planned rules, Americans returning from Panama and Bermuda also would need to show passports or secure documents, officials said. Currently, Americans returning from Mexico, Panama or Bermuda need only show a government-issued ID card, plus proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or a naturalization certificate.

In addition to passports, American travelers would be able to use the secure "border crossing card" also known as a laser visa. Some Mexicans traveling frequently to the United States use the laser ID in place of a passport and visa.

Officials said travelers probably would be able to obtain secure ID cards issued under several other federal programs, such as those for frequent travelers and shippers.

The new rules would be phased in. The passport rule would be imposed on air and sea travel from the Caribbean, Bermuda and Central and South America on Dec. 31 of this year. It would be extended to air and sea travel from Canada and Mexico on Dec. 31, 2006. A year later it would apply to land crossings.

The changes are required under the intelligence reform law approved by Congress and signed by President Bush last year. In implementing the law`s requirements, State Department officials said there would be a 60-day period for public comment. The rules could undergo changes based on the comments before becoming final this fall.

"We recognize the implications this might have for industry, business and the general public, as well as our neighboring countries, and they are important partners in this initiative," said Maura Harty, assistant secretary of State for consular affairs.

She said the advance notice of the proposed requirements would allow those affected "to voice concern and provide ideas for [alternative] documents acceptable under the law."

Elaine Dezenski, an acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the changes would make travel within the Western Hemisphere more like other foreign trips.

"We want folks to think about their travel to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda as equivalent to taking a trip to Europe or Asia," Dezenski said.

Even with the new rules, Canadians would be exempt from fingerprinting requirements that would apply to other foreign visitors to the U.S., officials said.

Some Canadians have voiced criticism about U.S. border concerns. In reaction, one Canadian official said, his country might begin requiring Americans to show their passports before crossing into Canada.

"We will review our requirements for American citizens, and we`re going to do that in collaboration with the United States," Canadian Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan said outside the House of Commons in Ottawa.

Maryscott "Scotty" Greenwood, executive director of the Canadian American Business Council in Washington, said that for traffic to continue to flow smoothly with the new rules, governments would have to provide sufficient resources at the border and would have to make people in border communities fully aware of the new requirements.

"Implementation will be crucial," she said.

Border security has been a leading concern among U.S. policymakers since the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sept. 11 commission report warned last year that "the current system enables non-U.S. citizens to gain entry by showing minimal identification. The 9/11 experience shows that terrorists study and exploit America`s vulnerabilities."

It said that "Americans should not be exempt from carrying biometric passports or otherwise enabling their identities to be securely verified when they enter the United States; nor should Canadians or Mexicans."


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Die USA war beim Pisa-Test hinter D

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Greenbacks waft in with greenhouse gases
By Indrajit Basu
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GD07Df04.html

The Kyoto Protocol, which has finally come into being after about seven years of intense international negotiations, holds out immense possibilities for India. As India is not required to reduce emission of greenhouse gases under the protocol, which basically is a mandate for only acknowledged "industrialized", and thus highly polluting, nations, the country could well be one of the largest beneficiaries in term of dollars.

The protocol brings into force a clean development mechanism (CDM) wherein developed nations - the so-called "Annex I" countries - will be able to trade part of their commitment of reducing greenhouse gasses by buying green energy credits, called certified emission reductions (CERs), from projects in developing countries like India - non-Annex I countries - that do not have their own Kyoto emission targets.

"India has developed more CDM methodologies and project proposals than any other country," says a study by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), adding, "Brazil, China and India have the greatest potential for the new mechanism." According to Indian industry sources, India has emerged as the largest supplier of projects followed by Brazil (China is expected to enter the market soon), and could soon command over 10% of the global CER trade.

Adopted in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, this protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) puts binding commitments on 36 developed countries (the industrialized countries and the countries with economies in transition) to reduce their overall greenhouse gas emissions, individually or jointly, by at least 5% below 1990 levels in the first commitment period of 2008-2012. These countries account for about 30% of total carbon emissions.
Weiter:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GD07Df04.html

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Apr 7, 2005
The myth of an Israeli strike on Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD07Ak01.html

BERLIN - There is much talk these days of an impending Israeli military strike against Iran`s nuclear facilities, fueled most recently by a London Times article indicating that the Israeli parliament had given the initial nod to the planned attack - to take care of what the Israeli politicians of various persuasions regularly describe as the "biggest existential threat" to the Jewish state.

Yet a careful examination of the various logistical, operational feasibility as well as geopolitical and regional aspects or consequences of this much-debated scenario leads us to the opposite conclusion, namely, the impractical and unworkable nature of the so-called "Osirak option", named after Israel`s successful aerial bombardment of Iraq`s nuclear reactor in 1981.

Lest we forget, while the full details of the Osirak operations have yet to be revealed, it is fairly certain that Israeli fighter jets crossed the airspace of one or more of Iraq`s neighbors to reach Iraq for their single strike. In attacking Iran`s multiple nuclear facilities, spread throughout the country, particularly in central Iran, requiring a long trek across the borders, Israel`s best option would be a simultaneous multi-pronged strike using different routes, eg through Jordan and Iraq as well as the Mediterranean route through Turkey and or Azerbaijan, not to mention the logistical "nightmare" of long distance necessitating either aerial refueling or midpoint landing.

Yet at present neither option is available to Israel, nor is there any immediate prospect of their availability in the near future, given both Iran`s cordial relations with its neighbors and the fears and concerns of those neighbors of a severe Iranian backlash in case they permit their airspace for an Israeli attack on Iran.

Turkey, Israel`s "strategic partner" in the region, has excellent economic and diplomatic relations with Iran, as the two enjoy voluminous energy trade, regional cooperation through the Economic Cooperation Organization, and common policy toward Iraq and the "Kurdish issue"; the latter was for all practical purposes solved after 2001 after both sides set up a joint "border security" committee that resolved the outstanding differences between Tehran and Ankara on the issue of Kurdish insurgency. Hence, at present, irrespective of their divergent political orientations, one being secularist the other Islamist and theocratic-republican, Iran and Turkey enjoy the dividends of stable neighborly relations unlikely to be torpedoed by an Israeli incursion inside Iran through Turkish territory.

Of course, Turkey remains concerned about the nature of Iran`s nuclear programs, yet its leaders do not share Israel`s paranoid alarm about a "nuclear Iran" in the absence of any credible intelligence that would substantiate this fear, notwithstanding Iran`s adherence to the intrusive Additional Protocol of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the recent IAEA chief`s report confirming the absence of any evidence to corroborate the (US and Israeli) accusations that Iran is building a nuclear arsenal. (Recently, Aharon Ze`evi, an Israeli general, went on record stating that "Iran is not actually capable of enriching uranium to build a nuclear bomb ..." This is in contrast to Brenda Shaffer, a former Israeli officer turned Harvard scholar, who has repeatedly penned that Iran is at the "nuclear threshold".)

In the light of Turkey`s leaders` stated satisfaction with Iran`s continued cooperation with the IAEA inspections and the Iran-European Union nuclear negotiations, it is hard to envisage them taking on the risk of jeopardizing their sensitive, and mutually rewarding, economic, security and other ties with Iran by allowing Israel to use their air space against Iran.

Unfortunately, the high improbability of an Israeli operation against Iran through Turkey has consistently escaped the attention of Western media and the army of military and security pundits writing about this scenario. To give an example, in his recent book, The Persian Puzzle, Kenneth Pollock overlooks Turkey`s unwillingness to accede to Israel`s request when discussing the "Osirik option". Similarly, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in his New Yorker article on a similar subject, simply takes for granted that because of Turkey`s close ties to both Israel and the US it could be a launching pad for military offensives against Iran`s nuclear installations.

Clearly, such convenient oversights, and consistent mischaracterizations of Iran-Turkey relations as predominantly competitive, when in fact the cooperative side has the clear upper hand, simply add fuel to the myth of an imminent Israeli attack on Iran, whereas what is needed is a proper analysis of the key variables, such as the long-term damage to Iran-Turkey relations affecting the larger region if Turkey ever consented to an Israeli request for the use of its airspace for military action against Iran.

What makes this an even less likely scenario is the recent setback in Turkey-Israel relations caused by media revelations that Israel is actively courting Kurdish groups in the region, a charge flatly denied by Israel when confronted harshly about it by Ankara not long ago. Turkey`s relations with the EU could suffer as well, and its prospects for inclusion as a EU member further postponed, if Turkey puts itself at the disposal of US and Israel for military action unsupported by Europe.

Henceforth, the most likely scenario for Israeli use of Turkey`s airspace against Iran is a prior Turkey-EU consultation and understanding on the matter, unlikely to materialize in the post-Iraq invasion milieu featuring a war-weary Europe uninterested in risking the entire sum of its relations with Iran over the nuclear question.

The same argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to Iran`s other neighbor, Azerbaijan, whose new leader visited Iran recently and assured Tehran that under no circumstance would he allow a foreign attack against Iran through Azerbaijan. In fact, compared with Turkey, Azerbaijan has even more to fear of a harsh Iranian reaction in case of an Israeli raid through the Caspian state, which looks to Iran for support in its long bid to regain the territory lost to Armenia during the 1990s. In other words, Baku would have much to lose and little, if anything, to gain, by playing in the hands of US and Israel, which would also mar its carefully cultivated relations with Moscow (unhappy with Baku`s cozying up to the US military).

As with Azerbaijan, all the other Caucasian-Central Asian doors to Israel for an attack on Iran are currently closed, given the prominent sway of the Russian military in the region and Moscow`s inherent opposition to any US-Israeli plan to weaken a powerful and reliable allay, namely the Islamic Republic of Iran. As for Pakistan, much like Turkey and Azerbaijan, it has simply too much vested interest with Iran, covering Afghanistan and the Indo-Pakistani balance of power, among other things, to allow itself a supporting role for an invasion of Iran by the Jewish state hated by Pakistan`s mass of Muslim fundamentalists. Already, President General Pervez Musharraf and his assistants have repeatedly gone on record clearly stating that they would never allow Pakistan to be used against Iran.

What then remains of the "Osirik option" is an Israeli strike passing through Jordan and then Iraq before reaching Iran, hardly conceivable in today`s Shi`ite-dominated Iraqi polity. Assuming, in argumendo, that Israel would "violate" Iraqi airspace to conduct its operations, this could only happen with the United States` complicity, which, in turn, would both seriously complicate the relationship of the US and the new Iraqi government, making a mockery of the United States` claim that the "occupation had ended" and Iraq`s sovereignty "restored", and, worse, igniting an unpredictable new round of Iran-US hostility inside Iraq that could easily escalate and engulf the oil-rich Persian Gulf. For one thing, this would adversely impact the world economy by causing substantially higher oil prices, much to the chagrin of Western economies already suffering from high energy prices.

Again, it is rather astounding how simplistic, and naive, most of the published stuff is on an Israeli strike against Iran, drawing illicit comparisons between the Osirik power plant in Iraq, which was barely constructed and was in the incipient stage of construction when demolished by Israeli bombs, and the Russian-made Bushehr nuclear reactor, employing hundreds of Russian workers now putting the final touches on it; the Bushehr plant is more than 90% completed, Russia and Iran have reached an agreement on the return of "spent fuel", and in addition to the loss of Russian lives, causing Moscow`s fury perhaps to the level of affecting Israel`s energy ties with Russia, its bombardment would cause a massive environmental catastrophe likely to impact Iran`s neighbors in the Persian Gulf.

Thus, aside from the question of what Israel would actually achieve by destroying the Bushehr power plant, except angering the Russians, Arabs and the whole Muslim world and making Iran ever more determined to retaliate and build a nuclear arsenal without hesitation, the simplest questions concerning the dissimilarities of Osirik and Bushehr targets have yet to be addressed by the "experts" and policymakers in Washington and Tel Aviv advising a military strike against the Bushehr reactor.

And then there are the "operational" nightmares pertaining to Iran`s air defense systems, particularly when Israeli jets would have to fly across Iran to reach the targets in Isfahan, Tehran, Arak and elsewhere, facing rather formidable responses from Iran`s air force and surface to air missiles. By hitting these targets, Israel would inflict major "collateral" damage on civilians in Iran, and this factor alone would have a long-term implication hardly desirable by Israel, that is, Iran`s transformation into a sworn enemy of Israel.

Despite virulent anti-Israeli rhetoric in Iran today, Iran`s leaders and policymakers by and large consider Israel an "out of area" country not germane to Iran`s national security worries. In fact, no one in Iran takes seriously Israeli propaganda about Iran`s threats to Israel, and yet this could change overnight if Israel attacks Iran, causing substantial new security worries for Israel at its borders with Lebanon, and even Syria. A whole new Arab-Iran alignment against Israel would take shape in the aftermath of an Israeli strike against Iran, compared with the relatively benign relations between the two sides now.

Sadly, the Israeli perspective on Iran appears fixated on the rhetoric, ignoring both the gap between mass-generated, largely symbolic rhetoric and the actual policy, as well as the positive signals of an evolving Iranian position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, notwithstanding Iran`s declared willingness to abide by the will of Palestinians, above all, a two-state solution. But no matter how deep their misperceptions of Iran, or their delusions of an "Osirik option" against Iran, Israeli leaders, and their media pundits, are consciously propagating a myth of military action that flies in the face of formidable obstacles that make it impractical and, increasingly, into a paper wish-list, but one that nonetheless adds much to the political and psychological instabilities in the volatile region and beyond.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran`s Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and "Iran`s Foreign Policy Since 9/11", Brown`s Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003. He teaches political science at Tehran University.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Ich weiß nicht, ob allein das Internet die Leserzahlen schrumpfen läßt. Wenn ich mir in den letzten Monaten die Kampagnen in den Zeitungen betrachte, da werden Bagatellen aufgebauscht und mit Schlagzeilen gepusht. Dann nach einer Woche sind die Geschichten wieder vergessen, und es wird die nächste Sau durchs Dorf getrieben. Der Unterschied zwischen Boulevard und seriöser Presse ist fließend oder es gibt ihn nicht mehr. Für mich ist die Hauptursache der Medienmüdigkeit, dass wir mehr Medien als Nachrichten haben und daher wird aus jedem Furz ein Gewitter gemacht. Immer Superlative ermüden und machen unglaubwürdig. Dann haben auch der Kostendruck dazu geführt, dass Zeitungen keine eigenen Recherchen machen, sondern nur noch auf Agenturen setzen und das führt wieder zur Vereinheitlich und Beliebigkeit der Meldungen. Gerade die Gleichschaltung der Medien in den USA vor dem Irakkrieg haben dort doch für viel Ärger gesorgt und viele nicht erzkonservative Bürger ins Internet vertrieben. Die Blogger sind wie Pilze aus dem Boden geschossen und das hat zu einer direkten Gegenkultur geführt. Die interessantesten Artikel findet man heute im Web bei den kleinen Online-Zeitungen. Es ist nicht so, dass in D alle Zeitungen verlieren oder nur noch Auflage über Gratisexemplare in Flugzeugen und öffentlichen Einrichtungen machen. Die unabhängigen Webseiten haben das nicht nötig, sondern sie können gezielt Gruppen ansprechen und dadurch auch Meinungen zuspitzen. Wenn die Zeitungsredaktionen ihre Onlineseiten nur noch gegen Bares zugänglich machen, dann werden die unabhängigen Webdienste die Artikel anbieten und auch noch mehr Zulauf bekommen. Joerver

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 06. April 2005, 11:43

Unter Druck

Zum Sterben zu viel, zum Leben zu wenig?
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,349727,00.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,349727,00.html


Von Frank Patalong

Die Zeitung steckt in einer tiefen Krise. Auflagen und Umsätze sinken dramatisch, das "Kerngeschäft" bricht weg, Profite scheinen nur noch in neuen Märkten möglich. Allein Online boomt und wächst und brummt - und beißt die Hand, die es füttert, meinen Skeptiker. Das Web: Strohhalm oder Sargnagel für eine taumelnde Branche?

Die Probleme, mit denen sich Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. herumschlägt, hätte so mancher Medienunternehmer gern. Seit 1992 darf er sich Verleger der "New York Times" (NYT) nennen, seit 1997 steht er der gesamten New York Times Company vor: Das ist ein Unterschied, denn neben der vielleicht bekanntesten Tageszeitung der Welt betreibt die Firma 18 weitere Zeitungen und Magazine, acht TV-Sender, zwei Radiostationen und satte 40 Websites. Dazu kommt eine wachsende Zahl von Joint Ventures, von denen das in Europa bekannteste wohl die Beteiligung am Discovery Channel sein dürfte, an dem die NYT 50 Prozent hält.

Insgesamt ernteten diese NYT-Besitztümer bisher 111 Pulitzerpreise, von denen allein 89 an "Times"-Reporter gingen. Qualität ist die Ware, mit der die New Yorker Verlegerfamilie Ochs-Sulzberger seit vier Generationen erfolgreich handelt: Uropa Adolph S. Ochs kaufte 1896 das damals noch "New-York Daily Times" genannte, 1851 begründete Blättchen und machte es mit Innovationen ("illustrierte Ausgabe") und Rabattaktionen (1 Cent Verkaufspreis erhöhte die Auflage binnen zwei Jahren von 9000 auf 76.000) zum Massenerfolg.

Und die Marken unter dem NYT-Label brummen bis heute, trotz anhaltender Medienkrise: Fast 300 Millionen Dollar machte der Konzern im letzten Jahr und ist an den Börsen doch rund 25 Prozent weniger wert als noch vor drei Jahren. Denn auch, wenn die Zahlen der NYT auf den ersten Blick beeindrucken: Sie beschreiben seit rund fünf Jahren einen steten Abstieg.

Warnsignale

Zumindest fast überall: Die Zeitung verliert Leser, die Mutter wie die Tochterfirmen verlieren Werbeumsätze. Die einzige Tochterfirma, deren steter Boom unaufhaltsam scheint, ist New York Times Digital, die Firma hinter der Website der Zeitung. Die findet Online längst mehr Leser als in gedruckter Form, und auch das zahlt sich aus: Mit einem geschätzten Gewinn von warscheinlich knapp über 30 Millionen Dollar im letzten Jahr dürfte die NYT die finanziell lukrativste Newsseite der Welt sein.

Kein Wunder, kann sie sich doch nicht allein auf eine der kopfstärksten Onlineredaktionen stützen, sondern auch auf das Korrespondentennetz der NYT, zudem auf die geballte Kompetenz der Printredaktion - zumindest aber auf deren Renommee.

An diesem Punkt jedoch beginnt auch in New York das große Grübeln: Print verliert Umsätze, Online gewinnt. Eine Verlagerung des Geschäftes sei das, sagen Optimisten. Doch werden die neuen Einkünfte aus dem Online-Geschäft je ausreichen, die Verluste beim Print auszugleichen?

Viel spricht nicht dafür

Denn Qualität zu produzieren ist teuer. Vor rund zwei Jahren erlebte die NYT mit dem Jayson-Blair-Skandal um erfundene, teils gestohlene und aufgebauschte Stories eines Reporters ihren bisher größten Image-Gau - ein Fiasko, das von vielen auch auf Sparmaßnahmen innerhalb der Redaktion zurückgeführt wurde.

Dort zu sparen kann sich die NYT nicht leisten, wenn sie ihren Ruf als Qualitätsmedium wahren will, von dem sie lebt. Und genau das, analysierte kürzlich Anthony Bianco in der "Business Week", verhindert seit Jahren, dass die "Times" aus ihren Profiten Polster für raue Krisenzeiten schöpfen könne: Mit geschätzt über 300 Millionen Dollar im Jahr investiert die NYT mehr Geld in ihre Redaktion als jedes andere kommerzielle Medienunternehmen der Welt.

Das Missverhältnis ist offenkundig.

Stolz und stetig wachsende, aber nach wie vor zweistellige Online-Profite stehen dreistelligen Umsatz- und Profiteinbrüchen im Printbereich gegenüber. Im Klartext: Was eine Medienmarke Online gewinnt, gleicht die Offline-Verluste nicht aus - und das gilt selbst für eine der stärksten Zeitungsmarken der Welt.

Kritiker gehen noch weiter: Zumindest die Verlagerungen bei den Leserzahlen seien ein Zeichen dafür, dass sich Print-Medienhäuser mit Web-Engagements selbst "kannibalisierten". Online beiße die Hand, von der es gefüttert werde.

Die Diskussion um genau diese Frage schwelt seit nun fast zehn Jahren - und sie lebt gerade wieder auf.

Signale an die Branche

Wohl kaum zufällig ließ die "New York Times" Anfang April die Redakteurin Katherine Q. Seelye im eigenen Angebot darüber sinnieren, ob es sich Zeitungen leisten könnten, den kostenlosen Zugang zu ihren Webseiten zu beenden - und meinte damit eigentlich, ob sie es sich leisten könnten, das nicht zu tun. Auch bei der "New York Times", verriet sie, werde "darüber nachgedacht". Eine offizielle Stellungnahme zu dieser Frage werde in Kürze erfolgen. In Deutschland überschreibt man solche Artikel mit "In eigener Sache".

Da schwant Onlinern nichts Gutes. Die Fädenzieher der Webwelt setzen seit den ersten, zumeist enttäuschenden Versuchen mit Bezahlmodellen in den Neunzigern vor allem auf Werbung. Statistiken der Online Publishers Association OPA zufolge schöpfen europäische Webseiten rund 70 Prozent ihrer Einkünfte aus der Werbung, Tendenz steigend. So schön es ist, dass die Werbetreibende Industrie die kraftvollen Onlinemedien als Träger für ihre Kampagnen entdeckt, aus der Perspektive von Web-aktiven Zeitungsverlegern sind mindestens drei große Probleme damit verbunden:

1. Einkünfte aus Online-Werbung erreichen nur sehr selten die Höhe, die es zur Refinanzierung von Redaktion und Infrastruktur braucht - vor allem, wenn ein Onlineangebot mit vom Renommee einer in der Medienkrise darbenden "Muttermarke" lebt.

2. Die Offline-Umsätze sinken schneller, als die Online-Umsätze steigen.

3. Online-Werbung hat auf Seiten der Leser mit größeren Akzeptanzproblemen zu kämpfen als beispielsweise Print-Anzeigen.

Das aber hat viel mit der Geschichte des Mediums Internet zu tun.

Lesen gern, aber dafür bezahlen?

Das WWW begann seinen Siegeszug Mitte der Neunziger als weitgehend graues, werbefreies Medium. Den Einzug der "Kommerziellen" empfanden die frühen "Web-Bewohner" als ein Eindringen. Das Web als Trägermedium für Inhalte etablierte sich so schnell bei so vielen Menschen vor allem aus einem Grund: Hier bekam und bekommt man vieles umsonst. Selbst die flackernde, oft schrille Werbung, mit der die Finanziers der Angebote versuchen, zumindest ihre Verluste zu minimieren, wird von vielen schon als Zumutung empfunden.

Web-Leser sind nahezu konditioniert, publizistische Inhalte im Web für kostenlos zu halten. Zugleich erwarten sie von diesen Inhalten bestmögliche Qualitäten und beschweren sich über alles, was dem nicht genügt. Ein "Übermaß" an Werbeschaltungen wiederum wird als schädlich für das Image einer Medienmarke angeprangert. Es gibt Leser, die androhen, nicht wieder zu kommen, wenn die Werbung nicht "abgeschaltet" werde.

Während Zeitungsleser seit Generationen daran gewöhnt sind, dass bis zu vierzig Prozent der Zeitungsfläche von Werbung eingenommen wird (die meisten nehmen das gar nicht wahr), ist die Toleranz für Werbung im Web noch immer gering.

Die im Fernsehen selbstverständliche Unterbrecherwerbung beispielsweise, in England von einzelnen Webseiten bereits 1997 weitgehend erfolglos erprobt, setzt im Web Leser-Abwanderungen in Gang. Nur wenigen Webseiten wie beispielsweise Salon.com gelang nach Einführung solch einer werblichen "Aufmerksamkeits-Maut" das Überleben.

Werbung ist aus User-Sicht ein abzuschaltendes Übel

Pop-up-Werbung killt man ganz selbstverständlich mit technischen Maßnahmen (alle neuen Browser unterdrücken heute Pop-ups). Und Online-Publisher befürchten, dass Ähnliches auch mit ihren ganz normalen Werbebannern geschehen könnte.

"Meine größte Sorge", zitiert Katherine Q. Seelye den NYT-Chefredakteur Bill Keller, "ist, dass wie auch immer wir unsere Inhalte verteilen, wir das Geld dafür irgendwie verdienen müssen. Das Werbemodell scheint im Augenblick attraktiv, aber wollen wir, dass unsere Zukunft wirklich von einer einzigen Einnahmequelle abhängt? Was passiert, wenn der Werbemarkt einbricht? Was passiert, wenn jemand eine Software entwickelt, die Werbung ausfiltert?"

Zumindest eine Antwort auf diese Fragen scheint völlig klar: So eine Software würde zu einem Mega-Erfolg.

Online-Publisher wie Zeitungsverleger verfallen bei solchen Gedanken in düsteres Grübeln. Sie haben kaum Alternativen. Eine aktuelle Studie der Online Publishers Association (Amerika) weist nach, dass die Zahlungsbereitschaft für Inhalte von 2003 auf 2004 um 0,4 Prozent gewachsen sei. Gerade einmal 88 Millionen Dollar flossen für Online-Nachrichteninhalte, Archivnutzungen und andere Dienstleistungen. Im gleichen Zeitraum gaben die US-Konsumenten 414 Millionen Dollar für Entertainmentinhalte wie Onlinespiele aus - 90 Prozent mehr als im Vorjahr.

Ernüchterung mit Zahl-Modellen

Im Web jedoch kosten zahlungspflichtige Angebote bisher oft mehr an Leserzahlen und damit Werbeeinnahmen, als sie an Gebühren einbringen. Bei der "Los Angeles Times" denkt man deshalb im Augenblick darüber nach, zahlungspflichtige Angebote wieder kostenfrei anzubieten. Die Katze beißt sich, wie der Volksmund wohl sagen würde, im Online-Publishing ständig in den eigenen Schwanz.

Viel gravierender als für Angebote wie die "New York Times", die mit ihren Online-Gewinnen ja auf allerhöchstem Niveau jammert, ist all das für das Gros der Zeitungshäuser, die Online nichts als zusätzliche Verluste machen - und zudem einen guten Teil der Anzeigen- und Rubrikanzeigenmärkte an "Online" verloren haben.

Ihr größtes Problem aber ist, dass sie auf Online nicht einfach verzichten können. Die Zeitung erlebt einen grundlegenden Wandel in der Mediennutzung, der zu Lasten des gedruckten Wortes und zugunsten des Bildschirms geht: Sie verliert gerade ganze Abonnenten-Generationen an das Web. Wie soll sie sich bei Wahrung hoher Qualität künftig refinanzieren? Und, was Web-Leser kaum je wahrnehmen: Wie soll das den Web-Angeboten gelingen?


© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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Where Are The Good Christians?
The fanatics and nutjobs now running the show sure give honest believers a bad name
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 6, 2005

I know they`re out there.

I forget, often, too often, just how many there are but I know they exist in much larger numbers than you might be led to believe by current spiritually embarrassing headlines and I know they are just as, if not more, passionate and healthy and deeply felt in their beliefs than the overpublicized sects of angry and frothing "true believers" screeching into the megaphone of the culture, the ones yanking BushCo`s chain and pounding their Bibles and hiding their warped porn fetishes and forcing their way into our lives and laws and bedrooms right now.

They are the decent Christians. They are the calm, morally progressive, compassionate, open-hearted Jesus-loving folk who don`t really give a damn for archaic church dogma or pious noise or sanctimonious candlelight vigils, for repressing women or bashing gays or slamming Islam and. in fact, turned to Christianity precisely because they believe these things are abhorrent and wrong and, well, anti-Christian.

They are Episcopalians, for example, that most nimble and intelligent and groundbreaking of Christian churches, a rather revolutionary sect that recently appointed its first openly gay bishop and supports gay marriage and dares to ordain women as priests.

And they`re still deeply involved in amazing charity work, AIDS and orphanages and Africa and stuff that makes you humble and amazed and they have not, due to this seemingly blasphemous dichotomy and much to the shock of their homophobic conservative brethren, been struck by lightning or doomed to hell for all eternity -- or, rather, if they have, they`ll go down happy and intelligent and singing and believing in Jesus anyway, all the way down.

They are the legions of recovering Catholics, people for whom the radiant and positive aspects of this most intense of faiths still hold powerful sway but who just can`t abide by the ridiculous and outdated and often homophobic and sexist doctrines hurled forth like so much flaccid manna from the unhappy red-robed automatons of Vatican City.

They are the moderate Christians, the ones who do not support illegal wars or the killing of all doctors who perform abortions and who are all for social justice and who think Bush is a bit of an imbecile, and even if they find themselves for some unfortunate reason in support of the Republican cause overall, they still think it`s rather abhorrent that the man dares invoke God to support his lie-ridden wars and the smashing down of women`s rights and gay rights and abuse of the environment et al.

How do I know they`re out there? Because I hear from them all the time, especially when I get carried away and lump them all together in my often overly harsh criticisms of the faith and my utter lack of patience for its more rabid and small-minded and hateful practitioners and its more violently self-righteous elements, stuff so completely antithetical to what true Christianity, what true faith, true spiritual connection, is all about, it would make Jesus wince.

And these Christians -- let us call them "normal" or perhaps "natural" or even "organic" (i.e.;, devoid of poisons or preservatives or Sanctimonious Growth Hormones) -- they are filling all manner of funky or progressive (or Unitarian) churches across many a large city in America, right now.

They are streaming into huge beautiful nonjudgmental buildings all over San Francisco and Chicago and New York and Boston, etc., places that welcome gays and oddballs and spiritual nomads and pantheists and anyone else who might be feeling a divine pull, and please leave your Jesus extremism at the door and let`s talk about Sufism.

And they discuss stuff that sounds much closer to mystical or cosmological or otherwise paganistic energy work than the narrow, spittle-filled believe-in-Jesus-or-burn-in-hell angles of approach you keep hearing about and that tend to slash at your heart and insult your soul.

They`re not radical. They`re not rabid. They`re not full of venom and Rapture and they read books other than the childish Left Behind series and they don`t loathe sex or despise other religions or hate their genitalia like Tom DeLay loathes congressional law, and they know full well that Mel Gibson is a rather insane misogynistic blood fetishist who knowingly swiped an illiterate 18th-century stigmatic nun`s bizarre and ultraviolent hallucination to use as some sort of dangerous literal truth. Amen.

They are, in short, those who understand the deep irony that, when it comes to religion, the ones who scream and stomp and whine the loudest are often the ones who understand their faith the least.

But there is a reason these calm and moderate and private Christians don`t make the news, why, despite their enormous numbers, they are not setting the cultural agenda like some sort of sanctimonious meth-addled monkey (hi, Sen. Santorum!) right now.

It`s because they are not organized. They are not a club. They do not have a unified attack agenda. They do not have pamphlets or advertising budgets or congressional lobbyists or the complaint line of every TV network and program except Fox News and "The 700 Club" on speed dial.

They do not call themselves the Parent`s Television Council or the Right to Life Marauders or the Family Values Coalition or some other dumbly misleading and patently bogus moniker. They are not attempting to cram already gutted public school textbooks with imbecilic "Intelligent Design" BS, nor are they writing uptight letters to the FCC en masse or ranting about nipples or dildos or low-cut jeans on teenage girls while at the same exact moment repressing their own gay fantasies and kiddie-porn collections.

They understand that our children are at much higher risk of moral and spiritual damage from, say, decimated school budgets and violent presidential warmongering and noxious Kraft Lunchables than they could ever be from Janet Jackson or Abercrombie and Fitch or healthy teen sex.

Most spiritually healthy Christians are simply living their lives, praying deeply, carefully, privately, seeing the divine all around them and choosing Jesus` teachings as the best moral compass, especially the parts about love and healing and empathy and acceptance and turning the other cheek, about how God is not some sneering angry bearded puppeteer but rather a radiant energy force inside everyone and every living thing, always, just waiting for you to tap into it. You know, just like every other religion in existence.

They are the ones who understand that Jesus was, quite simply, one hell of a powerful teacher, and healer, and mystic, and visionary, a pacifist, a liberal, a feminist, the ultimate outsider, one of the finest examples in all of history of how to radiate pure love and compassion and divine interconnection and Lord knows we could all use more of that.

The bad news is, the rabid evangelical set is growing, this cluster of lost and weirdly undereducated people for whom the Bible is literal word-for-word verbatim truth and the Rapture is imminent and the Earth is just a disposable lump and the flesh is a disgusting afterthought and should be ignored and loathed and made really really fat and sexless and sad. And, to my mind, these people deserve all the fiery verbiage and raw satire and intelligent ideological counterforce I can possibly lob their way.

But. Just as there are moderate and wonderfully articulate pro-choice Republicans and just as there are moderate and fiscally conservative liberals, so there are millions of Christians who don`t adhere in the slightest to the narrow and spiritually numb worldview now being touted by the BushCo Right. And if we`re going to get anywhere with this increasingly desperate and fractured American social experiment, we need to remember that.


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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Iraqi Suspect Says U.S. Troops Took Mother Hostage
Tue Apr 5, 2005 03:50 PM ET
http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=world…
By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi apparently suspected by U.S. troops of taking part in attacks in Baghdad accused U.S. forces on Tuesday of taking his mother and sister hostage to pressure him and his brothers into surrendering for questioning.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he doubted the accusation and was not aware of such an incident. But neighbors interviewed around Arkan Mukhlif al-Batawi`s villa in the capital`s Sunni Arab suburb of Taji corroborated his account.

If true, the troops would have offended local sensibilities about the treatment of women; Amnesty International said they could also have broken international law by taking hostages.

Batawi, who spoke to Reuters at the offices of a leading group of Sunni clerics, said U.S. soldiers searched his home on Saturday. When they found neither him nor two brothers also on the wanted list, they arrested his mother and sister, he said.

A message purportedly left at the house by the troops, which urged the brothers to surrender, contained a mobile telephone number. This was answered by an American soldier who appeared to be aware of Batawi`s accusation but declined further comment.

"Last Saturday morning, about 20 Humvees (military vehicles) surrounded our house and neighboring houses and when they failed to find us they took our mother and sister," said Batawi, who spent more than a year in Baghdad`s Abu Ghraib jail after the U.S. invasion but denies any link to Iraq`s insurgency.

He said he was not sure why the troops wanted to arrest him and his brothers, Muhammad and Saddam, again. But he believed they suspected them of involvement in insurgent attacks. All three were released in August from Abu Ghraib, which became notorious last year for abuses of prisoners by U.S. troops.

"GIVE YOURSELF UP"

A handwritten sign in Arabic on the front gate of their house read: "Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters.

"Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention."

It was signed "Bandit 6," apparently U.S. Army code, possibly designating a company commander.

When Reuters called the mobile telephone number at the bottom of the message, an American answered, saying he was on a military patrol. Asked about Batawi`s accusation, he said: "I can`t comment on that. The commander will call you back."

Hours later, a second call elicited the same response before the American, who would not identify himself, hung up.

The U.S. 3rd Infantry Division is active in the area.

A spokesman at U.S. headquarters in Iraq, who also declined to give his name, said he could neither confirm nor deny the incident. He said he did not find Batawi`s account "plausible."

Three neighbors of the Batawi home did corroborate the accusation. They said U.S. troops, accompanied by Iraqi police, had arrested Batawi`s 65-year-old mother and a sister who is 35.

"The Americans attacked the house of the Batawi family. They were searching for the brothers. When they could not find them they took the women," said one neighbor, Kamal Abbas.

"Through a translator they told us that they will release the women when the men surrender."

Batawi, who says his occupation is farming his land around Taji, said he and his brothers were imprisoned in 2003 on charges of attacking U.S. forces and planning armed assaults.

NEIGHBORS ANGRY

He said he would be willing to give himself up again if the Americans provided guarantees that his mother and sister would be freed. He and his brothers had sought the assistance of the Muslim Clerics Association, the main voice of Iraq`s Sunni Arabs, in trying to resolve the situation.

"My brothers and I never attacked American forces before.

"But if they do not release our mother and sister we will be ready to attack them wherever they are," he said.

Near his home, another neighbor, Ali Jassem, said: "If they want the men they should take the men. Arresting women is not accepted by God ... Our tribal traditions reject such acts. Where are you, the advocates of democracy?"

Many Iraqis accuse American soldiers of heavy-handed tactics in their fight against mainly Sunni insurgents. U.S. commanders insist they do their best to avoid harming civilians.

There have been reports of U.S. commanders acknowledging they have taken relatives of fugitives into custody. While questioning relatives is seen as legitimate among police forces worldwide, holding them as hostages is not.

At Amnesty International, the London-based human rights lobby group, Middle East spokeswoman Nicole Choueiry said of Batawi`s case: "I do not think it is the first time."

"We are against it. It is against international law to take civilians and use them as bargaining chips."


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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

War News for Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Oil pipeline bombed near Beiji, oil exports to Turkey at a standstill.

Bring ‘em on: Freelance cameraman working for CBS shot and wounded by US troops in Mosul. One suspected insurgent killed in same incident.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier assigned to Task Force Baghdad killed in Iraq.


Drones: In the skies over Iraq, the number of remotely piloted aircraft - increasingly crucial tools in tracking insurgents, foiling roadside bombings, protecting convoys and launching missile attacks - has shot up to more than 700 now from just a handful four years ago, military officials say.

The aircraft are being put into service so quickly that the various military and intelligence branches are struggling to keep pace with the increased number of operators required and with the lack of common policy and strategy on how to use them.

There are nearly a dozen varieties in service now, from the 4.5-pound Ravens that patrol 100 feet off the ground to the giant Global Hawks that can soar at 60,000 feet and take on sophisticated reconnaissance missions. And while much of the appeal of the aircraft is that they keep aircrews out of the line of fire, there are now so many of them buzzing around combat zones that, in fact, the airspace can get dangerously crowded.


Humvees: For the fifth time in the past year, U.S. commanders running the war in Iraq have told the Army to send more armored Humvee utility vehicles to protect U.S. troops.

Just as the Army was reaching its target of 8,279 factory-built armored Humvees for delivery to Iraq, U.S. Central Command last month raised the bar again, to 10,079, Army officials disclosed Tuesday.

The Army has been accused by many in Congress of lagging behind in providing armor protection for troops, hundreds of whom have been killed or wounded in ambushes and roadside bombs in Iraq. The Army says it has pressed the vehicle manufacturer for as many as possible, and it has been chasing a moving target set initially at 1,407 by commanders in Iraq in August 2003.


Politics: Parliament elected veteran Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as Iraq`s president on Wednesday, breaking a political impasse and paving the way for a new government more than nine weeks after elections.

Talabani is the first Kurd to be Iraq`s president – and the first non-Arab president of an Arab state -- a sign of the new clout of the Kurdish minority that backed the U.S.-led invasion.

Two vice presidents were elected: Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shi`ite who was finance minister in the outgoing government, and Sunni Arab tribal leader Ghazi Yawar, the former president.

"This is the new Iraq -- an Iraq that elects a Kurd to be president and an Arab former president as his deputy," parliament speaker Hajem al-Hassani said after the vote. "What more could the world want from us?"

Disagreement remains on some cabinet posts, particularly the Oil Ministry which is coveted by both Shi`ites and Kurds.


Ancient History

Culture of life: The former US envoy to the Vatican, Jim Nicholson, recalled Pope John Paul II`s vocal opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq on the grounds that war represented a "defeat for humanity."

"There was a clear disagreement," Nicholson said of the rift between the Vatican and the White House over the use of military force to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

In a failed attempt to sway President George W. Bush from a military strike, the pope had sent an emissary to Washington in the run-up to the war.


Another congenital liar: An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.

According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq`s alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as `crazy` by his intelligence handlers and a `congenital liar` by his friends.

The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball`s credibility, his claims were included in the administration`s case for war without caveat.

It now appears there were problems with Curveball from the start, but the intelligence community was willing to believe him `because the tales he told were consistent with what they already believed.`


Secrecy

Too sensitive for the likes of you: The White House is maintaining extraordinary restrictions on information about the detention of high-level terror suspects, permitting only a small number of members of Congress to be briefed on how and where the prisoners are being held and interrogated, senior government officials say.

By law, the White House is required to notify the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of all intelligence-gathering activities. But the White House has taken the stance that the secret detention program is too sensitive to be described to any members other than the top Republican and Democrat on each panel.


Maybe this is why: CIA interrogations may have played a role in the deaths of several detainees in Iraq, as Bush administration lawyers were advocating an aggressive interrogation policy that critics say led to torture, military documents and officials say.

U.S. officials have formally disclosed the death of only one person interrogated by the CIA in Iraq -- Manadel al-Jamadi, an unregistered "ghost" prisoner at Abu Ghraib who died Nov. 4, 2003, while handcuffed in a prison shower room.

But sworn statements provided to Army investigators by military intelligence and police at Abu Ghraib contain at least four references to CIA detainees dying during interrogations that do not correspond with the al-Jamadi case.


Malfeasance

Wolfowitz: If the World Bank`s board had applied the same kind of "due diligence" to Paul Wolfowitz that they purport to apply to major development projects, they might have uncovered a significant conflict of interest that could have led them to rethink their embrace of the architect of the Iraq war.

Just consider his role in the U.S. occupational authority`s (CPA) looting of the Iraqi people`s oil revenues to pay off well-connected crony contractors like Halliburton. As president of the World Bank, he will be in a position to quash an important related investigation.


Military News

Parental approval: Faced with wilting recruitment and ongoing violence in Iraq, Army and Marine Corps recruiters are turning their attention to those most likely to oppose them: parents.

The two branches are shifting from a strategy that focused first on wooing potential recruits to one aimed at gaining the trust and attention of their parents by using grassroots initiatives and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns.


No kids: Female soldiers should avoid having children until they are ready to leave the Army or have established careers, members of a panel of female first sergeants advised troops here Thursday.

First Sgt. Mary Maczko joined the Army 21 years ago as a 30-year-old mother of two. The Queens, N.Y., native said it’s natural for younger soldiers to want to have children.

“Between 21 and 30 is when they have children. But we are an Army at war. The best thing to do is not have any children,” she advised the soldiers.

“You want to make sure you are able to do what you have to do. A child is an obstacle. There are things you cannot do. It restricts your time,” she said.


Maupin: The military will consider reclassifying as dead the only United States soldier listed as captured in the Iraq War and review its designation of a pilot shot down in the 1991 Gulf War as captured, officials said.

A three-officer board of inquiry will convene today to review evidence in the case of Army Reserve Sergeant Keith Matthew Maupin, missing in Iraq since April 9, 2004, when his military fuel convoy was ambushed near Baghdad, the army said yesterday.

The army has classified Maupin of Batavia, Ohio, as ‘captured’. Ms Shari Lawrence, a spokeswoman for the Army human resources command, said among the range of options available to the board was to recommend Sgt Maupin be reclassified as ‘deceased/body not recovered’.


Commentary

Comment: When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, they expected there would be a quick handover to carefully selected allies in a secular government that would be the opposite of Iran`s theocracy, and perhaps even a counterfoil to Iran`s regional aspirations. It is one of the greatest ironies of the US intervention that the Iraqi people instead used their first voting opportunity to elect a government with a strong religious base, and indeed with close links to the Islamic republic on their border. The US, having destroyed the sole major secular government in the region, is now at risk of replacing it with a theocratic regime.

The scene is now set for a prolonged power struggle between the US and the Shia majority. Having been deprived for more than 500 years of the opportunity to govern Iraq, the Shias, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, are clearly now determined to exert their influence.

To forestall a clerical-driven religious regime, Washington has a plan in reserve, according to Asia Times (15 February), to arm small militias backed by US troops. The report states that "in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, and consignments have been loaded in bulk on to US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks". The same report says that these US supported militias would comprise former members of the Baath party, which has already split into three factions, and would receive assistance from the interim prime minister Iyad Allawi`s Iraqi National Accord.

Comment: Last October, just weeks before the presidential election, I wrote a column stating that the acting director of the CIA was suppressing a report to Congress that was potentially embarrassing to President Bush`s campaign. The report had been completed by the CIA`s own independent inspector general four months before the election, yet the agency rebuffed Congress` request that it be made public.

The case of Curveball was relevant to the election because it went to the heart of the administration`s competency in managing national security. At best, what emerges from the presidential commission`s report is a picture of an American leadership in total disarray on national security; at worst, it shows widespread complicity at the top in a concerted effort to deceive the electorate on matters of war.

The Curveball case was definitively closed when the CIA gained access to the Iraqi defector in March 2004 and categorically repudiated his story. That was half a year before the U.S. presidential election, however, and clearly the White House didn`t want the CIA inspector general to blow the whistle and embarrass the president as he fought for his political survival.

To squelch the exposure of such widespread incompetence and deadly manipulation of national security intelligence is a betrayal of democracy.


Casualty Reports

Local story: Oak Ridge, TN, soldier killed south of Balad Ruz.

Local story: Buffalo, NY, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Salcha, Alaska, Marine killed in Al Anbar province.

Local story: Filipino Marine, who joined the service hoping to become a US citizen, killed in Ramadi.

Award

Local story: West Pennesboro Township, PA, Marine awarded posthumous Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal.

# posted by matt : 10:40 AM
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Apr.05: 10

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
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CIA`S SOURCE OF PREWAR INTELLIGENCE SAYS BRAD AND JEN ARE STAYING TOGETHER
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1102&srch=

New Statement From `Curveball` Raises Eyebrows

The Central Intelligence Agency’s primary source of prewar intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction made headlines again today, telling People magazine that actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are staying together.

“I am telling you that Brad and Jennifer have never been happier with their marriage,” said the source, codenamed Curveball. “I would be willing to go to war over that.”

When asked about reports that Mr. Pitt and Ms. Aniston are heading for divorce court, he replied, “Who are you going to believe – ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ or Curveball?”

Mr. Curveball, who reportedly swigged from a bottle of Jack Daniels during his rambling, often incoherent interview, also predicted that the film “Guess Who” would sweep next year’s Academy Awards and that Mickey Rourke would be named People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”

He refused to indicate how he had obtained any of this information, saying only, “My reception has improved greatly since I started wrapping my head in aluminum foil.”

The latest pronouncements from Mr. Curveball have fueled criticism of the CIA for relying on him as its sole source of prewar intelligence, prompting former CIA director George Tenet to hold a rare press conference outside his home on Sunday.

“Contrary to the reports, Curveball was not our only source of intelligence,” Mr. Tenet said. “We also had two other sources, codenamed Whackjob and Nutcase.”

Elsewhere, a U.S. military spokesman said that an insurgent attack on Abu Ghraib prison on Saturday was “an isolated incident,” and that in the future all violence would be confined to inside the prison.

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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, April 07, 2005

Bush Less Popular than Dick Nixon

Could Iraq be the undoing of both major political parties that backed the war in the West?

President Bush is suffering from the worst poll numbers of any second-term president in the spring after his reelection since World War II. If the rest of his second term goes like this, it could hand the Democrats the White House in 2008.

Editor and Publisher put the poll in historical context and found that Bush is relatively unpopular.

Mark Murray gives some of the reasons for the fall in Bush`s popularity, but sees Bush`s pitiful 45-48 percent poll numbers as solid or good. The whole picture looks much worse in historical context, which is further proof that judgment about contemporary affairs made in a historical vacuum is always flawed.

Murray points to public dislike of Bush`s plan for privatizing social security and its disgust at the Republicans` grave-robbing grandstanding in the Schiavo case, as well as a general feeling that the country is going in the wrong direction (51%), as explanations for Bush`s poor showing.

Murray mysteriously leaves out the petroleum factor. I have been amazed that a doubling of gas prices was just accepted by Americans as a matter of course and did not become an issue in last year`s presidential campaign. The public still hates Jimmy Carter for allowing such a thing (as if he could have done anything about it). I presume that stoicism over petroleum prices was a by-product of the war mentality. Maybe Americans felt that their country had come under attack on September 11, and the subsequent wars and gas price hikes just had to be borne.

But the issue is finally emerging. In a recent poll, 58 % said the gas prices were creating a serious financial hardship for them. USA Today reports, "Nearly half of those polled — 48% — said they already have cut driving to reduce their fuel bills, and 38% say they`ve trimmed other household spending." People are also buying fewer SUVs, which isn`t going to help the US auto industry. The present concern probably comes because the public has begun to suspect that prices are not going back down. About $10 a barrel of the current $57 a barrel for petroleum probably derives from speculation and anxiety in the oil markets resulting from the Iraq war and ongoing crisis. Prices at the pump might be $1.80 rather than $2.20 if it weren`t for Iraq.

And then there is Iraq. In a recent poll, "53 percent of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, 57 percent said they disapprove of the president`s handling of Iraq and 70 percent said the number of U.S. casualties, including more than 1,500 deaths, is an unacceptable price to pay there."

My American readers seem completely disinterested in British politics, to my amazement. But it is worth noting that Tony Blair has called for elections May 5, isn`t doing well in the polls, and admits that the Iraq debacle has hurt him. His government has been dogged by questions of whether Blair knew the war to be illegal before he helped launch it, whether he promised Bush to support such a war early in Bush`s presidency, and whether he knew or should have known how bad was the intelligence on the basis of which it was set in motion. The British public, unlike the American, actually cares, moreover, about things like the Geneva Conventions and international law, and the Iraq prison abuse scandals have hurt Blair`s image, as well. (Bush, on the other hand, has been teflon in the US in the face of torture, intelligence failures, and gross mismanagement of the country he conquered, apparently because a majority of Americans just doesn`t care).

Italy`s Silvio Berlusconi is also running away from the Iraq issue by announcing he`ll start pulling out troops in September, for the purposes of positioning himself in his own upcoming election. He knows what happened to Aznar in Spain.

Is Iraq becoming an electoral albatross around the necks of the victors?

posted by Juan @ [url4/7/2005 06:34:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/bush-less-popular-than-dick-nixon.html[/url]

Provincial Elections Stir Trouble

My comments on the Lehrer News Hour about the implications of the formation of a presidency council are now online.

I was challenged by Dr. Karim on some facts. But I stand by what I said. 1) Adnan al-Janabi was in fact rejected as speaker by the Shiites and Kurds because they said his brother had Baath connections. 2) Mishaan al-Juburi was in fact put forward by the Sunni caucus in parliament. 3) The man who became speaker, Hajem al-Hassani, was thrown out of the Iraqi Islamic Party for declining to resign when that party withdrew from the interim government in protest against the Fallujah campaign, and he does not have grass roots among the Sunni Arabs on the ground in Iraq.

Karim`s insistence that Sunnis with any Baath links at all be ostracized and that the Kurds absolutely must have Kirkuk is a good illustration of the nationalist passions that threaten the stability of Iraq. Nationalism is always very selfish. By the way, Kirkuk was "historically" a Turkmen city probably until the 1950s. And we haven`t lost over 1500 US troops killed and 11,000 wounded to make sure the Kurds can grab Kirkuk. They owe us the basic decency of being willing to compromise for the sake of social peace in Iraq.

Edmund Sanders of the Los Angeles Times has gotten the story. This piece is to my knowledge the first major article in the American press on the story of the provincial elections and all the problems attending them.

He reveals that the struggles over who controls the Najaf police in part involve former American-appointed governor Adnan Zurfi, who was displaced by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq but has attempted to maintain control of the security forces. Al-Zaman, the reports from which I had earlier summarized, had cast the struggle as one between federal Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib and the local Najaf politicians, and had not see Zurfi as a player in the disturbances.

Sanders` version raises the question of whether the Americans and the Iranians are fighting a proxy war for control of Najaf, with Zurfi acting with Rumsfeld`s backing, while SCIRI is close to Tehran. Najaf province has a population of over half a million, and is home to the extremely important religious pilgrimage site of the Tomb of Ali (the Prophet`s cousin and son-in-law).

Sanders also reveals that SCIRI, which has 20 out of 41 seats on the Basra council, has been outmaneuvered by the Fadila Party, which has made alliances with smaller groups allowing it to come to power. Fadila is an offshoot of the Sadr Movement and is loyal to Shaikh Muhammad Yaqubi, a rival of Muqtada al-Sadr, who studied with Muqtada`s father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. Yaqubi can claim to be a fully fledged jurisprudent, unlike Muqtada, and has picked up the support of Qom-based Grand Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri. All the Sadrists are puritanical Shiite extremists aiming for an Islamic state not so different from what is in Iran. The Sadrist attacks on more secular students at Basra University, Sanders says, may be related to Fadila`s ascendancy in Basra politics. Basra has a strong secular middle class, but its politics has ended up being dominated by Fadila and SCIRI, both of them aspects of political Islam.

Al-Zaman reported on Tuesday that the Diyala city council had finally been elected, tithout giving a breakdown by party or saying who the new governor is. Sanders reveals that the Diyala council is afraid to hold a meeting for fear of being assassinated, as 8 of the members of the previous council were.

And, the Tamim council can`t meet because the Turkmen and Arab members are boycotting, to protest what they see as the victorious Kurds` high-handedness. Tamim is the province in which Kirkuk is now situated, and the Kurds are making a play for dominance in that city, where they are not the majority and haven`t traditionally been the majority (in the early 20th century it was a Turkmen city).

I have been telling anyone who would listen that the provincial councils are a big story not being covered by the US press, and send Kudos to Sanders for nailing it.

But what about Sadrist dominance in Maysan and Wasit? Did that pan out. And what is this "Wolves" militia that is attacking "terrorists" in Maysan according to the Iraqi press. It is like a noir movie. There are a million stories in the cities of Iraq.

Thanks to Christine Prince for the tip.

posted by Juan @ [url4/7/2005 06:12:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/provincial-elections-stir-trouble-my.html[/url]

Yalla Ya Jama`ah (Hurry up, folks!)

The Department of Defense is having difficulty, according to Fred Kaplan at Slate, in coming up with a policy on teaching Arabic to Pentagon personnel. Not a program, not a class. A policy.

The University of Michigan and other Title VI (federally-supported) centers, in contrast, are training thousands of Americans in Arabic every year, and doing the language teaching at a very high level, with great professionalism and innovation. The critics of those Centers would have you believe that they aren`t serving the interests of the United States, but in fact they are at the vanguard of helping Americans understand the Middle East at this fateful juncture.

posted by Juan @ [url4/7/2005 06:03:00 AM]
A returning aid worker for the AFSC says of Iraq:[/url]

Oil Workers and Privatization of Iraqi Petroleum

An oil workers union in Basra, organized after the fall of the Baath regime, may be the strongest guarantee against the privatization of the Iraqi oil industry.

But given how broke the Iraqi government would be without the petroleum income, I don`t think there is any chance it will privatize, anyway. That particular dream of the Washington consensus people was always a fantasy.

posted by Juan @ [url4/7/2005 06:01:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/oil-workers-and-privatization-of-iraqi.html[/url]

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April 7, 2005
Bush Nominee for U.N. Post Faces Hurdles at Senate Panel
By DOUGLAS JEHL and STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/politics/07bolton.html?hp&…

WASHINGTON, April 6 - A former chief of the State Department`s Bureau of Intelligence and Research is expected to testify in opposition to John R. Bolton`s nomination as ambassador to the United Nations when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds hearings on Mr. Bolton next week.

With one Republican member, Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, reserving final judgment, the committee`s approval of Mr. Bolton`s nomination does not appear to be certain, senior Congressional officials said.

Two other administration nominees ran into difficulties in the confirmation process on Wednesday, as a senator threatened to block the nomination of Stephen L. Johnson to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and two Democrats said they were blocking the confirmation of the nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration. [Page A19.]

Carl W. Ford Jr., the former State Department official, and Mr. Bolton clashed while at the State Department over what Mr. Ford regarded as Mr. Bolton`s intimidation of intelligence officials. The committee is also seeking testimony from two intelligence officials, one a top Central Intelligence Agency analyst, about what the officials have said they believed were Mr. Bolton`s efforts to have them replaced for disagreeing with him over the weapons programs of Iraq, Cuba and other countries.

Former government officials have accused Mr. Bolton of improperly circumventing State Department channels to gain access to confidential sensitive intelligence reports, the Congressional officials said.

In addition, there have been accusations that Mr. Bolton has sought to remove dissenters from their posts or bar them from meetings called to discuss policies. A senior Central Intelligence Agency official has become the second government official to tell the Senate Intelligence Committee that he believes Mr. Bolton sought to remove him from his post after he complained that statements Mr. Bolton made in 2002 about a biological weapons program in Cuba did not reflect the views of intelligence agencies, Congressional officials said.

They said that the committee was reviewing those accusations, combined with previous allegations that Mr. Bolton had tried to suppress information undercutting the administration`s contentions about unconventional weapons.

Mr. Bolton has declined to comment on the accusations, but a senior State Department official, declining to be identified to avoid breaking a no-comment rule before the hearings, said that Mr. Bolton had never tried to distort intelligence reports, have anyone dismissed or bar dissenters from his meetings.

He added that Mr. Bolton had in fact barred aides from outside his immediate office from meetings, including one from the Intelligence and Research Bureau, to confine these sessions to "immediate family" and not for policy reasons.

Mr. Bolton`s use of intelligence has long been a source of contention in the Bush administration, particularly in the State Department. Some intelligence officials have complained that he used intelligence selectively, promoting views favorable to his positions on Cuba, Iraq, Syria and other countries.

Mr. Bolton is scheduled to testify Monday, and Mr. Ford and other possible witnesses are to testify Tuesday. A Republican Senate staff aide said Mr. Bolton could return for a rebuttal if necessary.

Republican and Democratic Senate staff members said that Mr. Bolton would probably be approved, but that if all 8 Democrats were joined by one of the 10 Republicans on the committee to make it a tie vote, the nomination could not go to the Senate floor and would most likely be blocked. The Congressional officials who discussed the prospects for the hearing included Democrats and Republicans and people who favor the Bolton nomination as well as those who oppose it. They refused to be identified because of the delicacy of the nomination, because the postponement of the hearing in light of the funeral for Pope John Paul II made the situation fluid and because intelligence matters are involved.

Senator Chafee is "inclined" to vote in favor of Mr. Bolton, said his spokesman, Stephen Hourahan. But he said that Mr. Chafee, after meeting with the nominee, had not decided and still had serious concerns that Mr. Bolton needed to address.

The emerging Democratic strategy is to dig up evidence of intelligence abuses and try to confront Mr. Bolton with his past criticism of the United Nations and to win over Mr. Chafee, a strong United Nations supporter, if Mr. Bolton does not repudiate his earlier positions. One of the administration`s most outspoken conservatives, and a longtime critic of the United Nations, Mr. Bolton has won praise from conservatives and Republicans who say he should be able to serve a president and a vice president whose views he reflects.

Of the two aides that the committee wants to interview, one is a C.I.A. official serving undercover overseas, who was national intelligence officer for Latin America, responsible for producing formal intelligence estimates on Cuba and other topics.

The second official, Christian P. Westermann of the State Department, complained to the intelligence panel in 2003 about being removed by Mr. Bolton. But the senior State Department official said Mr. Bolton lost confidence in Mr. Westermann`s willingness to get clearance for the wording he wanted to use in a speech and not over the basic interpretation of the intelligence.

The Foreign Relations committee has asked the C.I.A. and the State Department to make the two officials available to the panel`s staff, as well as at least two others, and to produce other documents as part of its review of Mr. Bolton`s conduct, the Congressional officials said. The officials said they were seeking to substantiate the accusations by former officials that Mr. Bolton improperly obtained intelligence reports from the C.I.A., and the National Security Agency, rather than going through the department`s on Bureau of Intelligence and Research, with which he had a stormy relationship.

Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell praised Mr. Westermann in 2003 for providing confidential testimony to the Senate intelligence panel about his disagreements on arms matters. Mr. Powell said he was "pleased" that Mr. Westermann had "honestly answered" when asked about pressure to describe undue influence on intelligence on Iraq.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 7, 2005
A Kurd Is Named Iraq`s President as Tensions Boil
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/international/middleeast/0…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 6 - A Kurdish militia leader who fought Saddam Hussein for decades was named president on Wednesday by Iraq`s national assembly as Mr. Hussein watched the proceedings on a television inside his prison.

The militia leader, Jalal Talabani, will be the first Kurd to serve as president of an Arab-dominated country. But immediately after his appointment, tensions among Iraq`s political groups erupted, as some Shiite and Kurdish members of the assembly demanded that the interim government resign as soon as Mr. Talabani, 72, is sworn in on Thursday.

That government, led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, has infuriated many officials from the main Shiite and Kurdish parties, which will dominate the new administration. They accuse Dr. Allawi, a secular Shiite, of having brought back into the government former senior members of the Baath Party who played key roles in oppressing ordinary Iraqis, especially Shiites and Kurds.

The debate on Wednesday foreshadowed what could be a harsh purging of former Baathists once the new leaders, including the prime minister and cabinet, are installed.

"I think the government should resign after the council takes an oath and assumes its duties," said Fouad Massoum, the former head of the interim assembly, referring to the presidency council, which consists of Mr. Talabani and his two deputies.

Hajim al-Hassani, the speaker of the assembly, shot down the suggestion, saying "this parliament can`t change the government."

Iraq`s Shiites and Kurds are united on some issues, including their intense distrust of Sunni Arabs, a minority group that ruled the country for decades, and their enmity for the Baath Party. On that count, they are likely to work together to revamp the security forces in the Interior and Defense Ministries, which Dr. Allawi, a former Baathist, filled with his allies.

But the protracted negotiations to form the government, which caused many Iraqis to lose faith in their elected leaders, indicate that the Shiites and Kurds could face heated clashes going forward, as they struggle to write a permanent constitution by mid-August and hold full-term elections at year`s end.

The unresolved issues include how much autonomy the Kurds will receive, how oil revenues will be split and what role Islam will play in the new government. As early as Thursday, the national assembly could appoint Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a religious Shiite, as prime minister, the most powerful post in the new government.

The appointment of Mr. Talabani and his two deputies, done by a pro forma vote in the assembly meeting on Wednesday, was the first significant move by the members to install a government. In Washington, President Bush praised the assembly for the step.

"The Iraqi people have shown their commitment to democracy and we, in turn, are committed to Iraq," the president said in a written statement. Bekhtiyar Amin, the human rights minister and a Kurd, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Hussein and 11 of his top aides watched Wednesday`s proceedings, held in the fortified Green Zone, on a television in their detention center near the Baghdad airport. The idea to provide Mr. Hussein with a television for the occasion was taken to Mr. Amin by Kosrat Rasoul, a top official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Kurdish party that Mr. Talabani founded, Mr. Amin said.

"We want them to know that they are not presidents or ministers or anything other than prisoners," Mr. Amin said. "Their time is over."

The appointment of Mr. Talabani brought Kurds out into the streets across Iraqi Kurdistan. People celebrated by waving Kurdish flags, dancing and honking their horns as they drove along crowded roadways. Though some in the north distrust Mr. Talabani and his political machine, most saw the appointment as a historic moment for the Kurds.

Confident in their newfound political muscle, the Kurds are carefully monitoring any moves by the Dawa Islamic Party of Dr. Jaafari and other Shiite parties to enshrine Shariah, or Koranic law. Likewise, the Shiites have chafed at demands by Kurdish leaders that the Kurds retain broad autonomous powers, including maintaining their formidable militia and controlling the vast oil fields around the northern city of Kirkuk.

In the Jan. 30 elections, the Kurdistan Alliance won 75 of the 275 assembly seats, while the main Shiite bloc won 140. Together, the two groups had more than the two-thirds assembly vote needed to install the presidency council.

Because the talks to form a government have taken so long and have been so contentious, assembly members are already saying they may have to invoke the right to extend a deadline for the first draft of the constitution by up to six months. That would in turn push back the elections for a full-term government.

"I don`t see how they can avoid the six-month extension," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority and advised on the interim constitution.

"Without it, they will have to finish the constitution by mid-August," he said. "But they won`t even get down to beginning to deliberate on it probably for another month. Then they need time, as I said, to hold public hearings or at least solicit public opinion and discussion. So I think it is truly inevitable now."

As the Shiites and Kurds try to wrap up negotiations over the top government jobs, they have said they want to bring Sunni Arabs into the fold. On Wednesday, they voted in Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, the Sunni president of the interim government, as one of two vice presidents. They selected Adel Abdul Mahdi, a leading Shiite politician, as the other.

If the Sunnis continue to feel disenfranchised, or if the Shiites and Kurds push too hard for a purge of former Baathists, the insurgency could worsen. The American military said Wednesday that an American soldier was killed the previous day when his patrol hit a roadside bomb and took small-arms fire. Security conditions surrounding the appointment of Mr. Talabani on Wednesday showed that Baghdad was still very much a city under siege. Apache attack helicopters circled the skies, while the Iraqi police set up checkpoints along the major roads downtown. Yet, there was some joy in the city, especially among the Kurds.

Awat Abdullah, 40, a Kurdish restaurant owner, said he had let more than 25 customers eat lunch for free. "I can`t tell you how happy I feel," he said.

Some Arabs voiced their suspicions of Mr. Talabani, and of the Kurdish dream of carving out an independent nation in the north.

"Talabani is well known for his insistence on independence," said Ali Naji, a 33-year-old engineer. "He will work for Kurdistan`s sake only."

Though Mr. Talabani is widely regarded as an advocate of Kurdish autonomy, there are many Kurds who accuse him and his party of corruption. In the mid-1990`s, he sent his militia into battle against a rival Kurdish party. The result was a civil war that left at least 3,000 Kurds dead and that was quelled only when Mr. Hussein sent armor into the north to beat down Mr. Talabani.

Warzer Jaff, Zaineb Obeid and Layla Isitfan contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 7, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Arabs Lift Their Voices
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/opinion/07friedman.html

Until the recent elections in Iraq and among the Palestinians, the modern Arab world was largely immune to the winds of democracy that have blown everywhere else in the world. Why? That`s a pretty important question. For years, though, it was avoided in both the East and the West.

In the West it was avoided because a toxic political correctness infected the academic field of Middle Eastern studies - to such a degree that anyone focusing on the absence of freedom in the Arab world ran the risk of being labeled an "Orientalist" or an "essentialist." It was also avoided because Western governments basically told Arab leaders that all they needed to do was keep their oil pumps open and their prices low and be nice to Israel. If they did all that, they could deny their own people the freedom America advocated everywhere else.

Meanwhile, the Arab peoples were told by their own leaders and state-owned intellectuals that democracy had to come later - after the nationalist struggle against colonialism or the liberation of Palestine or the creation of an Islamic state.

Well, the combination of 9/11, the Bush policies and the flattening of the world, whereby everyone can increasingly see how everyone else is living, changed all that - as evidenced this week with the publication of the third Arab Human Development Report, written by a courageous group of Arab social scientists under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program. This is one of the finest U.N. products under Kofi Annan.
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The first report, in 2002, was about the poor state of Arab human development. The second, in 2003, was about the poor state of Arab education and science. The new one focuses on "the acute deficit of freedom and good governance" in the Arab world. It underscores how much Arab peoples crave, and need, freedom and good government - as much any other people. With the great news that Iraqis are finally forming a new government, it couldn`t appear at a better time.

The report notes that most Arab states today resemble "a `black hole,` which converts its surrounding social environment into a setting in which nothing moves and from which nothing escapes." All political parties, institutions, courts, intelligence services, police and media are centralized in the hands of the Arab leader - that`s why the "modern-day Arab state is frequently dubbed `the intelligence state.` " What all these states have in common, the report says, "is that power is concentrated at the tip of the executive pyramid and that the margin of freedom permitted (which can be swiftly reduced) has no effect on the state`s firm and absolute grip on power." But without a majority of people behind them, all of these Arab regimes lack legitimacy.

Arab societal structures tend to reinforce these autocratic trends, the report says: "The family, the primary unit of Arab society, is based on clannism, which implants submission, and is considered the enemy of personal independence, intellectual daring and the flowering of a unique and authentic human entity. Once children enter school, they find an educational institution, curricula, teaching and evaluation methods which tend to rely on dictation and instill submissiveness. This learning environment ... does not open the doors to freedom of thought and criticism."

The chain constricting freedom, the report notes, "completes its circle in the political realm, squeezing Arab public life into a small and constricted space. ... This complicated process has led Arab citizens, including some among the intelligentsia, to a state of submission fed by fear and marked by denial of their subjugation."

The report`s authors conclude with their hope for a broad, peaceful redistribution of power in the Arab world, their fear that nothing will change - which they predict could lead to "chaotic upheavals" - and their expectation of some externally induced change and muddling through.

But the important thing about this report is that political reform is now being put on the Arab agenda by Arabs. Yes, it`s scathing about the Western and Israeli roles in retarding Arab democratization, but it`s equally scathing about what Arabs have done to themselves and how they must change - people don`t change when you tell them they should, but when they tell themselves they must. Read this report and you`ll also understand why part of every Arab hates the U.S. invasion of Iraq - and why another part is praying that it succeeds.

Thomas L. Friedman`s documentary "Does Europe Hate Us?" will be shown on the Discovery Channel Thursday at 8 and on the Discovery Times Channel on Monday at 9 p.m.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
A Failure of More Than Intelligence
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32733-2005Apr…

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, April 7, 2005; Page A31

Shortly before the United States went to war in Iraq, I was in contact with a former member of the American intelligence community. This is what he told me: Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program, no chemical or biological weapons program to speak of, and no link to al Qaeda. He said that if America invaded, it would cost us "perhaps 1,000 casualties" and would lead to prolonged "terrorism and harassment." I thanked him very much for his views -- and urged the United States to attack anyway. Along with Don Quixote, I sometimes feel that facts are the enemy of truth.

The record will show, however, that as war approached I was expressing second thoughts. I urged patience since it was becoming obvious that my source might be right: Hussein`s various arms programs either didn`t exist or were being hyped by the administration. In short, I knew that the most alarming case against Saddam Hussein -- that he was an imminent threat to the United States -- was a lie.

Paradoxically, that basic fact becomes increasingly obscure the more one commission or another looks into America`s epic intelligence failures. No doubt they were legion and no doubt they contributed to a public case for war, but the inadvertent impression left by these commissions -- buttressed by the aw-shucks demeanor of the Bush administration -- that something like an act of God led America to war is just plain ridiculous. America went to war because George Bush wanted to go to war.

Of course the CIA and other intelligence agencies were inept and, too often, timid. Of course they had an insufficient number of agents on the ground. Of course they had all failed to stop the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and, worse, the Bushies disregarded the warnings of Clinton administration officials -- themselves Johnny-come-latelies to the imminent peril that Osama bin Laden posed -- that fighting terrorism should be their first priority. Instead, the Bush administration -- knowing best, as always -- decided to concentrate elsewhere.

That little dig at the president is both purposeful and, in my view, warranted. From the very start, he had expressed the view that he had no need to read newspapers because, as he insisted, he got everything he needed from briefings. Unlike Bill Clinton, who got the PDB (the President`s Daily Brief) on paper and routinely defaced it with questions and comments, Bush had briefings that were delivered orally, much like children`s medicine. Much was made of them, but we now know they were worthless and sometimes misleading. So found the latest commission to look into the matter, the one chaired by former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal judge. Neither man is known for making rash judgments.

Had the president read the local newspaper, however, he might have raised the question of whether much of what he was being told was nonsense. Every piece of evidence the Bush administration was citing to support its assertion that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program was being challenged, usually by United Nations weapons inspectors. Sometimes these officials announced their findings; sometimes they were leaked in advance. Sometimes others made the case, even journalists in Iraq. All of this was in the press. None of it mattered, of course. The United States was going to war.

It is now clear that the decision to do so was made shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks -- maybe even the next day. History may well decide that this was the correct decision, that it eradicated terrorism and spread democracy throughout the Arab world -- just as the neocons intended. Even if that materializes (from Richard Perle`s mouth to God`s ears), it won`t change the fact that the administration failed to make a truthful case for war. Instead it built a sham one based on the hysteria, hate and panic created by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Intelligence hardly mattered. Hussein was going to go, regardless of the evidence. My source in the intelligence community understood this from the get-go. I did not -- not right away, anyway.

No doubt Iraq was a doozy of an intelligence failure. But it was, fundamentally and above all, a breach of faith with the American people. When it comes to matters of life and death, we expect our government to level with us. The Bush administration did not -- and it would not matter if all of the Middle East, from the Tigris to the Nile, becomes a democracy overnight. The fact will remain that this war was fought for a lie. The failure was not in intelligence. It was in political character.

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© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Am 05.05.05 ist Wahl in GB. Die Probleme, die man dort hat, sind viel entscheidender, als was im nächsten Jahr auf uns in D zukommt.
Man hat in GB keine Alternative. Deshalb dieser Artikel hier.

A fight for Labour`s future will have to begin on May 6

Who should you vote for if you`re against privatisation and the Iraq war?
Seumas Milne
Thursday April 7, 2005

Guardian
Voters opposed to the occupation of Iraq, the galloping privatisation of public services and the shameful inequality of Britain in 2005 - a majority of the British people, according to opinion polls - face a problem at next month`s general election. In most constituencies, they will have no one to vote for. That is because none of the three main parties will be offering a meaningful alternative on what are, by any reckoning, central issues in political and social life. But of course it`s not only the voters who have a problem. So does the government - because the majority of those who are most angry about the war, privatisation, inequality and attacks on civil liberties have in the past been committed Labour voters. And polling evidence suggests that millions of them could stay at home or switch to the Liberal Democrats or a protest party as a result.

New Labour has only itself to blame. The political boil of the war - and the attendant collapse of trust in the government - could have been lanced if Tony Blair had been induced to step down last summer, when the scale of the disaster unleashed in Iraq and the deception used to sell it had become fully apparent. That would have been better for the country, but also for Labour. Gordon Brown, Blair`s natural successor, was obviously tainted by the decision to go to war and responsible for some of the most damaging privatisations. But the ousting of Blair would have at least demonstrated that the government had been held to account and allowed a shift of policy, both domestically and over Iraq.

What`s more, polls have repeatedly shown that Labour would attract significantly more support with Brown as leader, whose popularity now far outstrips the prime minister`s dismal ratings - something Blair implicitly acknowledged yesterday, when he signalled that he did not after all plan to move Brown from the Treasury after the election. If a Labour victory remains the likeliest outcome, given rising living standards and the lack of enthusiasm for the Tories, that is now in spite of Blair. But if Labour were to be defeated or lose its majority next month, the party would be paying the price of Tony Blair`s ego.

Government supporters who insist that the dominating political controversy of the last four years can be safely ignored for the purposes of the election are dreaming. Of course the war does not affect British people`s daily lives. But awareness of the crime that has been carried out, the scale of the slaughter, the falsehoods peddled to justify it and the contempt for public opinion it involved runs deep in Britain. So does revulsion for the craven relationship with the US that underpinned it - frankly highlighted by Alan Milburn last month when he told the Guardian that the war had been in Britain`s interests "because you`ve got one superpower in the world nowadays". But, as John Reid`s ham-fisted performance on BBC radio demonstrated yesterday, New Labour has little clue as to how to defuse visceral public hostility over the debacle.

The same goes for the privatisation of public services - more of which is due to be trailed in Labour`s manifesto under the banner of reform and choice, taking the sheen off Brown`s popular public-spending increases for many traditional Labour supporters. In health, education and social housing, profit-seeking private corporations are already being given a free hand as the price of new hospitals and schools, modernisation and quicker treatment - with all we now know that means for service quality, jobs, pay and conditions, public control and accountability. And in defiance of overwhelming public support for bringing the failed privatised rail system back into public ownership, the government is busy returning rail franchises to private companies. Meanwhile, despite Brown`s limited efforts at redistribution, income inequality has actually increased during Labour`s period in office - mainly because of the government`s refusal to raise tax for the highest earners - while wealth inequality has ballooned.

But in all these cases there is no clear way for voters to make their views felt because the main opposition party either agrees with the government - as on the war - or in the case of privatisation, is even more extreme, planning sweeping extensions of private provision. Many disillusioned Labour voters seem bound to be drawn to the obvious alternative, the Liberal Democrats. But although they originally opposed going to war and back a 50% tax rate for high earners, the Lib Dems have supported the occupation of Iraq and moved sharply to the right on the economy and public services, backing privatisation of health provision and the private finance initiative - while opposing trade union rights and a national minimum wage. In any case, in the large majority of seats likely to change hands, votes for the Liberal Democrats risk delivering them to the Tories.

The only possible outcome of the election is a Labour or Tory government and it would be absurd to discount either Labour`s achievements - such as the boost to health and education spending, new employment and other social rights, the cut in child poverty - or the crucial domestic policy differences between them. But there is also no avoiding the fact that hostility to New Labour over the war and its featherbedding of wealth and corporate power is at such a pitch that many Labour voters will not support the party again while Blair is leader and will instead look for points of pressure and protest. In Wales and Scotland, that may mean the nationalists and others to the left of New Labour; in a minority of seats in England, the Greens and, more point edly, George Galloway`s Respect, the party that grew out of the anti-war movement and outpolled New Labour in parts of east London in last year`s European elections. Respect is calling on supporters to vote for "credible anti-war candidates" in constituencies held by those most closely associated with the war, such as Blair and Jack Straw. Elsewhere it is backing a Labour vote. Others will focus support on those Labour MPs who voted against the war or attempt targeted tactical voting, while trying to force issues that the main parties don`t want to discuss on to the campaign agenda.

There is in reality no "correct" answer to the problem of how to punish New Labour without punishing the British people, let alone how to elect a Labour government with a small enough majority to encourage pressure for a change of political direction. The fact that vast swathes of public opinion effectively now have no voice inside the main parties demonstrates that the political system isn`t working - and the Iraq war has made that crisis of representation much sharper. A two-party system can only function if both main parties are broad coalitions. By moving Labour so far to the right while silencing those on his left, Blair has made that impossible. The battle inside Labour for a change of direction will have to begin the day after the election - or the current process of political and electoral disintegration may become unstoppable.

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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[urlRepublican Congress leader `paid lobbying money to his family`]http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=627096[/url]

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Das Verhältnis zwischen den Evangelikalen und den Katholiken ist nicht ganz spannungsfrei. Um ein Bild von dem Verhältnissen zu geben hier eine Satire. Daher ist der Besuch Bushs in Rom scheinheilig.
[urlSatan Calls Another Pope to Hell!]http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0405/popedeath.html[/url]
[/B]Achtung Satire: mehrhttp://www.chickenhead.com/

Politics in red robes

Bush`s attendance at the Pope`s funeral merely masks White House exploitation of Catholic division
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday April 7, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1453785,00.ht…

Guardian
President Bush, a militant evangelical Protestant, has lowered the American flag to half-staff for the first time at the death of a pope. Also for the first time, a US president will attend a papal funeral. Bush`s political rhetoric is deliberately inflected with Catholic theological phrases, in particular "the culture of life", words he used to justify his interference in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman, the removal of whose feeding tube was upheld 19 times by state and federal courts.

In the 2004 election, Bush`s campaign helped organise the attack on John Kerry`s Catholic authenticity by conservative bishops who threatened to deny him communion. Inside the White House, policy and personnel are coordinated in line with rightwing Catholicism. Not only are issues like international population control, reproductive health and women`s rights vetted, but so are appointments.

Since the accession of Pope John Paul II, the conservative mobilisation within the American church has been a microcosmic version of the ascendancy of the conservative movement in the country generally. As the authority of the Vatican was marshalled on behalf of the conservatives, the Republican right adopted its position as its own in order to capture Catholic votes. Now the social agendas of conservative Catholics and Republicans are indistinguishable.

John Paul II welcomed American democracy as a counter to communism, but he had no experience with democracy of any kind. He envisioned his mission as restoring the authority of the church. America appeared to him as a liberal inferno - its citizens, he lectured American bishops last year, were "hypnotised by materialism, teetering before a soulless vision of the world".

The Pope asserted his control over the American church in 1984 with his naming of conservatives Bernard Law and John O`Connor as archbishops of Boston and New York. They became his chief agents. At the same time, the Vatican refused to deal with the elected officers of the US conference of Catholic bishops, who were largely imbued with the spirit of Vatican II.

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago was acknowledged as the leader of the bishops and represented the broad progressive tradition of the American church. He articulated the concept of Catholicism as a "seamless garment" in which abortion was only one among many important issues. In 1994 he announced a common ground initiative, entitled Church in a Time of Peril, calling on the church to overcome its polarisation and suppression of discussion on the issues tearing it apart - from women`s changing roles to the fact that many Catholics did not accept most church teachings on sexuality to the declining numbers of priests. Bernardin was a consensus builder and believed he had touched all bases with the Vatican before unveiling his project. But the same day, Cardinal Law, clearly acting with Vatican authority, denounced it: "The fundamental flaw in this document is its appeal for `dialogue` as a path to `common ground`. "

Bernardin died months later and was replaced by a protege of Law`s. In 2002, the Boston Globe ran the first of more than 250 stories on paedophilic molestation by parish priests. Law resisted investigating the sex scandal and faced potential criminal prosecution for his cover-ups. The Pope rescued him with a sinecure in the Vatican. In the aftermath of the sex scandal, conservatives under siege lashed out more ferociously. As they saw it, their failure to overturn the law on abortion demonstrated that they had not been hardline enough. Thus the sex scandal set the stage for the rightwing Catholic offensive on behalf of Bush in the 2004 campaign.

With the Pope`s death, American Catholics yearn for openness. According to a poll by Gallup, 78% want the next pope to allow Catholics to use birth control; 63% say he should let priests marry; 59% believe he should have a less strict policy on stem cell research; 55% say he should allow women to be priests.

But the Republicans are moving aggressively on the conservative social agenda. This week, in Kansas, gay marriage was banned in a referendum. Four states have passed bills permitting pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. The governor of Illinois has issued an emergency order to ensure that pharmacists fill all prescriptions. California`s legislature is debating a law to require druggists to do the same.

By consolidating power, the Pope believed that he was strengthening the church. Now the conservatives want a post-John Paul papacy to extend his stringency. Others want moderation, openness and discussion. Catholics in America do not now hold the same principle of hope. No one monitors the church`s crisis more closely than the White House, and no one plots to exploit its division more ruthlessly. Religion is politics under red robes. So Bush travels to Rome.

· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Wie viele andere Gesetze idt das USA Patriot Act Gesetz begrenzt. Dieses Ablaufdatum liegt, da dass Gesetz auf 4 Jahre begrenzt ist, am Ende diese Jahres.
Mit Gonzales, einem Hardliner, dem neuen Heimatfrontminister hat Bush sich einen Verteidiger dieses Gesetzes ins Kabinett geholt, und dieser beginnt auch schon mit der Werbung um die Verlängerung und auch Verschärfung des Gesetzes.

Gonzales Argues Against Expiration Date on Patriot Act
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-patr…

April 7, 2005

WASHINGTON — When Congress enacted the USA Patriot Act after the Sept. 11 attacks, it put the Justice Department on a short leash, mandating that many of the new powers in the act would last four years unless renewed.

Now, as lawmakers are debating a Bush administration proposal to make those provisions permanent, Republicans and Democrats alike are wondering whether they should retain the so-called sunset provisions to ensure a degree of Justice Department accountability.

The issue is apt to become an important part of the debate as Congress determines whether to extend the law, which gave the government new power to investigate and prosecute terrorists.

It surfaced Wednesday as Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales testified before the House Judiciary Committee for a second day about the Patriot Act.

The hearing was the first of a series that the House panel had scheduled to decide whether 16 provisions of the law should be renewed this year.

Gonzales said that because the department had achieved a "strong record of success" in using the provisions to fight terrorism, they should be made permanent.

He argued that removing the sunset provisions would not limit Congress` scrutiny of the department.

But many members of Congress contend that their ability to oversee the agency has been thwarted because the Justice Department — at least under former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft — has been loath to reveal details of how the law has been used.

So the issue raises a larger question: Can the Justice Department — even under a new and more accessible attorney general — be trusted?

Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr.(R-Wis.) was among the most ardent supporters of the sunset provisions when the original law was passed.

A spokesman said Sensenbrenner was keeping an open mind on the issue. But the chairman`s first question to Gonzales on Wednesday was whether such provisions were necessary.

Some other Republicans on the committee see the time limits as a valuable safeguard.

Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona contends that "law enforcement officials would be more circumspect if they were faced with the prospect of having to come to Congress every couple of years and justify the provisions," a spokesman said.

Gregory Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union legislative office, said: "There seems to be strong bipartisan support for keeping sunsets in the Patriot Act, even after Congress decides what parts will be reauthorized and what parts will be amended."

At a Senate hearing Tuesday, Gonzales released declassified information showing how often the department had used powerful new tools under the law.

These included provisions covering the collection of a wide range of business records, and search warrants that allowed the government to delay notifying the target of a warrant until sometimes weeks or months after the search had taken place, a practice critics called "sneak and peek."

The department also gave Congress a 69-page analysis of how the expiring provisions had operated.

"I think it`s a strong record of success," Gonzales said.

"I think that the act has been effective. I think that the department has acted responsibly."


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Bad Reporter

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Thursday, April 07, 2005
Rant of the Day, Thursday, April 7, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

This is how Richard Cohen (s.#27599) wraps up his Opinion piece in today’s WaPo:

"It is now clear that the decision to do so was made shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks -- maybe even the next day. History may well decide that this was the correct decision, that it eradicated terrorism and spread democracy throughout the Arab world -- just as the neocons intended. Even if that materializes (from Richard Perle`s mouth to God`s ears), it won`t change the fact that the administration failed to make a truthful case for war. Instead it built a sham one based on the hysteria, hate and panic created by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Intelligence hardly mattered. Hussein was going to go, regardless of the evidence. My source in the intelligence community understood this from the get-go. I did not -- not right away, anyway.

"No doubt Iraq was a doozy of an intelligence failure. But it was, fundamentally and above all, a breach of faith with the American people. When it comes to matters of life and death, we expect our government to level with us. The Bush administration did not -- and it would not matter if all of the Middle East, from the Tigris to the Nile, becomes a democracy overnight. The fact will remain that this war was fought for a lie. The failure was not in intelligence. It was in political character.”


Cohen’s piece exemplifies what is wrong with the American media and punditocracy. Cohen realizes the Bushies manufactured evidence to support an unjustified war. He even makes the statement, “America went to war because George W. Bush wanted to go to war.” The tone of the article makes it clear that Cohen is angry. But Cohen still doesn’t get it.

This wasn’t an intelligence failure or a failure of “political character.” This was a failure of morality. Germany invaded Poland in 1939 because Hitler wanted to invade Poland. Outside Germany, the rest of the world recognized Hitler’s invasion as a monstrous act of moral depravity. Contemporary American journalists didn’t write about Hitler’s failure of “political character.” They wrote about the evil of his soul.

The Germans of 1939 believed Hitler’s manufactured evidence of a Polish attack at Sender Gleiwitz and didn’t see the evil of his soul because a Ministry of Propaganda controlled the German media. Cohen doesn’t have that excuse. Despite all the failures of the corporate media establishment, America has no propaganda ministry. Can anybody imagine the 1939 Frankfurter Rundschau publishing a columnist who questioned Hitler’s motives?

This is why the stain on America’s reputation caused by Bush’s unprovoked war is greater than the stain caused by Germany’s unprovoked invasion of Poland. We have a relatively free press which freely chose to support Bush’s war and refused to question the flimsy evidence offered by the Bush administration.

Now that it has become clear the justification Bush offered was largely bogus (and the administration knew it was bogus) the press talks about intelligence failures, policy failures, and now a failure of “political character.” None speak of the moral failure of the administration that knowingly launched an unprovoked war.

George W. Bush and the men and women of his administration made a deliberate, calculated decision to start an unprovoked war that would cost the lives of tens of thousands of people, maim many more, disrupt countless lives and generate hatreds that will last for generations. Cohen even acknowledges that they made that decision with the full knowledge that such a war was completely unjustified.

Like the rest of the American media, Richard Cohen has just looked directly at profoundly evil men and women, but he can’t recognize the evil of their souls.
# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:15 AM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 05, 2005

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Posted on Wed, Apr. 06, 2005


Ethnic tensions in Kirkuk dangerously high, raising fears of civil war
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11327248.htm

By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers

KIRKUK, Iraq - U.S. military officials are concerned that ethnic tensions could turn into widespread violence and, perhaps, civil war in Iraq`s northern city of Kirkuk, setting a dangerous pattern for rest of the country.

Kirkuk oil fields hold at least 6 percent of the world`s oil reserves and Kurdish talk of secession is at a fever pitch.

A bloc of Kurdish-led politicians received the majority of seats on the provincial council after January elections and is now threatening to fill most key positions with Kurds. Arab and Turkmen (also known as Turkomen) politicians protested with a series of walkouts and now refuse to show up at council meetings, where Kurdish leaders insist on speaking in their mother language.

The Kurds are also accelerating efforts to bring back families pushed out of Kirkuk and the surrounding province by former dictator Saddam Hussein during his massive resettlement campaigns aimed at weakening Kurdish opposition. The Kurds hope the influx will help make Kirkuk a part of the Iraqi region of Kurdistan and possibly provide an economic engine for an independent Kurdish nation. Breaking away from Iraq, though, would be difficult for the Kurds because of pressure from neighboring countries such as Iran and Turkey, which oppose an independent Kurdistan.

"We`re worried about the domino effect of the Kurds getting the senior leadership positions and the Arabs and Turkomen going back to their constituencies and saying the Kurds have taken over, and the Turkomen and, to a greater extent, the Arabs rise up," said Lt. Col. Anthony Wickham, the U.S. Army`s liaison to the Kirkuk council.

"Worst-case scenario is a civil war," he said. "The threat is out there. There are armed Arab groups, Turkomen groups that say they need to arm themselves, and the Kurds say, `We know how to keep the peace, we`ll deploy the Peshmerga,`" a militia that numbers in the tens of thousands.

Wickham is worried not only about potential havoc in Kirkuk, but also about the destabilizing effect it would have across ethnically divided Iraq as it makes its way toward democracy.

Saddam used savage military might to suppress ethnic and religious groups that opposed him. With him gone, many of those groups are sorting out long-simmering tensions.

Rizqar Ali Hamajan, a Kirkuk council member and a senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a political party, said his party estimates that Saddam pushed about 600,000 Kurds out of the Kirkuk area. Not only should those people be able to return to the province - which has an estimated population of 1.5 million - but they should be able to bring their families with them, Hamajan said.

The province is about 40 percent Arab and 35 percent Kurd, according to U.S. officials in the area. The return of even a small percentage of those 600,000 and their families to Kirkuk would give Kurds a decisive numerical advantage.

Many in Iraq consider Kirkuk key in the effort to keep ethnic differences from tearing the nation apart. Kirkuk, as elsewhere in Iraq, has seen its share of battles between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces, and, as ethnic tensions rise, the danger of individual attacks triggering wider violence has increased.

On March 19, for example, a yellow taxi pulled up in front of a police station and a passenger threw out a soda can. When an officer came out to inspect the can, it blew up, killing him. The next day, a roadside bomb at a traffic roundabout exploded near a truck full of police officers on their way to their comrade`s funeral. Four officers were killed.

When police failed to find any leads, they returned to the traffic circle the following day and rounded up potential witnesses. Among them were two Turkmen vegetable vendors. While in custody, both vendors were beaten and tortured by a Kurdish officer who pushed lit cigarettes into their bodies, lashed them with cables and punched and kicked them in their faces, according to family accounts verified by U.S. military officials.

The two vendors were cousins of Tahsin Mohammed Kahya, a Turkmen who`s the chair of the Kirkuk council and an immensely popular local politician.

His tribe called for massive protests and violence. The city stood on the brink.

"It could have been the spark," Wickham said.

Kahya asked his tribe to keep its guns away and to let the political process take its course. But he`s far from certain that the peace will hold, especially given the provincial council`s inability to appoint government leaders and the prospect of a Kurd-dominated government.

"If the decision-makers cannot agree, then it will go to the streets," he said. "If we fail, we will tell the people we have failed, and it`s up to them to decide what they want to do - maybe then we would have a bad situation."

Maj. Gen. Joseph Taluto, who commands Task Force Liberty, the U.S. Army element stretching from just north of Baghdad to Kirkuk, also worries about the tensions. "As the politics goes down lower, I think the level of understanding (between ethnic groups) becomes less," and the result, he said, is bombs sometimes being placed on the road.

While U.S. officials used to intervene in local governmental affairs, choosing council members and making sure they all spoke with one another, they remained in the background after the Iraqi elections in January, letting Iraqis for the most part succeed or fail on their own accord.

The need for ethnic groups in Kirkuk to negotiate their differences is probably the most important issue facing Iraq today, Taluto said.

"What can Task Force Liberty do about that? Not a hell of a lot, frankly," he said.

Many Arabs and Turkomen say the Kurds are using force, when necessary, to push them out of Kirkuk. They accuse Kurds, who say they left the Peshmerga militia before joining the Iraqi army and police, of using their positions to intimidate people into leaving.

Hamajan, the Kurdish council member, denied there were any Peshmerga present in Kirkuk. He then added, smiling, that "the leader of the Peshmerga is about to become president of Iraq," referring to Jalal Talabani, a former Peshmerga commander who was elected president on Wednesday by the national assembly.

Outside Hamajan`s office, Kurdish men in military fatigues holding AK-47s patrolled the gate.

U.S. officials confirmed that at least half the Iraqi army troops in Kirkuk are Kurds. Wickham said he knows of Arabs being taken from Kirkuk and put into a Kurd-controlled prison in nearby Sulaimaniyah, but he didn`t know the specifics of who took them there or why.

Khalaf Farhan, a Sunni Arab and former army general in Saddam`s army, said Iraqi soldiers raided his house last week. Just before he was blindfolded, Farhan said, he saw a large Kurdish-looking man who was speaking Kurdish.

Farhan, whose face was bruised and scratched and whose left eye was badly swollen days later, said he was beaten in the face with a rifle butt, punched and kicked.

When he was shoved into a vehicle outside, Farhan said, one of the soldiers leaned toward him and said, "OK, do you want to sell the house?"

In one area, at least 40,000 Kurds have returned to rebuild a series of small villages demolished by Saddam. Those families were given $1,000 each and building supplies by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan operating out of Sulaimaniyah, a neighboring province.

The resettlement of Kurds in Kirkuk is provided for by Iraq`s transitional law, which also says that the decision about Kirkuk becoming a part of Kurdistan will "take into account the will of the people."

The Kurds interpret this to mean that a provincial referendum will decide the matter.

Many Arabs and Turkomen said the Kurds are pushing for resettlement not just out of a sense of historical justice, but to stack the chips in their favor for the referendum, and, ultimately, to break away from Iraq.

One of the few things that U.S. and Iraqi officials interviewed in Kirkuk agreed about was that if the Kurds went down that path, it would be a bloody one.




© 2005 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.realcities.com

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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Hail to the Robber Baron?
By YOSHI TSURUMI
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=506836


Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.

In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.

Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.

Business education has also produced former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling and other MBAs behind the malfeasances of Tyco, HealthSouth, Haliburton, AIG, and WorldCom. Many executives of corporate America who hold MBAs have also been engaged in the unethical acts of raiding their corporate treasuries at the expense of employees and stockholders. Emulating President Bush’s hubris, a multitude of CEOs in corporate America give themselves obscenely large bonuses that have little to do with their performance. In 1980, the CEOs of Fortune 500 large corporations received, on average, 70 times larger annual compensations than their average employees. Under the Bush Administration, comparable CEOs have come to give themselves 600 to 1,000 times larger annual compensations than their rank-and-file employees whose pay has stagnated. To pay for such self-dealt compensations, corporate aristocrats layoff their workers, cut ordinary employees’ health benefits, and outsource jobs abroad. Under the Bush Administration, over five million Americans have lost their health benefits, and the U.S. has lost over 2.7 million quality manufacturing jobs. President Bush and his rapacious “captains of piracy” of corporate America are destroying America’s democracy built up since Roosevelt’s New Deal era.

Meanwhile, American economics study has increasingly become a pseudoscience of mathematical formula manipulation that is devoid of humanity. This economics has conquered America’s business education and become fused with the robber baron culture of greed supremacy. American MBAs are taught to treat ordinary employees as disposable costs and to swallow uncritically the gospel that corporations exist only to reward abstract stockholders. MBAs are taught the pretend-science of manipulating accounting, finance, employees, customers, and stock prices. Financial games and hostile takeovers of competitors are taught to accomplish corporations’ sole objective—to make money and manipulate stock prices. Such a mistaken view of corporations has caused the dismal decline of American auto manufacturers while Toyota and Honda widen their market shares and profits in America, pursuing their goals of expanding employment and technological innovations.

To justify the robber baron culture, America’s business educators and economists falsely cite their demigod of laissez-faire market economics, Adam Smith. Little do they know that Adam Smith in fact scathingly castigated Bush’s type of government: business collusion and unfair taxes, Wal-Mart’s exploitations of labor and communities, and robber barons’ hubris. Nowhere in his 900-page book, The Wealth of Nations, does Smith even imply that those who knowingly harm others and society in their pursuit of personal greed also benefit their society. He rejects the notion that a corporation exists to make money without ethical constraints.

Yoshi Tsurumi is a professor of international business at Baruch College. He earned his Doctor of Business Administration from Harvard in 1968, and he taught at Harvard Business School from 1972 to 1976.


Copyright © 2005, The Harvard Crimson Inc.

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Reject the Law of Silence
http://www.newstatesman.com/200504110009

From the BBC`s capitulation to the Israeli government, to the rush to eulogise a deeply reactionary Pope, pressure on the media is leading to insidious new state propaganda.

John Pilger

04/06/05 "New Statesman" - - Can you imagine the BBC apologising to a rogue regime that practises racism and ethnic cleansing; that has "effectively legalised the use of torture" (Amnesty); that holds international law in contempt, having defied hundreds of UN resolutions and built an apartheid wall in defiance of the International Court of Justice; that has demolished thousands of people`s homes and given its soldiers the right to assassinate; and whose leader was judged "personally responsible" for the massacre of more than 2,000 people?

Can you imagine the BBC saying sorry to Saddam Hussein`s Iraq, or other official demons, for broadcasting an uncensored interview with a courageous dissident of that country, a man who spent 19 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement? Of course not.

Yet last month, the BBC apologised "confidentially" to a regime with such a record, so that its correspondent would be allowed back, having promised to abide by a system of censorship that continues to gag the dissident. The regime is Ariel Sharon`s in Israel, whose war crimes, appalling human rights record and enduring lawlessness continue to be granted a certificate of exemption not only by the US-dominated west but by respectable journalism. The Blair government`s collusion with the Sharon gang is reflected in the BBC`s "balanced" coverage of a repression described by Nelson Mandela as "the greatest moral issue of the age". Simon Wilson, the correspondent made to apologise for a proper, important and long-overdue interview with Mordechai Vanunu, will know better in future.

That is hardly new. Pressure applied to the BBC by the Israel "lobby" has been so successful that, as a Glasgow University study revealed, many viewers of television news in Britain believe the Jewish "settlers", whose illegal and often violent squatting on Palestinian land has undermined hopes of real peace, are actually Palestinians. What is new is the extent to which insidious state propaganda has penetrated sections of the media whose independence has been, until recently, accepted by much of the public.

To appreciate this, one applies the Law of Opposites and the Law of Silence. The Law of Opposites can be applied to almost any news broadcast these days. The long-awaited death of the Pope is a case in point. By reversing the river of drivel about him - "the people`s Pope" (almost universal), "the man who changed history" (Bush), "a shining example . . . revered across all faiths and none" (Blair) - you have the truth. This deeply reactionary man held back history and destroyed lives all over the world with his fanatical opposition to basic decencies such as birth control. He called this "abominable", spitting the word out, and so condemned millions, from starving infants to babies born with Aids. In Latin America, he publicly humiliated courageous priests whose "preference for the poor" dared to cross the medieval hierarchy he upheld. The claim that he "brought down communism" is also the opposite of the truth. As I learned when I reported his papal return to his native Poland in 1979, the Catholic Church in that country, whose conservatism he embodied, was a scheming bedfellow of the Stalinist regime until the wind changed.

The Law of Opposites can be applied to the current government/media fashion for saving Africa known as the Year of Africa. The BBC has hosted a special conference about this, just as Blair will host the G8 summit in July with "eradicating Africa`s poverty" as its theme. This is "Britain`s big chance", wrote Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, "to engage the rich with debt relief, aid, fair trade, carbon emissions and Aids-crippled Africa". She added: "On debt and trade, Labour has done well."

The opposite is true. Like the rest of the impoverished world, African countries qualify for Gordon Brown`s enlightenment only if they agree to impose on their people the deadly strictures of the World Trade Organisation, the IMF and the World Bank - such as the destruction of tariffs protecting sustainable economies and the privatising of water and other natural resources. At the same time, they are "encouraged" to buy weapons from British arms companies, especially if they have a civil war under way or there is a tension with a neighbour.

The Law of Silence is applied to crimes committed not by official demons - Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic et al - but by western governments. An Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent, Eric Campbell, recently promoting a book of his adventures, described the broadcast "coverage" of the war in Iraq. "Live satellite is a travesty," he said. "Basically, if [the reporters] are on satellite, they haven`t seen anything. The correspondent is read the stories from the wire and told that is what they have to say on air - that`s in the majority of cases."

That may help to explain why the horror of the American attack on Fallujah has yet to be reported by all the major broadcasters. By contrast, independent journalists such as Dahr Jamail have reported doctors describing the slaughter by US marines of civilians carrying white flags. This slaughter was videotaped, including the killing of most of a family of 12. One witness described how his mother had been shot in the head and

his father through the heart, and how a six-year-old boy standing

over his dead parents, crying, was shot dead. None of this has

appeared on British television. When asked, a BBC spokesperson

said: "The conduct of coalition forces has been examined at length by BBC programmes." That is demonstrably untrue.

Similarly, the Law of Silence applies to the likely American attack on Iran. Scott Ritter, the UN weapons inspector who in 1999 disclosed that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was thereafter virtually blackballed, has recently revealed that, according to a Pentagon official, Iran will be attacked in June. Again, Ritter has been ignored by most of the media. As Bush`s and Blair`s "democracy is on the march in the Middle East" propaganda is reported uncritically, the Law of Silence applies to the Bush regime`s campaign to subvert and overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. President Chavez is arguably the most democratically elected leader in Latin America, if not the world (nine elections), and his own "preference for the poor" has diverted the proceeds of the world`s fourth-biggest oil supplier to the majority of Venezuelans.

Last year, I did a long interview with Jeremy Bowen, a BBC reporter I admire, for a programme about war correspondents. Although I guessed that what was really wanted were my tales of journalistic derring-do on the front line, I set about describing how journalists often produced veiled propaganda for western power - by accepting "our" version or by omitting the unpalatable, such as the atrocities of western state terrorism: a major taboo. I emphasised that this censorship was not conspiratorial, but often unconscious, even subliminal; such was our training and grooming. My contribution did not appear.

John Pilger`s film Stealing a Nation, about the expulsion of the people of Diego Garcia, has won the Royal Television Society`s award for best documentary on British television in 2004-2005
This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition.

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Apr 8, 2005

THE ROVING EYE
What`s behind the new Iraq
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD08Ak04.html

It took more than nine weeks, fiery haggling and backroom deals for Iraq`s politicians to compose a new government.

The president is Kurdish warlord Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who enjoys close ties with both Washington and Tehran. The two vice presidents are: Adel Abdel Mahdi of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), a senior Shi`ite leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq and the interim finance minister, and a former Maoist turned free-marketer who last December promised in Washington to privatize the Iraqi oil industry; and the previous president, Ghazi al-Yawer, a former exile and influential Sunni sheikh of the Sammar tribe. Talabani is finally set to appoint Da`wa Party senior leader Ibrahim Jaafari of the UIA as prime minister.
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It`s about time. Iraqis have grown increasingly exasperated with the political haggling since the elections on January 30 - on the lines of "how could we have elected those people?" It got so bad that the four grand ayatollahs in the now de facto shadow capital Najaf were about to call a massive street protest to bring the politicians to their senses. This was compounded by the fact that many Iraqis repudiate political life reduced to religious sectarianism, a legacy of the United States` Coalition Provisional Authority, which imposed the current institutional arrangement.

It`s emerging that the real meaty matters in Iraq - federalism, who gets oil-rich Kirkuk, and, crucially, what happens to the oil industry overall - will be settled by the constituent assembly. But two developments are ominous. The attribution of ministries for the "new" government once again will be sectarian. And every faction will remain armed to their teeth. The Kurds keep their independent peshmerga militia, and financed by Baghdad. The SCIRI keeps its Badr Brigades. The Da`wa Party also keeps its own militia. None of these will answer to Baghdad - which mobilizes its own, US-trained Iraqi security forces. Cynically, one might add that outside the political process, the Sunni resistance will also keep its thousands of fighters.

Lebanonization?
It`s too soon to perceive the substantial details of the Shi`ite-Kurd deal - between them they hold more than two-thirds of the 275 seats in parliament. But what`s happened since January 30 is definitely not a good omen.

Among the 275 parliamentary players involved in the nine-week political football, there were only 17 Sunni Arabs, as the majority of Sunni Arabs boycotted the elections. Clearly, these Sunnis are unlikely to be representative of the Sunni Arabs, who make up 20% of the population. The crucial Sunni Arab grievance is that because they are a demographic minority - although nobody really knows for sure, there is no census and there may be more Sunni Arabs than Kurds - this does not mean they have to accept their political marginalization as a fait accompli. The fact that Sunni Arabs involved in the political process are viewed by many Sunni Arabs as illegitimate explains why former president Yawer didn`t want to become parliamentary Speaker.

Indeed, the manner in which the new Sunni Arab parliament Speaker, Hajim al-Hasani, was picked upset the Sunnis. Of the 17 Sunnis in parliament, three contested the elections on the UIA list - so they were unacceptable to the Sunnis themselves. Of the remaining 14, 12 were parliamentarians under Saddam Hussein or had some kind of Ba`athist credentials, so they were unacceptable to the Shi`ites and the Kurds.

So there were only two Sunnis with standing: Yawer and Hasani. Both are non-Ba`athist former exiles. Hasani, a native of Kirkuk and a former member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a successor of the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood, studied and lived for years in the US. And that goes to the heart of why he was not the Sunni first choice for Speaker: he had been an exile for too long; and to make matters worse, during the leveling of Fallujah - when he was one of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi`s ministers - he refused to resign, unlike the leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Muhsin Abdul Hamid (the party later expelled Hasani).

So why was he elected Speaker? Because he`s one of only two Sunnis who did not contest the elections for the UIA who is acceptable to the Shi`ites; the other, Yawer, wisely refused the hot potato.

The ramifications are ominous. Shi`ites understandably would be resentful of any Sunnis who were connected to the Ba`ath Party. Yet Iraqis know that during Saddam`s era this was the only way to get things done, and in many cases survive with some dignity. To make matters worse, the new deputy Speaker, Hussein Shahristani, an engineer very close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has labeled 12 of the 17 Sunni parliamentarians as Ba`athists. So the Shi`ites are caught in a see-saw of wanting Sunni Arabs to become involved in the political process - with the objective of weakening the guerrilla war - just as they are falling over themselves to alienate them.

Most Sunni Arabs can be expected to view the story as one of falling from total control of government and society in Iraq to the point of being represented in a dodgy parliament by a former exile with negligible local support and connections and who was discarded by his own political party. To compound the climate of untrustworthiness, the Kurds suspect Hasani of being a fundamentalist Sunni Arab from Kirkuk.

If the Sunni Arabs inside the political process are not recognized as legitimate, the ones who are remain outside the process: the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), under its leader Harith al-Dari, and what we have described as the Sinn Fein strand of the Sunni Arab resistance. The minority secular Sunni Arabs, inside the political process, are concerned that the AMS may be configuring itself as a religious, pro-resistance Sunni counterpower: they fear this would represent a certified Lebanonization of Iraq. But the fact is the AMS has been cleverly filling a Sunni political vacuum: it has even admitted publicly it would condemn the resistance in Islamic terms, as long as the new Iraqi government came up with a definitive timetable for a complete US military withdrawal. You can`t get more popular than that in Iraq. The AMS already makes a clear distinction between "noble" guerrillas - who attack the occupying forces - and the murderers who attack Iraqi civilians.

The big question now is how the Shi`ites and Kurds will deal with marginalized Sunni Arabs - paying close attention to their political grievances or clobbering them with peshmergas, Badr Brigades and Iraqi security forces. It`s politics or civil war.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Tomgram:
Jonathan Schell on Creating an Uncivil Society
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2306

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the USA Patriot Act, the following exchange took place between former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, now Attorney General, and Senator Arlen Specter (R., PA):

GONZALES: Mr. Chairman, let me, kind of, reassure the committee and the American people that the department has no interest in rummaging through the library records or the medical records of Americans.

That is not something that we have an interest in.

SPECTER: Does that mean you`d agree to excluding them?

GONZALES: We do have an interest, however, in records that may help us capture terrorists. And there may be an occasion where having the tools of 215 to access this kind of information may be very helpful to the department in dealing with the terrorist threat.

The fact that this authority has not been used for these kinds of records means that the department, in my judgment, has acted judiciously. It should not be held against us that we`ve exercised, in my judgment, restraint.

It`s comparable to a police officer who carries a gun for 15 years and never draws it. Does that mean that for the next five years he should not have that weapon, because he`s never used it?

SPECTER: Attorney General Gonzales, I don`t think your analogy is apt, but if you want to retain those records, as your position I understand. And let me move on.

Actually, Specter is wrong. Gonzales`s analogy is all too apt. That sheathed gun is, in this case, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act which gives the government the ability to demand -- as librarians fear -- records of a person`s library reading habits. A library, so requested, is banned from informing the reader of this search. But of course Section 215 applies to far more than libraries; and when it comes to basic civil liberties as well as the most basic aspects of civil society, the Bush administration does indeed carry a gun that we have no reason to believe has remained sheathed.

The actual wording of Section 215 reads, in part:

"The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution… No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section."

In other words, they can do it and we can`t know. Nothing civil about it. Note, by the way, that "not conducted solely…" which assumedly means that an investigation can be conducted against "activities protected by the first amendment." And keep in mind that the man now testifying, before he morphed into the Attorney General of the increasingly ill-named Justice Department, was sitting in the White House Counsel`s office overseeing some of the most pretzled language and tortured logic ever-produced to create a prosecution-free basis for promoting a presidential regime of torture throughout our various jails, camps, and detention centers then being set up abroad.

It`s one of those commonplaces to say that empire and its appurtenances like torture never stay long out in the imperium, but it`s another thing to note that the men who now run the Pentagon (Donald Rumsfeld), the Homeland Security Department (Michael Chertoff), and the Justice Department (Alberto Gonzales), as well as the White House (George Bush & Co.) have been deeply involved in creating the opposite of a civil society around an American-garrisoned world, and that everyone should think twice about letting them into a library with that sheathed gun. Even their language is a language of armament. While FBI Director Robert Mueller "asked lawmakers to expand the bureau`s ability to obtain records without first asking a judge, and he joined Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in seeking that every temporary provision of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act be renewed," Gonzalez was insisting that "now is not the time for us to be engaging in unilateral disarmament" when it came to the "legal weapons available for fighting terrorism."

In his latest "Letter from Ground Zero" for the Nation magazine (posted here thanks to the kindness of that magazine`s editors), Jonathan Schell considers ways in which a striking development of the pre-9/11 decades, the creation of "civil societies" around the world in places where previously only uncivil ones had existed, is slowly being turned into something else entirely. He also explores ways in which, domestically, a society that could hardly be thought of as civil is being created by men whose most powerful impulse is to draw their guns.
Tom

Faking Civil Society
By Jonathan Schell

Perhaps the most beautiful achievement of political life in the late twentieth century was the international movement for democracy that brought down several dozen dictatorships of every possible description -- authoritarian, communist, fascist, military. It happened on all continents, and it happened peacefully. It began in the 1970s, with the collapse of the Greek junta and of the right-wing regimes in Portugal and Spain; it continued in the 1980s, mysteriously jumping the Atlantic, with the collapse of dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and Brazil; then, vaulting the Pacific, it claimed the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Finally, in the early `90s, it spread to South Africa, where the white apartheid regime yielded to majority rule, and returned to the Eurasian continent where the great Soviet empire itself shuffled off history`s stage.

The actors in this benign contagion acquired a name: civil society. "Civil": they were peaceful, meaning that the bomb in the cafe, the assassination of the local official, the paratrooper invasion of the Parliament building, were not their tactics. "Society": they expressed popular will, not the will of governments. The movement broke or made governments. It was their master.

Recently, however, the movement has undergone a change both at home and abroad. Civil society groups in the more prosperous societies began to lend welcome assistance in poorer ones. But governments also joined in. Unlike private civil groups, governments are in their nature interested in power, and the civil society movements clearly exercised it. Here in America, the National Endowment for Democracy was created in the early eighties. Funded by Congress and governed by a board that includes active and retired politicians of both parties, it nevertheless calls itself a "nongovernmental" organization. Its declared mission was to support democracy per se, not any political party, but the distinction was soon lost in practice. Most of the $10.5 million handed out in Nicaragua during the elections of 1990 went to the opposition to the Sandinistas, who were duly voted out of power. In 2002, the Endowment funded groups in Venezuela that backed the briefly successful coup against President Hugo Chávez, in which the Venezuelan Parliament, judiciary and constitution were suspended.

The day after the overthrow, which Omar Encarnación of Bard College has called a "civil society coup," the president of the International Republican Institute, which is loosely tied to the GOP and is a conduit for Endowment funds, stated, "Last night, led by every sector of civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country." Speaking for the U.S. government, presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer stated that the coup "happened in a very quick fashion as a result of the message of the Venezuelan people." In fact, the Venezuelan people opposed the coup, and Chávez, notwithstanding his own repressive tendencies, almost immediately returned to power.

More recently Endowment contributions went to groups in Ukraine that supported presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko, who became president after fraudulent results engineered by the opposition government candidate were reversed by popular pressure. In Venezuela, the outcome was the destruction, however brief, of all democratic institutions, whereas in Ukraine the outcome was the rescue of democracy; yet in both cases the integrity of civil society, which depends on independence from governments, was partially corrupted.

Something similar was meanwhile happening within the United States. The Republican Party and its supporters have been the pioneers, creating what might be called a shadow civil society and seeking to merge it imperceptibly with the real one. Former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley summarized the process in a March 30 op-ed in the New York Times: Large donors founded partisan think tanks more interested in propagandizing than in thinking; then proceeded to establish seemingly independent but actually politically subservient news organizations such as FOX News and the Rush Limbaugh show. Recently, some new wrinkles in the process have emerged: the use of fake newscasters, pretending to report from an independent news station while actually working for a department of government, and fake reporters, such as "Jeff Gannon," the imposter permitted by the White House to ask sycophantic questions of the President at White House press conferences. There is also the fake "town meeting" (the very emblem of civil society) with the President, at which a screened audience asks pretested questions.

The strategy of faking civil activity has a long tradition in the foreign sphere. For example, the CIA virtually cut its teeth manipulating popular and intellectual movements in Europe in the late 1940s and `50s. (Indeed, historian Allen Weinstein, who was the National Endowment`s first acting president, has commented, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly twenty-five years ago by the CIA.") But the domestic practice is more recent. One of the lesser-known points of origin is the presidency of Richard Nixon, who once ordered his aide Charles Colson to firebomb the Brookings Institution, then called it off. But he also had some more workable ideas. He told Patrick Buchanan, then his communications director, that he wanted somehow not only to cut off existing "left-wing" foundations "without a dime" but also to found a right-wing institute that would seem to be independent but actually be managed by the White House. As Buchanan commented in a memo, "some of the essential objectives of the Institute would have to be blurred, even buried, in all sorts of other activity that would be the bulk of its work, that would employ many people, and that would provide the cover for the more important efforts." In this matter, as in so many others, today`s Republican Party is the legatee of Richard Nixon.

Some Democrats want their party to respond in kind. For urgent and understandable reasons, they want to level the playing field. But the cost could be high. In such a world, nothing would be what it seemed. Behind every blogger would lurk the PR spinmeister, behind every reporter would stand the political hack, behind every charming demonstrator holding her banner -- rose, orange, purple, or cedar --would lie the cold hand of the state. In the name of civil society, civil society would be spoiled.

Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, is the Nation Institute`s Harold Willens Peace Fellow. The Jonathan Schell Reader was recently published by Nation Books.

Copyright C2005 Jonathan Schell

This article will appear in the next issue of The Nation Magazine.


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For recruiters, a distant war becomes a tough sell
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20050406/c…

Wed Apr 6, 7:56 AM ET

In the recent documentary Gunner Palace, a U.S. soldier in Iraq is asked about the scary patrols he and his fellow soldiers make in their Humvee. Do people back home truly understand or care what happens in these mean streets of Baghdad? Pause. Probably not, he replies.

That answer contains a worrisome perception the Pentagon may not be taking into account as it tries to bolster its flagging military recruiting.

The Iraq war has pushed Army recruiting programs into the danger zone. The active-duty Army missed its March goal by 32%, the Army National Guard by 12%.

The shortfall should come as no surprise. More than 1,500 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, and more than 11,000 have suffered wounds that range from minor to disfiguring. By now, photos of troops struggling to walk with artificial limbs have been seen by most Americans, including prospective soldiers and their parents. National Guard members, who used to be "weekend warriors," have had repeated and extended deployments.

Against this backdrop, it`s hard to fault the Army, which has suffered most of the casualties, for its recruiting setbacks. In an effort to reverse the trend, these quick and logical steps are being taken:

• The Army is offering re-enlistment bonuses of up to $20,000.

• The maximum age for new Guard recruits is being raised by five years to 39. That will add another 22 million to the pool of potential recruits.

• The Pentagon is adding 1,200 Army recruiters and 1,400 Guard recruiters.

New salesmen, however, only help if people want to buy the product. On Tuesday, USA TODAY`s Rick Jervis reported that the Army and Marine Corps will launch new public relations campaigns aimed at those most likely to discourage new recruits - their worried parents.

Opposition to sending sons and daughters into the military has been increasing among parents, coaches, ministers and neighbors, according to a study of potential recruits.

New television ads will try to convince parents that military service brings strong gains in integrity and job skills. Also part of the public relations offensive: Army recruiters visiting homes of potential recruits will be paired with veterans of the campaigns in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Maybe it will work. But maybe that Gunner Palace soldier saw something that PR can`t overcome. The American public remains disconnected from the war, even while supporting the troops with words and bumper stickers. That`s because the White House has stubbornly refused to call on the American people to sacrifice. The public hasn`t been asked to pay for the war by giving up tax cuts. The public hasn`t been asked to reduce its reliance on imported oil.

It`s possible that the recruiting problems are temporary and can be turned around by policy tweaks and PR campaigns aimed at parents. But it`s just as possible that recruitment problems have a deeper source during a war in which the sacrifices fall disproportionately on heroic volunteers.


Copyright © 2005 USA TODAY

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April 8, 2005
Shiite Leader Named Iraq Premier to End 2 Months of Wrangling
By ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/international/middleeast/0…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 7 - The Shiite leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari was appointed Iraq`s new prime minister Thursday, crystallizing the leadership of the first elected government in decades and ending more than two months of divisive negotiations.

Dr. Jaafari, a doctor and the leader of one of Iraq`s major Shiite religious parties, was named by the new president, Jalal Talabani, shortly after Mr. Talabani was sworn into office with his hand on a Koran.

Hours earlier, Ayad Allawi, who has been the prime minister in Iraq`s interim government, submitted his resignation, opening the way for the new government to take power. Dr. Allawi will remain head of a caretaker government until a full cabinet is chosen.

Dr. Jaafari, 58, had long been expected to be named prime minister - the most powerful post in the new government. Still, the announcement brought a palpable sense of finality and relief among Iraq`s leading political groups, which had spent weeks locked in bitter talks on power-sharing and other issues that tried the patience of many Iraqis who risked their lives to vote on Jan. 30.

The appointment was also a long-deferred moment of triumph for the Shiites, who represent 60 percent of Iraq`s population but were brutally suppressed by Saddam Hussein.

The Shiite coalition to which Mr. Jaafari belongs was formed under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq`s most revered Shiite cleric, and Dr. Jaafari has made clear that he favors a strong voice for Islam in Iraq`s new constitution, although he is vague about specifics.

Dr. Jaafari`s appointment also underscored the anxieties expressed by some Arab leaders about Iran`s influence in the region. During 20 years of exile from Iraq, Dr. Jaafari spent time living in Iran and forged close ties with Iranian leaders, as did many members of his Dawa Party.

As a member of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council set up shortly after American forces ousted Mr. Hussein two years ago, he pushed for a broader role for Islam in the interim constitution that now is in force in Iraq. When pressed for his personal views about what elements of Islamic law should be reflected in Iraq`s new constitution, Dr. Jaafari offered few details during an interview last month.

"I understand that Iraqis all have different views and different political thinking and different religious thinking," he said. "The majority are Muslim, but that doesn`t mean others are canceled or excluded."

He described himself in the interview as a supporter of a strong political role for women, and he said he would never favor laws forcing women to wear head scarves in public. Asked for his views on whether adultery should be criminalized in Iraq - as it is in some Arab countries - he said simply that this was an issue for the parliament to deal with, not him.

"This day for me means a new democratic political era in Iraq," Dr. Jaafari said Thursday after being named by the new president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who was selected on Wednesday. "It is one of the most important moments in the new democratic process in our country."

As he picks his cabinet, Dr. Jaafari will be facing a range of difficult issues that have already tested the fragile coalition between his Shiite alliance, which won just over half the assembly`s 275 seats, and the smaller Kurdish alliance to which Mr. Talabani belongs. In addition to the role of Islam in the new government, those issues include the extent of Kurdish autonomy and how to split revenues from Iraq`s oil industry.

On Wednesday, some assembly members called for Dr. Allawi`s government to be dissolved as soon as Mr. Talabani was sworn in, but that issue may have been defused by Dr. Allawi`s resignation.

Barham Salih, a member of the Kurdish alliance, said Dr. Allawi`s government would now remain in office as a caretaker government until Dr. Jaafari finishes naming his cabinet. Dr. Allawi is also a member of the new Iraqi national assembly.

Dr. Jaafari offered no hints about whom he would name to his cabinet. He added, though, that the new government would include women and representatives of Iraq`s various ethnic and religious groups.

But an agreement has been reached to name a Sunni Arab as head of the Defense Ministry, said Jawad al-Maliki, a national assembly member and deputy leader of the Dawa Party. Over all, the Sunnis will be given no less than six ministries, and the Foreign Ministry portfolio will go to Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who holds the same post in the interim government, Mr. Maliki said.

Sunni Arabs largely stayed away from the polls during the January election, and granting them powerful positions is seen as crucial both in forming a stable government and in defeating the insurgency. The Defense Ministry could be particularly important in that effort. Sunnis dominated the higher echelons of Mr. Hussein`s military, and many joined the insurgency after his fall.

Mr. Talabani made his own overtures to the Sunnis after he took the oath of office on Thursday, along with his two deputies, in an auditorium packed with members of the new national assembly.

The Shiite and Kurdish alliances, Mr. Talabani said, "should respond to the legitimate demands of our brothers the Sunni Arabs and respect their rights as one of the most important elements of the Iraqi people."

Like some other Shiite leaders, Dr. Jaafari initially refused a year ago to sign Iraq`s interim constitution, which sets up the procedures for writing the new constitution, because it allowed a two-thirds majority in any three of Iraq`s 18 provinces to nullify the final constitution when it goes before voters later this year.

That provision was particularly important to Iraq`s Kurdish minority. But Dr. Jaafari said at the time that he found it undemocratic. He signed the law, but has since said he may lead an effort to reverse that provision - a possibility that alarms many groups here, including the Kurds and the Americans.

Dr. Jaafari, a soft-spoken man who smiles easily, was born in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, where his father worked in the Imam Hussein shrine. He fled Iraq in 1980, when Mr. Hussein began killing and torturing thousands of Dawa Party members. After traveling through Syria and Iran, he arrived in London. He returned to Iraq shortly after the American-led invasion two years ago.

"The last person I bade farewell to when I left was my mother," Dr. Jaafari said in the interview last month. "When I came back to Iraq I went to Karbala. I visited my mother again, this time in the cemetery."

His mother had died naturally, but one of his brothers and four of his cousins were executed by Mr. Hussein`s government, Dr. Jaafari said.

A voracious reader, he said he was reading Bill Clinton`s autobiography. He said that he liked reading contemporary Arabic poetry and that his favorite Western writers were Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolstoy.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 8, 2005
EDITORIAL
The Worst of the Bad Nominees
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/opinion/08fri1.html

When a president picks his administration officials, the opposing political party can`t expect to be thrilled with the selections. Right now, Democrats in the Senate are trying to block the nominations of three men chosen by George W. Bush for important posts: John Bolton for United Nations ambassador, Stephen Johnson for head of the Environmental Protection Agency and Dr. Lester Crawford for commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. They have excellent reasons for opposition in each case, but some reasons are more excellent than others.

Mr. Bolton stands out because he is not only bad in a policy sense, but also unqualified for the post to which he`s been named. At a minimum, the United States representative to the United Nations should be a person who believes it is a good idea. Mr. Bolton has never made secret his disdain for the United Nations, for multilateralism and for consensus-seeking diplomacy in general.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins taking testimony on Mr. Bolton`s nomination next week, it is also expected to hear other charges about his fitness, like allegations that when he was under secretary of state for arms control, he tried to distort intelligence reports by intimidating analysts who disagreed with him. After the invasion of Iraq, complaints that top advisers to the president had attempted to make intelligence reports conform to a preconceived conclusion about Saddam Hussein`s weapons programs were often aimed in Mr. Bolton`s direction.

All of this is very much to the point. When the country chooses an ambassador to the United Nations, it ought to avoid picking someone whose bullying style of leadership symbolizes everything that created the current estrangement between the United States and most of the world. One of the goals of Mr. Bush`s second term was supposed to be rapprochement with other nations, whose assistance the United States desperately needs to curb the proliferation of the real weapons of mass destruction.

Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee are fighting to actually kill Mr. Bolton`s nomination; all eyes are on Lincoln Chafee, the moderate Republican swing vote who has a record of being very supportive of the United Nations. In the case of Dr. Crawford and Mr. Johnson, a few senators are threatening to block what would be easy confirmations by putting a hold on each nomination before it goes to the Senate floor.

The right to block a nomination, like the right to filibuster a bill on the Senate floor, is one of the few tools the minority party has for affecting public policy. But it needs to be used with discretion. Mr. Johnson, in particular, seems like a bad choice for such a fight. His main drawback is that he is unlikely to put up the slightest resistance to Mr. Bush`s policies, which have not been helpful in protecting the nation`s clean air and water. Unfortunately, that will be the case whether this particular nomination goes through or not, and the president clearly has the capacity to find a less qualified yes-man for the job.

Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Ben Nelson of Florida are threatening to stall Mr. Johnson`s confirmation unless he promises to end a suspended Florida study in which families would be paid to allow researchers to study the effects of pesticides on their children - a macabre investigation co-sponsored by the American Chemistry Council. The idea that the E.P.A. would pay families to continue exposing their children to potentially dangerous chemicals is on its face outrageous - and made worse by the study`s ghoulish acronym, Cheers, for Children`s Environmental Exposure Research Study. But the study has already been stopped, pending a review. It would have been a good sign of independence if Mr. Johnson had called a complete halt, but there seems little likelihood that the study will ever be revived. This seems like a weak reason to stop a Senate vote.

In the case of the F.D.A., Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington are threatening to keep the nomination from the floor unless Dr. Crawford prompts his agency to make a long-delayed decision on whether the so-called morning-after pill may be sold over the counter.

Their cause is righteous. If taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, the pills can end unwanted pregnancies - so making them readily available could drastically cut down on the number of abortions. Two committees of expert advisers voted overwhelmingly in favor of selling the medication over the counter, but the F.D.A. has failed to do anything. Another proposal, which would limit its sale to women over 16, has also been pending.

Dr. Crawford has been the deputy or acting commissioner during a very troubled period for the drug agency. He presided over fiascos involving cox-2 painkillers, antidepressants and other drugs. He is clearly afraid to let his agency make a decision on the morning-after pill that will get him in hot water with social conservatives or with those who believe that the F.D.A. should be run on the basis of science, not theology. That timidity doesn`t suggest that he would impose needed reform in other areas.

The Senate should vote on Dr. Crawford and defeat his nomination on the merits. If the Democratic senators are going to choose a disastrous Bush nomination to block, our choice is Mr. Bolton`s.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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An Old U.S. Foe Rises Again in Iraq
Shiite Mahdi Army Growing Bolder in South
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35586-2005Apr…

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 8, 2005; Page A01

GHARAF, Iraq -- Over the loudspeakers set up in this small town in a backwater of southern Iraq, the commands came in staccato bursts. "Forward!" a man clad in black shouted to the militiamen. "March!"

Column after column followed through the dusty, windswept square. Some of the marchers wore the funeral shawls of prospective martyrs. Others were dressed in newly pressed camouflage. Together, their boots beat the pavement like a drum as they goose-stepped or double-timed in place.

Over their heads flew the Iraqi flag, banners of Shiite Muslim saints and a portrait of their leader, Moqtada Sadr -- symbols of their militia, the Mahdi Army, twice subdued by the U.S. military last year but now openly displaying its strength in parts of the south.

"At your service, Sadr! At your service, Moqtada!" the men chanted in formation. "We hear a voice calling us!"

"The tanks do not terrify us," others joined in. "We`re resisting! We`re resisting!"

The military parade this week lasted an hour, long enough for 700 men brandishing swords, machetes and not a few guns to pass a viewing stand of turbaned clerics and townspeople gathered in front of low-slung brick buildings.

It was also long enough for the militiamen to deliver the message that has distinguished their organization from Iraq`s other Shiite groups -- implacable hostility toward the U.S. occupation. They delivered it far beyond the purview of the U.S. military, in one of the many towns and cities in southern Iraq where the Mahdi Army has emerged as kingmaker, and where the lines between authority and lawlessness are still ambiguous.

Iraq`s most prominent religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, stepped between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military in Najaf last August, ending fighting that destroyed parts of Iraq`s most sacred Shiite city. Since then, an uneasy truce has held there and in Karbala, another holy city, and in the vast Baghdad slum known as Sadr City.

U.S. military officials say they believe the toll they inflicted during last year`s fighting sapped the young cleric`s support. While still a threat, the militia is less so than when it first took up arms in April 2004, the officials say.

"We believe Moqtada`s militia is generally marginalized, and there is little to be gained from taking a military role," said Lt. Col. Bob Taylor, chief intelligence officer for the 3rd Infantry Division, which oversees Baghdad. "But it could still be a threat."

Beyond Baghdad, though, Iraqis see a new boldness in the militia in cities like Nasiriyah, Basra and Amarah, all south of the capital and all patrolled by foreign forces allied with the United States.

In Basra, the Mahdi Army is widely viewed as the force that can put more armed men in the street than any other. Amarah remains its stronghold. In Nasiriyah, it has struck an alliance with the secular police chief, who views the group as a counterweight to other militias.

"The silent majority is not with him, but the majority of active people are," said Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi Mudarrassi, a cleric in Karbala, referring to Sadr. "If you count the ballot boxes, the balance is with the moderates. If you count those in the streets, it`s the opposite."

The enduring appeal of Sadr`s militia speaks to the forces still shaping Iraq: nationalism, religion and guns.

For the militia, the axis on which those forces spin is the messianic cult of personality the movement has built around Sadr. The movement maintains a presence in the U.S.-backed political process -- about two dozen sympathizers serve in Iraq`s new parliament. But it fosters the militia as insurance, a political calculation based on a much older notion of Iraqi politics: Arms and the men who wield them convey power and ensure survival.

Time and again, after battles that left hundreds of Sadr`s followers dead, the movement has managed to rewrite the notion of winning and losing: The very act of fighting is a victory. There is no defeat.

"We still have the weapons, we still have the army, and we still have the leader," said Sahib Amari, a spokesman for Sadr in Kufa, where the movement came of age in the weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Prayers and Politics

The Friday prayers at the Kufa mosque, the shrine a few miles from Najaf where Sadr`s father preached in the 1990s and where his son built his movement after the U.S. invasion, are akin to street theater. Religion is less pronounced than politics, and politics helps to rally the thousands of men who gather each week in the open-air courtyard.

"Long live Sadr!" the men chant as they file through the arched brick entrance. "Moqtada is the bridge to heaven!"

The prayers led by members of Sadr`s movement have long drawn some of the largest crowds in post-invasion Iraq -- in Baghdad and Kufa. The numbers seem to have dwindled little, if at all, over the past year.

Just as constant is the message of protest, delivered in the sermon by Nasser Saadi, a rousing, swaggering cleric built like a wrestler. The enemies of the Shiites are not their Sunni brothers, he insisted. The adversaries of Iraq are not fellow Arab countries.

"I am addressing my call to the honest Iraqi people who stand against the occupation, who reject the occupation and who demand freedom," he shouted, dressed as others in a funeral shawl. "The enemy is one enemy, and that enemy is the occupier."

The crowd erupted, fists in the air: "No to the occupier! No to terrorism! No to the devil!"

"Wherever America is present, then there is terrorism," Saadi said. "When they ask the terrorists why they`re here, they say we came to fight America. If America leaves, there would be no terrorism. Terrorism would leave with it."

In the mosque, and the markets that spring up around it each Friday, what has changed during the past year is the emphasis of the appeal the movement makes to the poor and young. Gone is the celebration of Sadr`s father, a revered cleric assassinated in 1999. In its stead is the cult built around his son and a glorification of arms.

In posters spread out on plastic mats, Moqtada Sadr`s image hovered over portraits of Mahdi Army militiamen waving rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.

"Victorious by force and faith, God willing," one read.
Growing Resistance

Najah Musawi is the Mahdi Army`s version of a fighting priest.

A 30-year-old from Kut with seven years in the Shiite seminary, he fought in both battles last year in Najaf. He was armed with an AK-47 assault rifle; his wife helped cook rice and lentils for his fighters posted along a famous street that leads to Najaf`s gold-domed Imam Ali shrine. To his men, he was simply Sayyid Najah, an honorific bestowed on clerics descended from the prophet Muhammad.

"Clerics are themselves fighters," said Musawi, a gaunt man with a wispy beard. "We defend our doctrine and our principles."

Najaf still bears the scars of last year`s fighting. Along main roads, rubble occasionally spills into the streets. With time, it has faded into the ramshackle brick construction of many of Najaf`s houses. Some walls are still charred, and bullet holes puncture the facades of buildings and the colonnade in the street where Musawi and his men fought.

Stories of the fighting and death they encountered have become celebrated among the militiamen, another chapter in what they fashion as a legitimate uprising against the Americans. Musawi recalled how they faced tanks with their Kalashnikovs, how they recited the Koran over gunfire, how they fought on four hours` sleep, and how his six brothers served with him, one of them with shrapnel in his right leg.

"In those last days, 10 fighters would share one bottle of water," he recalled.

These days, Musawi said, he commands 500 fresh recruits in Nasiriyah. He heads one of 18 Sadr offices in the city, all of which have their own militia units. There are no ranks, he said, only platoon and company commanders. As in Amarah and Basra, rumors are rife of the militia gathering more arms and men.

"We stood up to the Americans for 21 days, day and night, and the spirit of resistance is still there," he said. "If we get an order to resist the occupation, we`ll do it -- with more determination, more numbers, more experience and more skills."
Making Local Allies

Sheik Aws Khafaji is Sadr`s representative in Nasiriyah and Musawi`s boss. Khafaji, 32, joined the seminary in 1996, then spent more than two years in prison. Gen. Mohammed Hajami is the provincial police chief. At 47, he is a father of eight. He served 24 years in the Iraqi military, reaching the rank of colonel. He considers himself insistently secular.

On Feb. 10, their paths began to converge. Before long, the Mahdi Army and the Nasiriyah police would be staunch allies.

That night in February, Hajami said, 70 men attacked his office with machine guns, small arms and grenades. The gunmen belonged to the Badr Brigades, a militia loyal to one of Iraq`s biggest Shiite parties and a rival of the Mahdi Army; the gunmen were angry that the government had dismissed their leader and appointed Hajami. More than 30 of his policemen took part in what he called an attempted hit.

The next day, Khafaji denounced the attack in his Friday sermon. He said the gunmen weren`t Badr Brigades, they were ghadr -- Arabic for betrayal.

Those words were the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

"It`s a matter of balance," Hajami explained.

"Without the presence of the Sadr current, the Badr forces would seize every government building in the province. From my point of view, their presence is useful to us," he said. "We heard the Badr forces would like to do it again, so the Sadr people warned them, `If you try it another time, we`re going to throw your bodies into the streets.` "

A billboard-size painting of Sadr`s father stands at the entrance to the police station, protected by rows of sand-filled barricades. On the wall of the reception room, in a glass case, was a copy of Saadi`s sermon in Kufa, a call to gather for a Sadr-led protest in Baghdad this coming Saturday and a leaflet from the Sadr office titled, "The First Letter from Sayyid Moqtada Sadr to the Iraqi Police."

"You are from the people, and the people are from you as long as you detest the occupier and refuse the oppressor," it read.

Hajami says he is steadfastly pro-American but that survival is survival. His 5,500-man force is 2,500 short of what he said he needed to guarantee security. He suspects just 30 percent are loyal to him; the rest answer to the city`s handful of Islamic parties. So, in a city where alliances are necessary, the Mahdi Army is his ally, he said.

"The Sadr trend has the biggest popular influence in the streets," Hajami said. "The relations are good, and there is cooperation. We keep in touch. Any problem that happens, I call them and see if they need help, or they call me."
Unyielding Message

Hajami was invited to the military parade this week in Gharaf, about 12 miles north of Nasiriyah. He didn`t attend, but four of his police cars provided a high-speed escort, with sirens and loudspeakers, for Khafaji and other Sadr leaders. A few militiamen with bandoliers and heavy machine guns rode in the back, clad in the trademark black of the Mahdi Army.

At the parade, the Mahdi Army provided security. About 30 men in new uniforms, ammunition belts and assault rifles were posted on roofs and in the street. Another militiaman toted a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the background.

In white turban and clerical robes, Khafaji took the podium.

In private, he can be measured and militant. In one sentence, he will denounce the U.S. presence, warning of calamity if American troops fail to depart. In another, he strikes a more mainstream, nationalist tone -- outreach to Sunnis, cooperation with police, even holding out the prospect of formal participation in the political process once the Americans leave.

At Gharaf, he spoke to the militia assembled before him but addressed his words to the Americans.

"There is no place in the land of Mahdi except for the people of Mahdi," he shouted. "There is no place for you on this ground. Our people exist to force you out by means that are peaceful and then by means that are military.

"We are able to do that," he said, "God willing."

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post 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/
Friday, April 08, 2005


Blogger is down for me, so I am posting manually. They have been putting in a lot of improvements and it is now usually working well and fast, but something they did today made it impossible for me to post. Will fix soon.

Jaafari Appointed Prime Minister

Jalal Talabani appears to have had a senior moment of some magnitude. In the course of announcing that Ibrahim Jaafari will be Iraq`s new prime minister, he says he suffered a memory lapse and had to leave the podium so an aide could remind him of Jaafari`s name. The superstitious took it as an ill omen.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Jaafari pledged to make headway on Iraq`s poor security, and that he sharply criticized the outgoing government of Iyad Allawi for letting Baathists serve in the security and intelligence forces. Jaafari appears set to purge them.

The same newspaper says that 10 Iraqis were killed in separate incidents in the ongoing guerrilla war on Thursday, and another 11 corpses were discovered near Ramadi (usually these turn out to be police or police recruits). Mahdi Army still a Factor

Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post continues his world-beating coverage of Iraq with an article on the reemergence of the Mahdi Army in the south, in places like Nasiriyah and Basrah.

Look, if all the Mahdi Army amounts to is angry young men with guns persuaded to support puritanical morality and to give their political loyalty to Muqtada al-Sadr, then it can never be "defeated" by the US military. It is just an urban social movement. You`d have to change the character of the Shiite slums to make an impact on it, which won`t happen tomorrow.

The US military thought that it had defeated the Mahdi Army by late May 2004. Then when fighting broke out again in August, the militia fought tenaciously in Najaf and seemed to come from nowhere. One reporter told me that the US generals in Iraq were frantically trying to discover how Muqtada had recruited so many new fighters in only a couple of months. But that`s easy. The fighters in August were the angry cousins of the ones killed in May. In Iraq you can`t let a thing like foreigners killing your cousin pass without action. Young men who had been on the fence now picked up guns and rpg launchers. Their lack of professional fighting skills ensured their military defeat, but by holing up in the shrine of Ali they gained political capital outside Najaf itself. If Sistani had not intervened, and had Allawi gone ahead with plans to invade the shrine of Ali, it could well have provoked a Shiite social revolution against the interim government and against the Americans. Mahdi Army militiamen are easy to kill, hard to defeat.

So far the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq has gotten a pass from the Americans, on the whole. But its fighters can be just as thuggish and intrusive as Sadr`s.

Cairo Blast at Khan al-Khalili

The analysis of the bombing of a tourist area of Cairo, which killed 4 and wounded 18 on Thursday given by the Egyptian social scientists interviewed by China`s Xinhuanet seems to me quite sophisticated. They pointed to increased wealth stratification (social contradictions) in Egypt-- where the poor have stayed poor and the rich have gotten a bit better off during the past 25 years. They also pointed to the destabilizing effect on the region of the Iraq War and other American policies.

The bombing was likey the work of Ayman al-Zawahiri`s al-Jihad al-Islami, which is part of al-Qaeda. That Bush wimped out on destroying Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and instead poured $300 billion into the Iraq quagmire has left the jihadis free to plot and act. Egypt gets billions of dollars every year in revenue from tourism, which helps prop up the Egyptian government. The al-Jihad al-Islami wants to overthrow the Egyptian government, so it is trying to deprive it of the tourist revenue. The tactic works, but it has the disadvantage of making all the other Egyptians, who depend on the tourist revenue, angry at the jihadis and unwilling to support them politically.

New York Times Supports McCarthyite Witch Hunt

I am cancelling my subscription to the New York Times, and I urge others to do the same.

The New York Times editorial board went over to the Dark Side on Thursday, with an editorial that blasted the end results of a panel at Columbia University that investigated whether students had been intimidated by professors at Columbia University. The panel found that there was no evidence of any such thing, that no students had been punished for their views by lowered grades, that there was no evidence of racial bigotry.

The NYT nevertheless praised the neo-McCarthyite "film" (actually it is large numbers of films that are constantly re-edited and have never been publicly shown) produced by the shadowy anti-Palestinian "David Project." But the "film" is not an objective document. I could interview on film lots of people who ascribed all sorts of bad behavior to the editors of the New York Times and call it a "damning documentary." Students, including Israelis, who have actually taken classes in Middle East studies at Columbia dispute the films` allegations.

The real question here is whether it is all right to dispute the Zionist version of history. The David Project, AIPAC, the American Jewish Congress, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Middle East Forum, Campus Watch, MEMRI, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Zionist Organization of America, etc., etc., maintain that it is not all right. Some of them have even been known to maintain that disputing Zionist historiography is a form of hate speech.

Historians are unkind to nationalism of any sort. Nineteenth century romantic nationalism of the Zionist sort posits eternal "peoples" through history, who have a blood relationship (i.e. are a "race") and who have a mystical relationship with some particular territory. The Germans, who were very good at this game, called it "blood and soil." Nationalism casts about for some ancient exemplar of the "nation" to glorify as a predecessor to the modern nation. (Since nations actually did not exist in the modern sense before the late 1700s, the relationship is fictive. To explain what happened between ancient glory and modern nationalism, nationalists often say that the "nation" "fell asleep" or "went into centuries of decline. My colleague Ron Suny calls this the "sleeping beauty" theory of nationalism.)

But there are no eternal nations through history. People get all mixed up genetically over time, except for tiny parts of the genome like the mitochondria or the Y chromosome, on which too much emphasis is now put. Since there are no eternal nations based in "blood," they cannot have a mystical connection to the "land." People get moved around. The Turks now in Anatolia once lived in Mongolia (and most Turks anyway are just Greeks who converted to Islam and began speaking Turkish).

The David Project wants Middle East historians to reproduce faithfully in the classroom the Zionist master narrative as the "true" version of history. We aren`t going to do that, and nobody can make us do it, and if anyone did make us do it, it would be destructive of academic, analytical understandings of history. Next the Serbs will be demanding that we explain why the Bosnians had to be suppressed, and the Russians will object to any attempt to understand the roots of Chechen terrorism, and the Chinese will object to our teaching about Taiwan, etc. etc. Ethnic nationalisms if allowed to dictate the teaching of history would destroy the entire discipline.

The NYT editorial concludes:

"But in the end, the report is deeply unsatisfactory because the panel`s mandate was so limited. Most student complaints were not really about intimidation, but about allegations of stridently pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bias on the part of several professors. The panel had no mandate to examine the quality and fairness of teaching. That leaves the university to follow up on complaints about politicized courses and a lack of scholarly rigor as part of its effort to upgrade the department. One can only hope that Columbia will proceed with more determination and care than it has heretofore."

What the editors mean by "anti-Israeli" is not spelled out. But generally the term means any criticism of Israel. (You can criticize Argentina all day every day till the cows come home and nobody cares in the US, but make a mild objection to Ariel Sharon putting another 3500 settlers onto Palestinian territory in contravention of all international law and of the road map to which the Bush administration says it is committed, and boom!, you are branded a racist bigot. And if you dare point out that Sharon`s brutality and expansionism end up harming America and Americans by unnecessarily making enemies for us (because we are Sharon`s sycophants), then you are really in trouble.

Personally, I think that the master narrative of Zionist historiography is dominant in the American academy. Mostly this sort of thing is taught by International Relations specialists in political science departments, and a lot of them are Zionists, whether Christian or Jewish. Usually the narrative blames the Palestinians for their having been kicked off their own land, and then blames them again for not going quietly. It is not a balanced point of view, and if we take the NYT seriously (which we could stop doing after they let Judith Miller channel Ahmad Chalabi on the front page every day before the war), then the IR professors should be made to teach a module on the Palestinian point of view, as well. That is seldom done.

Academic teaching is not about balance or "fairness" or presenting "both sides" of an issue. It is about teaching people to reason analytically and synthetically about problems. The NYT approach would ruin our ability to do this and would impose a particular version of history on us all by fiat. It even implies that some committee should sanction anyone critical of Israel.

Universities are about skewering sacred cows. Anyone who doesn`t want their views challenged or their feelings hurt should stay away from them. If you can`t handle an intellectual challenge, you shouldn`t be on campus. And you certainly shouldn`t be editing a major newspaper.

Links:

Rashid Khalidi on Democracy Now..

Links to the report and to Joseph Massad`s response.

Baruch Kimmerling, the eminent Israeli sociologist, denounces the witch hunt at Columbia. The Chronicle of Higher Education, which hasn`t done squat for professors faced with the New McCarthyism, rejected Kimmerling`s piece, and they are another good candidate for cancelled subscriptions.

Scott Sherman in the Nation, "The Mideast Comes to Columbia."

Note: The links aren`t "balanced." You`ll have to find the McCarthyites on your own.

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We are rewriting the history of communism`s collapse

It was Gorbachev, not the Pope, who brought the system down
Jonathan Steele
Friday April 8, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1454825,00.ht…

Guardian
The deaths of the powerful elicit extravagant claims, and many of the tributes to the man being buried in Rome today have been little short of grotesque. Dumbing-down comes over obituary writers, and in their eagerness to define a clear legacy they often produce simplifications that take no account of how the world and people change.

The way Poles saw communism in the 1970s is not the way they see it now. The Polish Catholic church was in regular dialogue with the communist authorities, and both worked subtly together at times to resist Soviet influence. John Paul altered his own views as he travelled.

So the notion that anti-communism was always a consistent part of his motivation is off the mark. It was prominent in his early trips to Poland but less important in his dealings with Latin America. Pacifism was also a key principle for John Paul, and when it came to preserving power in his own domain, authoritarianism was his watchword rather than the protection of freedom.

The retrospectives that draw a line between his first visit home as Pope in 1979, the rise of Solidarity a year later and the collapse of the one-party system in 1989 are especially open to question.

They ignore martial law, which stopped Solidarity in its tracks and emasculated it for most of the 1980s. It was a defeat of enormous proportions that John Paul could not reverse until the real power-holders in eastern Europe, the men who ran the Kremlin, changed their line.

The Pope`s 1979 tour, with vast crowds at his open-air masses, undoubtedly gave Poles a tremendous sense of national revival. It added an unpredictable factor after decades of periodic crises between discontented workers, communist leaders who wanted to show their national credentials by finding a "Polish road to socialism" and narrow-minded rulers in Moscow.

The Pope`s support when workers struck in Gdansk and founded the Solidarity union as Poland`s first independent national organisation helped it to grow with amazing speed.

But things had changed a year later. Solidarity was split over tactics and goals. At its 1981 autumn congress, where western reporters were given full access, delegates fiercely debated priorities: was the key issue to be workers` demands for better wages and self-management in their factories or the call for political freedoms that the intellectuals on the Solidarity bandwagon saw as paramount? Should the union accept or reject the Communist party`s leading role in government?

All sides agonised over whether and how Moscow would intervene. There were already strong hints that the Polish army would be used rather than Soviet tanks. None of us thought a clamp-down could be avoided. Within weeks we were proved right. The Kremlin got its way with relative ease. Poland`s own communist authorities arrested thousands of Solidarity`s leaders and drove the rest underground.

John Paul`s reaction was soft. Armed resistance was not a serious option, but there were Poles who favoured mass protests, factory occupations and a campaign of civil disobedience. The Pope disappointed them. He criticised martial law but warned of bloodshed and civil war, counselling patience rather than defiance.

After prolonged negotiations with the regime, he made a second visit to Poland in 1983. Although martial law was lifted a month later, many Solidarity activists remained in jail for years. The government sat down to negotiate with Solidarity again only in August 1988, by which time Mikhail Gorbachev had already launched the drive towards pluralistic politics in the USSR itself and publicly promised no more Soviet military interventions in eastern Europe.

The impetus for Gorbachev`s reforms was not external pressure from the west, dissent in eastern Europe or the Pope`s calls to respect human rights, but economic stagnation in the Soviet Union and internal discontent within the Soviet elite.

The Pope`s cautious reaction to martial law was prompted by his firm belief in non-violence. If it tempered his anti-communism, so did the high value he put on national pride.

His line on communist Cuba differed sharply from his line on Poland. He realised that Castro`s resistance to US pressures reflected the feelings of most Cubans. He saw that nationalism and communist rule went hand in hand in Cuba in a way that they did not in Poland, where the party was ultimately subordinate to Moscow. In Havana the Pope mentioned freedom of conscience as a basic right, but his visit strengthened Castro. His critique of capitalism and global inequality echoed Castro`s and he denounced the US embargo on Cuba.

Nor was John Paul`s attack on liberation theology in the 1980s motivated primarily by the fact that the so-called "option for the poor" was infused with Marxism. The Pope was worried by other features too. He felt it was being used to justify violence and leading Catholic parish priests to support armed struggle by peasants against repressive landowners and feudal dictatorships.

In Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas toppled the US-backed Somoza regime by force, three priests became ministers. In El Salvador priests were often reporters` best conduits to guerrilla commanders, taking us into remote villages to meet them. In the Philippines some priests carried guns themselves. "The situation required more than a human rights group. I went underground and joined the defence forces," Father Eddy Balicao, who used to serve in Manila Cathedral, told me in the mountains of Luzon.

John Paul also opposed liberation theology because he saw priests defy their bishops and challenge the church`s hierarchical structure. Even while communism still held power in Europe, he had more in common with it than many of his supporters admit. He recentralised power in the Vatican and reversed the perestroika of his predecessor-but-two John XXIII, who had given more say to local dioceses.

With the fall of "international communism", the Vatican was left as the only authoritarian ideology with global reach. There was no let-up in the Pope`s pressures against dissent, the worst example being his excommunication of Sri Lanka`s Father Tissa Balasuriya in 1997, an impish figure who questioned the cult of Mary as a docile, submissive icon and argued that, as a minority religion in Asia, Catholicism had to be less arrogant towards other faiths.

The Pope could not accept that challenge to the Vatican`s absolutism. So it is fitting that he will be buried in the crypt from which John XXIII was removed, symbolically marking the primacy of Wojtyla`s conservative era over the liberal hopes of an earlier generation.

· Jonathan Steele reported from Poland, the Soviet Union and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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eine Karte der USA von Google. Gebt Adresse in USA ein und schaut durchs Fenster!

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=719+Scott+Street,SF,+Ca,+94117…

Die USA:
http://maps.google.com/maps

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Friday, April 08, 2005
War News for Friday, April 8, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: Four Iraqi children killed by roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: CBS cameraman wounded by US troops in firefight near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: One Turkish truck driver killed, six wounded in attack near Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi officer assassinated near Basra.

Bring ‘em on: Eleven Iraqis working for US forces killed near Muhammadiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Twelve Iraqis wounded by suicide bomber in Tall Afar.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi soldiers killed, 20 wounded in bomb attack near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Shi’ite shrine bombed near Latifiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis wounded in Najaf bombing.

US Marine killed in vehicle accident near Fallujah.

Hostages. “Arkan Mukhlif Al-Batawi, a farmer in the neighborhood of Taji, north of Baghdad, says US troops took his mother and sister hostage after raiding the family’s home last Saturday. Al-Batawi told Reuters that the women had been arrested in an attempt by the US to pressure him and two of his brothers to surrender themselves to US troops who suspect them of insurgent attacks. Several of Al-Batawi’s neighbors corroborated his version of the raid. According to Reuters, the Army confirmed Wednesday that it has detained two Iraqi women and said it is investigating Al-Batawi’s accusations, but a military spokesperson also claimed that the women are being held as suspected insurgents, not hostages. Holding the women as hostages would be a violation of international law.”

Guardsman sounds off. “Staff Sgt. Brad Rogers, who is with the 2113th Transportation Company in Paducah, Ky., complained in an e-mail to friends and co-workers in Kentucky that soldiers in his unit are driving old M915 tractor-trailers that frequently break down. Rogers called the trucks "a dinosaur" and said they are equipped with only one armored panel on each side and are not fitted with protective glass, or ballistic windows. Rogers said he decided to speak out about the dangers to his unit after a fellow soldier, Sgt. James A. Sherrill, was killed last Sunday when a bomb exploded near his military vehicle. Sherrill, 27, died when a piece of metal went through the truck window and hit him around his left temple, Rogers said.”

Women in combat. “Army Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester bolted from her Humvee, took cover behind a berm along the road and began firing at the swarm of insurgents ambushing a U.S. military convoy south of Baghdad. ‘Bullets were flying everywhere,’ said Hester, 23, of Bowling Green. ‘I could hear them pinging off the truck in back of me. I could hear them hitting the ground next to me. It was pretty crazy.’ For almost a half-hour, Hester and nine other Kentucky National Guard soldiers, including another woman, Spec. Ashley Pullen, fought off 40 to 50 attackers armed with assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. When the shooting ended, 26 insurgents lay dead and seven were wounded.”

Convoy duty: “The 87th Corps Support Battalion operates a major distribution center for the 3rd Infantry Division’s Task Force Baghdad, hauling supplies to military installations and forward operating bases all over the city. And each morning, its soldiers conduct battle drills before hitting the road to prepare for what they might face outside the wire. About two months into a yearlong deployment, many troops say that while incidents have been few, they are definitely something to worry about.”

Stop-loss. “On June 11, 2004, two weeks before Santiago`s National Guard contract was due to expire, his platoon sergeant informed him that he was subject to the Pentagon`s controversial "stop-loss" policy and would not be allowed to leave the Guard. Last October, months after his contract was supposed to have ended, the Guard ordered Santiago to report to Fort Sill, Okla., for training in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan. Santiago balked. Although he reported to Fort Sill as ordered and is there still, he`s fighting the government in court….Making it all the stranger is that the Army presented him with a new contract that extended his service until 2031. Army spokesperson Hart says the date was arbitrary, meant to allow for ‘wiggle room.’ Says Santiago, looking at another 27 years in the Army over and above the eight he signed up for: ‘It`s crazy.’” Maybe SGT Santiago can ask one of his daddy’s influential friends to arrange a transfer to an Alabama postal detachment.

Stop-loss doesn’t apply if you’re gay. “An Army sergeant who was wounded in Iraq wants a chance to remain in the military as an openly gay soldier, a desire that`s bringing him into conflict with the Pentagon`s ‘don`t ask, don`t tell’ policy. Sgt. Robert Stout, 23, says he has not encountered trouble from fellow soldiers and would like to stay if not for the policy that permits gay men and women to serve only if they keep their sexual orientation a secret.”

Hope this works out. “Since Iraq`s Jan. 30 parliamentary elections, that process has accelerated much more rapidly than US commanders have previously acknowledged. Although AO Iraq is one of just two sectors under Iraqi control (the other is the area around Baghdad`s Haifa Street), two senior US officers said the Iraqis` zone of responsibility would soon expand and eventually include all of Nineveh Province, including Mosul and Tall Afar, another volatile city, possibly within a year. The officers cautioned that the rough timetable for the northern province`s handover could be affected by several factors, including the potency of the insurgency and the preparedness of specific units, and US commanders have declined to provide a schedule for shifting responsibility to Iraqi forces throughout the country. But the process in Mosul, where in November insurgents overpowered an 8,000-man Iraqi police force and several National Guard units, demonstrates how fast the transition is happening.”

Our priceless fucking media. “An excellent idea, but when they arrived at the school, the unit was ‘surprised to find that no schoolchildren were present and that an Iraqi family was homesteading in the building,’ the report said. What`s more, ‘the Iraqi police were unwilling to remove the family and no school supplies" could be issued because the children were nowhere to be found. Could there be a silver lining to this dark cloud? Yes. The media come to the rescue! ‘Fortunately,’ the Army folks said in their report, ‘the reporter elected not to cover the event, which could have made us look bad, since we didn`t know what was going on with the school after we funded its construction.’ The reporter, who was not named, ‘understood what had happened and had other good coverage to use . . . rather than airing any of this event.’”

Commentary

Analysis: “If the Sunni Arabs inside the political process are not recognized as legitimate, the ones who are remain outside the process: the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), under its leader Harith al-Dari, and what we have described as the Sinn Fein strand of the Sunni Arab resistance. The minority secular Sunni Arabs, inside the political process, are concerned that the AMS may be configuring itself as a religious, pro-resistance Sunni counterpower: they fear this would represent a certified Lebanonization of Iraq. But the fact is the AMS has been cleverly filling a Sunni political vacuum: it has even admitted publicly it would condemn the resistance in Islamic terms, as long as the new Iraqi government came up with a definitive timetable for a complete US military withdrawal. You can`t get more popular than that in Iraq. The AMS already makes a clear distinction between "noble" guerrillas - who attack the occupying forces - and the murderers who attack Iraqi civilians. The big question now is how the Shi`ites and Kurds will deal with marginalized Sunni Arabs - paying close attention to their political grievances or clobbering them with peshmergas, Badr Brigades and Iraqi security forces. It`s politics or civil war.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Tennessee Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Alaska Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Filipino US Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Kentucky Guardsman wounded in Iraq.

Rant of the Day

From athenae at First Draft. Go read it.
# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:59 AM
Comments (9) | Trackback (0)
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Latest Fatality: Apr 06, 2005


Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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April 8, 2005
Bush, Clinton Disagree on Pope`s Legacy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Bush.h…

Filed at 2:52 p.m. ET

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) -- President Bush on Friday said that attending the funeral of Pope John Paul II was ``one of the highlights of my presidency`` and made clear that he disagrees with former President Clinton`s assessment that the pontiff leaves a mixed legacy.

``I think John Paul II will have a clear legacy of peace, compassion and a strong legacy of setting a clear moral tone,`` Bush told reporters on Air Force One as he flew from Rome to the United States just hours after the funeral. He said he wanted to amend his remarks to add the word ``excellent.``

``It was a strong legacy,`` the president said. ``I wanted to make sure there was a proper adjective to the legacy he left behind, not just the word clear.``

Bush, the first U.S. president to attend a papal funeral, led a U.S. delegation to the 2 1/2-hour funeral Mass that included his wife, Laura, his father, former President Bush, former President Clinton and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Clinton, on the flight to Rome earlier this week, had said that John Paul ``may have had a mixed legacy,`` but he called him a man with a great feel for human dignity.

``There will be debates about him. But on balance, he was a man of God, he was a consistent person, he did what he thought was right,`` Clinton said. ``That`s about all you can ask of anybody.``

Bush spoke with reporters in the conference room of his plane. ``I`m really glad I came,`` he said. ``There was never any question I would come.``

Bush talked about his time in Rome in extraordinarily personal terms, saying it strengthened his own belief in a ``living God.``

He remarked on how affected he was by the services, particularly the music and the sight of the plain casket being carried out with the sun pouring down on it. As he viewed the pope`s body, Bush said, he felt ``very much at peace`` and ``much more in touch with his spirit.``

``I knew the ceremony today would be majestic but I didn`t realize how moved I would be by the service itself,`` the president said. ``Today`s ceremony, I bet you, was a reaffirmation for millions.``

That was true for him, Bush said.

``No doubt in my mind the Lord Christ was sent by the Almighty,`` Bush said. ``No doubt.``

Bush said attending the funeral mass reminded him that faith is a long-term process, using a description of religious life common to evangelicals. ``Faith -- it`s a walk, not a moment, not a respite,`` he said.

Bush was close to the front of the section reserved for world leaders, who were seated in alphabetical order -- in French. The United States in French is Etats-Unis. A parallel section seated Catholic leaders. Bush sat on the aisle in the second row, next to his wife. Beside them were French President Jacques Chirac and his wife, Bernadette. The two presidents shook hands.

When Bush`s face appeared on giant screen TVs showing the ceremony, many in the crowds outside St. Peter`s Square booed and whistled.

Bush rode to Vatican City in a limousine displaying two flags, the customary American flag on the right fender and, as a tribute to the pope, the white and yellow Vatican banner on the left. He left Rome immediately after the service.

The president also was taping his weekly radio address focused on the pope`s life and legacy.

Bush was spending the weekend on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. His father accompanied him back aboard Air Force One, but Clinton took a backup Air Force plane back to the states.

On Thursday, Bush -- eager to remain out of the limelight and keep the focus on the pope -- met privately with Italian leaders and U.S. Catholic leaders in town for the funeral. He arrived in Rome late Wednesday.

^------

On the Net:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

Vatican: http://www.vatican.va

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Tomgram: Mark Danner on the Real Iraqi Election
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2307


Last December, Mark Danner took a piercing look back at our Presidential election in Florida, "How Bush Really Won," printed up in the New York Review of Books and posted on line at Tomdispatch. In the aftermath of another election, closely linked to our own and to the well being of our President, Danner returns to the (post-)campaign trail -- this time in Baghdad. What follows, I feel certain, is the single clearest-eyed, best reported piece to date on Iraq`s January election, whose end game is only now being played out in the installation of an ethnically and religiously divided, exceedingly weak Iraqi government. It will "rule" a riven, occupied country facing an explosive and resilient insurgency as well as independently controlled Shiite and Kurdish militias, and it will do so from inside Baghdad`s Green Zone; in other words, from within what is essentially a vast American military encampment.

I`ve seen no other piece that gives a more powerful sense of America`s Baghdad as it exists today, of what exactly the election meant, of the degree to which it was fought out in the media as much before an American as an Iraqi audience, and of why the lack of Sunni voter turnout is sure to prove such a disabling factor in Iraq`s future. As of this week, after two months of behind-the-scenes brokering, there will officially be an elected government in Iraq, but, as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, California, there may, in fact, be no there, there.

By the way, Mark Danner`s new book, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, is a chilling document that does much to explain the nature of the fix the Bush administration now finds itself in; but whatever you do, don`t miss his election essay which is being distributed on-line by Tomdispatch thanks to the kindness of the editors of the New York Review of Books. It appears in the April 28th issue of that magazine.
Tom

Iraq: The Real Election

By Mark Danner

1.

"The essence of any insurgency, and its most decisive battle space, is the psychological. [It`s] armed theater: you have protagonists on the stage but they`re sending messages to wider audiences. Insurgency is about perceptions, beliefs, expectations, legitimacy, and will. Insurgency is not won by killing insurgents, not won by seizing territory; it`s won by altering the psychological factors that are most relevant."[1]

Just past dawn on January 30, Iraq`s Election Day -- the fourth of the US occupation`s "turning points," after the fall of Baghdad, the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the "handover of sovereignty" -- I stood at the muddy gates of Muthana Air Base outside Baghdad watching the sun rise, pink and full, into a white-streaked sky; then, feeling a sudden tremor beneath my feet, I started abruptly: the explosion was loud and, judging by the vibrations, not far off.

I turned to the US Army captain who had been waiting with me next to Muthana`s inner watchtower, and saw his lazy smile. He had been watching me.

"Mortar?"

"No, sir," Captain Vic Schairstein said. "That would be an IED" -- an improvised explosive device. "That`s the low pitch. We`ve taken so many mortar rounds by now you can tell by the pitch whether they`re 60s, 82s, whatever. It`s like an outfielder judging a pop fly by the sound of the bat."

My face, puffy from a sleepless night spent on a makeshift canvas cot tracking incessant small-arms fire and intermittent explosions, must have betrayed concern, for here the captain`s smile broadened. "Don`t worry, sir, it`s early," he said. "They haven`t had time to go to the mosque to get all jihaded up yet." Then, as my ride appeared -- two armored BMWs rumbling slowly up the muddy track toward blast walls and barbed wire -- and the captain helped me gather up my flak jacket and my helmet, he offered a final word for the day ahead. "Those VBIEDs" -- vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, military-speak for car bombs -- "have you ever noticed how they all tend to be white? I guess that`s for purity. Anyway, you might keep that in mind."

The sun was turning orange now, the sky pale gray, and the gathering light on Baghdad`s streets revealed no cars, pure white or otherwise. Driving slowly through the monumental avenues and great squares we saw... nothing: no cars, no people, no dogs. Nothing moved. It was as if every living thing had been felled by a sudden and lethal plague.

Until we noticed, wrapped about a distant bridge, a glittering necklace of barbed wire; within it a clutter of tan American armor and, among the humvees and blast barriers and tank traps, a sudden burst of movement. What was happening? We slowed and squinted, and in a moment realized with a start that we were happening: the soldiers had seen us --four or five assault rifles were leveled at us and the big gun of one of the humvees was swinging to. Arms flailed in the air; mouths opened and closed; they were shouting, though we could hear no words. A soldier sprinting forward, rifle pointed at us in his right hand, held up a clear signal with his left: we were not to move.

Three or four minutes passed; we were scrutinized through binoculars, telescopic sights. We kept our eyes forward and our hands visible and waited. Up ahead now, at the bridge checkpoint, I saw the soldier motion with his rifle: come forward -- but slowly, slowly. We crept forward and then about two hundred yards from the checkpoint we were halted once more and with his rifle the soldier motioned the driver from the car.

Our Iraqi driver, who worked for The New York Times, glanced back at me. He was to have collected me at Muthana the night before but, in the gathering darkness and the imminent curfew, American soldiers had stopped him. "When I started to get out of the car they fired over my head," he told me. "The soldier ordered me to kneel on the ground and then to walk to him on my knees with my hands on my head. Then he rested his gun barrel here"--he touched his temple--"and said, ‘They`re going to search the car. If anything happens, the first thing I do is shoot you.`"

Slowly, carefully, our driver opened the door and stepped out; hands on head, he advanced slowly toward the bridge, a sleepwalker in the suddenly bright morning. Several guns were trained on him but most remained fixed on us. No one spoke. When he reached the soldiers he was roughly seized, his shirt pulled up, torso searched, credentials checked; then a full body search. Finally, guns raised, they motioned us out. Arms up, we inched forward; at last we in turn were seized, frisked, credentials checked; led finally into a small barbed-wire enclosure: wait here. The driver was sent back to the car, ordered to bring the vehicle forward--but slowly, slowly. We stood watching as the soldiers encircled the car, opened the hood, trunk, passed a mirror under the chassis, began dismantling the panels in the trunk...

*

Onto the dusty tan city that was Baghdad, dotted with Saddam`s grandiloquent Babylonian modernism -- the minatory office towers, the ceremonial gates and looming monuments -- had been superimposed, in the two years of occupation, an entirely new architecture, a harsh gray city of a distinctive high-brutalist style. Oceans of concrete had flowed into Baghdad, miles of barbed wire had been unwound around and through it, mountains of sand had been poured over it, and everywhere these most basic of elements had been gathered and shaped into the distinctive forms I saw before me. Lining the bridge, Berliners: twelve- or fifteen-foot-high blast barriers of rough concrete named for the Berlin Wall that now marched by the hundreds and thousands along Baghdad`s main streets and avenues, masking vast parts of the city from public view.

Blocking the bridge and surrounding the American armor were Jersey barriers: concrete half-walls that, arranged in the form of "chicanes," or tight S-curve-shaped obstacles, force vehicles to slow and stop. Tank traps: massive iron bars welded together in crisscross forms so that they resemble the jacks a giant child might play with, typically draped, as here, in flamboyant swirls of barbed wire. Hesco barriers: huge square canvas bags reinforced with steel and filled with dirt or cinderblocks, the giant`s version of a sandbag, stacked in their scores and hundreds. Sandbagged bunkers. Steel watchtowers. Iron blast doors. X-ray machines. Magnetometers. Sniffer dogs. And the ubiquitous squads of men, some uniformed but more often not, armed with 9 mms and AK-47s and the clear willingness to fire first and ask questions afterward.

A year before the concrete elements of this new architecture had encircled the ministries, the public buildings, the military bases, and of course the hotels. Now, under the pressure of hundreds of suicide bombings and kidnappings, they had metastasized, acquiring extra layers and additional cordons, and moved in force into residential neighborhoods, surrounding the homes of government workers and politicians and businessmen and finally doctors and lawyers and anyone of any means or power, anyone who might conceivably, for reasons political or financial, be targeted for assassination or kidnapping.

So pervasively had this new rough concrete and steel world imposed itself that one evening in the well-to-do district of Mansour, my driver, bewildered by the proliferating roadblocks and checkpoints and chicanes, found himself unable to find a way out of a neighborhood he had known well for decades but that had now become something alien and unfamiliar, a kind of gray mirror-maze of security. In barely two years the capital on which Saddam had lavished such money and attention had been entirely recast, by architects at least as megalomaniacal: the insurgents and their suicide bombers, and the security experts, military and civilian, who took on the task of thwarting them. Together the bombers and their adversaries had built this city, one bomb at a time -- hundreds of bombs since the occupation began, killing at least two thousand people. And on Election Day it remained a work in progress.[2]

*

The half-dozen checkpoints at which we were stopped, the barbed-wire pen in which I now stood--all of this was the insurgents` doing; for they had let it be known, in the couple of weeks before Election Day, that "150 car bombs and 250 suicide attackers are prepared to strike in coming days." Asked at a "Green Zone" news conference about these reports, which CNN had attributed to "intelligence sources" cited by "a top Iraqi police official,"[3] the interior minister of the interim government remarked that "the insurgents were trying to increase talks and rumors on the streets." Indeed, and they had succeeded; now the Americans were responding.

Fifteen months before, on the second day of what came to be known as the Ramadan Offensive, when insurgents in the space of forty-five minutes struck Red Cross headquarters and several police stations with suicide car bombs, I had an appointment with a top American intelligence officer. When I finally arrived at the meeting, a bit late and somewhat disheveled -- I had happened to be near the Red Cross when the car bomber struck[4] -- I remarked that such attacks were probably impossible to prevent. You`re quite wrong in that, the officer had responded sharply:

We could stop these things entirely if we were willing to do what was necessary. We could stop car bombers if we stopped all driving. But that would be inconsistent with another, overriding imperative --letting Iraqis live a reasonably normal life. That would prevent the return to normalcy that we need to have. Politically at least, we can`t take those steps. Which means that in the end these things are not a military problem, they are a political problem. We could stop them but to do it, we would have to shut the place down.

On Election Day, the political imperatives were different. In the months before, the Americans had increased the number of US troops in the country by 20,000 and had mounted a series of aggressive offensive operations against the insurgency that had reduced Fallujah to near rubble, had sent insurgents in other cities of the Sunni heartland underground, and had filled to capacity Abu Ghraib and the other military prisons in the country with suspected AIFs (or "anti-Iraqi forces," as the Americans called the insurgents).[5]

At the checkpoint, as US Army helicopters passed low overhead, the soldiers finished searching the car and brought us out from behind the barbed wire, searched us again more thoroughly, then let us put our bags back in the car and allowed us to depart. I asked the military`s translator -- his face covered by a brown knit ski mask, to prevent insurgents retaliating against him or his family -- whether he would vote that day; he said nothing. "Speaking for this sector, sir," his sergeant put in quickly, "the polling sites are real secure. The question is whether people will come out of their houses and vote. If they want to, it`s real secure." He gestured all around him. "No way a car bomb gets through this." On Election Day, there would be no "vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices" for there would be no vehicles. On Election Day the American military in Iraq had shut the place down.[6]

2.

And so, on Election Day, we walked. We had stopped at the bureau after the long drive across Baghdad -- watched a leader of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq tell the Green Zone television cameras, "We plead with Iraqi citizens to take the risk, if they still consider it a risk, to perform their duty..." -- and then, with the car useless, we set out on foot. We came out slowly, hesitantly into the mid-morning, a couple of security people walking ahead, passed through a checkpoint or two, then advanced down the middle of the nearly deserted main avenue. It was odd, after the armored cars and flak jackets and helmets, to be walking on the street: I felt unnaturally light, but also vulnerable, as if I had escaped from captivity and soon would be recaptured. The shift in point of view -- from behind the walls of the barricaded hotel or the armored car to the strangely deserted streets -- was jarring.

Three weeks after Election Day, in a newspaper report of a series of attacks on February 19, an image caught my eye:

In a fifth suicide attack, a suicide bomber rode a bicycle into a tent full of mourners at a funeral in southwest Baghdad, killing at least three people and wounding 55. Afterward, from a high building nearby, it could be seen that parts of human bodies below had been gathered together in piles.[7]

What struck me about this was not the macabre innovation (the use of a bicycle on the Shiite holiday of Ashura, when cars would be suspect); nor the peculiar dimness of the bomber, who, unlike his four somewhat abler colleagues, managed to strike the wrong target. ("He was an idiot," a housewife wounded in the attack told a reporter. "It was a Sunni funeral, not a Shiite one.") It was rather the point of view, which offers the reader a picture of the aftermath "from a high building nearby" from which one can discern "parts of human bodies below...gathered together in piles." The image is striking, grotesque; but the point of view is lofty, aerial -- distant.

Increasingly during the past year the newspaper reader and especially the television viewer has been looking at the great complicated tableau of occupied Iraq through a highly constricted lens, as if trying to examine an enormous history painting by squinting through a straw. For more than a year insurgents have targeted foreigners for assassination and especially for kidnapping -- at last count, 189 "foreign nationals" had been kidnapped in Iraq, and thirty-three of them had been killed.[8] What began as acts of political terror, complete with televised pleas on the part of the victim and in a few cases televised beheadings, quickly devolved into a cash business, in which criminal gangs, spotting a foreigner, seize him or her as a "target of opportunity" and market their prize to insurgent groups, who televise pictures of their acquisition and can earn, when they like, a substantial amount of cash in exchange for release. ("You must realize," a Jordanian security expert told me in Amman, "that as a foreigner the moment you enter Iraq now, you are transformed from human being into commodity -- a commodity worth half a million to a million dollars.")

As suicide bombers and kidnappers created the new concrete city, they have driven reporters off the streets, away from the restaurants and shops, away from "ordinary Iraqis," forcing them to sheath themselves in flak jackets and helmets, move in armored cars, and finally take refuge behind blast walls and barbed wire and armed guards in fortress-like hotels. Television reporters, politically the most important journalists on the ground-- for they supply information, and above all images, to by far the largest number of people -- are in practical terms the most vulnerable; their large "footprint" -- the cameras and other equipment they carry, the crews they bring to carry it -- makes them most conspicuous, and thus most restricted.

The correspondent you watch signing off his nightly report from the war zone with his name, network, and dateline "Baghdad" is usually speaking from the grounds or the roof of a fully guarded, barricaded hotel -- a virtual high-rise bunker -- and may not have ventured out of that hotel all day, having spent his time telephoning, reading the wires, and scrutinizing footage from Iraqi "stringers" who have been out on the street. When he does leave the hotel it will be in an armored car, surrounded by armed security guards, and very likely the destination will be a news conference or briefing or arranged interview in the vast American-ruled bunker known as "the Green Zone." Sorties beyond Baghdad, or even to "hot" neighborhoods within the capital, can usually be undertaken only by "embedding" with American troops. It is a bizarre, dispiriting way to work, this practice of "hotel journalism,"[9] producing not only a highly constrained picture of the country and its politics but, on the part of the journalist, constant fear, anxiety, and ultimately intense frustration. "I am getting out of here, getting out soon," one network correspondent told me. When I asked why -- for American foreign correspondents Iraq is, after all, the most important story going -- he shrugged: "It`s no longer honest work."

*

All of this made Election Day, thanks to the massive security presence on the street, a day of liberation for the foreign press. Journalists were set free. We walked, and looked, flinching now and again at the sound of mortars; and pretty soon -- by now it was mid-morning -- we began to see people, first one or two here and there, and eventually a group of three blue-shirted policemen walking abreast, all holding up purple fingers. They were jolly, laughing, giddy in the near-deserted street. Above the din of a couple of Apache helicopters passing overhead, they gladly told us their votes: one for Iyad Allawi, the present interim prime minister (whose face could be seen staring out from posters on many of the walls and concrete barriers around us, vowing "Strong Leadership, A Safe Country"); one for a list sympathetic to Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite rebel (who, officially, was boycotting the vote), and one for List 169, the great Shiite coalition gathered together under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (whose face, though he supposedly favored no particular list, was similarly ubiquitous on the 169 posters).

A few hundred yards down the street we came upon a barrier manned by a handful of Iraqi policemen and plainclothes security men. A cop wearing a ski mask gave me my seventh or eighth body search of the day, checked our credentials, wrote something down, took our cell phones, and finally, after some low-voiced discussion among the police, waved us by the concrete barrier. We walked down a short path, turned into a small courtyard, and were startled to see revealed...The Spectacle.

Filling the few hundred or so square yards of the courtyard of this small neighborhood school were perhaps a couple of hundred Iraqis -- old men in threadbare suits, women in traditional abeyas, young men in tracksuits and sweatshirts -- gathered together in five or six lines, talking in low voices, flinching at the occasional explosion, looking about somewhat self-consciously, but all waiting patiently to vote. I hesitated a moment. After all the Election Day images of mass carnage that had filled our heads during the last week, conveyed in rumors and threats and grim questions at news conferences, this gathering of people -- the sheer public vulnerability of them -- seemed shocking. We plunged in among them.

Vox populi, or, in journalese, vox pops: man-on-the-street interviews: in today`s Iraq, a rare, almost unheard-of pleasure. Such journalistic toe-dippings are generally attempts, among other things, to find "the great quote" -- the person who manages to articulate, in his or her own way, the broader narrative, the plotline already determined. Such exercises are thus simultaneously a matter of evidence gathering and of analytic confirmation. On this day we wanted answers to questions which had to do, at bottom, with why these Iraqis had risked their lives to come out to vote: our questions, that is, fit in with the central narrative about the war, and especially about why America had fought it, what had brought America to Iraq in the first place. Before us, after months of explosions and suicide bombings and dead soldiers and civilians, stood people who might seem the perfect symbols of liberation, who embodied the war`s purpose in a single image: Iraqis waiting to express their voices in an exercise of democratic will. We needed now the image to speak.

*

For the most part, though, they didn`t seem to want to cooperate. Why are you here, I asked a young man wearing a Ray`s Pool Hall shirt. "Why?" He looked surprised. "To vote." But why, why did you come? "We are a normal people, an independent people. We want to be like other people, to vote. We need security, stability -- that`s all." He volunteered nothing about Saddam, about the war, the Americans, the occupation; when asked he seemed reluctant, like many of his neighbors in line, to discuss them.

A young woman, wearing a beautiful sea-green abeya, asked by a colleague about Saddam, grew annoyed. "No, this is not about Saddam. Forget Saddam. I am an engineer and I have no job. Neither does my husband." Then, a bit exasperated, "We want a normal country."

I looked behind her: on the low roof of the school building, a policeman stood watching with his AK-47. We asked an old man, wearing a checked kaffiyeh and a white beard, what he expected from the elections. He too seemed reluctant. "I already talked to the press," he grumbled. But what did he hope to accomplish by voting? He thought a moment. "Now we`ll have good officials. Now we`ll talk to them and they`ll talk to us. Before they just hit you, beat you, punished you." He was eighty-three, had lived, he said, under eight governments. "The monarchy was the best. There was stability then."

Among these mostly middle-class people I heard this thought expressed again and again: the desperate need for security, for stability -- for normalcy. Several, when I asked why they had come out to vote, looked at me with varying degrees of surprise or condescension and said, "So we will have a government. Look around, we need a government." Some, when I asked whom they`d voted for, refused, smiling: this is democracy -- secret ballot.

Others, when asked several times, offered the names of candidates -- but only the famous ones, those leaders of the main lists, for of course the "security situation" -- the bombing, the kidnappings, the beheadings -- had prevented any public campaign; there had been no rallies, no door-to-door canvassing for votes, no chance even to learn who was running; indeed, many of the candidate lists were, in effect, secret. Only the names of the party leaders were widely known, Iyad Allawi, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim Jaafari, and a few others, all of them among the exiles returning from London and Washington and Tehran, who had dominated the American-appointed governing bodies since the fall of Saddam.

It seemed like a country fair, this gathering, a kind of journalistic grand buffet: the beautiful women in their traditional dress, young men in T-shirts and sweatpants, old men in their kaffiyehs. We met engineers and builders and schoolteachers, an elegant former government minister, and "one of the last eight Jews in Baghdad." (This last man, who would give his name only as Samir, told me he could be certain of his exalted status because "I know all the other ones.") After the "hotel journalism" and all the fear, it was a delight to move among this crowd. And yet, as a political matter, these people did not offer the desired symbolic justifications, the capstone in the narrative building already under construction that day. What would be the verbal equivalent for the images that already were dominating the world`s television screens: the lines of people, the purple fingers, the explosions in the background which made the voters flinch but not waver? We needed someone to say: Thank heaven Saddam has gone, thank heaven the Americans came, thank you for giving us democracy. And no one -- at least here in this voting place in Baghdad -- seemed to want to say it.

*

My favorite voter that morning was the former minister, Dr. Ahmed Dujaily--an elegant eighty-year-old engineer wearing a traditional sidari on his head and a beautifully tailored blue pin-striped suit--who had served as minister of agricultural reform in 1966 and 1967 ("the last brief time of good government") and offered, after we complimented him on his suit ("Ah yes"--smiling, gazing down at himself --"I wear this for weddings, parties... elections also"), in an English bespeaking a fine English education, what I took to be the most enlightening dialogue of the day:

So, we began, for whom had he voted?

"In fact, I voted for List 169..." -- the so-called Sistani List.

That is the Shiite List? You are Shiite?

"Yes, I am Shiite but I am Iraqi before anything. Religion is for myself. This election is for Iraq."

And why are you voting?

"I feel I must give service to my country and I voted for these people, Abd al-Hakim and Jaafari, because I trust them...."

And how do you feel about Saddam? a colleague put in.

"Well...of course, I am happy the Saddam regime is abolished. He is not human, he is an animal...."

Who abolished it?

"Who? Why, he did."

Well (trying another tack, and gesturing upward, at the buzzing Blackhawks), those helicopters, who are they?

"They are the Americans."

Yes, and are they good or bad?

"Good or bad?" A puzzled pause. "Not good or bad. They are the Americans."

No, no, what I wanted to ask...

He knew, of course, what we wanted to ask. He smiled and tried to be helpful. "Listen, we thank Americans for destroying the regime of Saddam but they did many things that were not required of the country. They made many, many mistakes here. I know what the Americans want." He smiled; he was matter-of-fact. "They want military bases. They want to dominate the new regime. They want the oil."

"Saddam was a criminal, a lot of people were killed. Now these others" -- he gestured in the vague direction of the most recent explosion; he meant the insurgents -- "they are bombing one place, another place. This doesn`t help, this does nothing for the country." Then, a bit of history -- from the 1920s but clearly relevant to him today: "When the British kicked out the Turks, the Shia, you know, fought the British also. But the Sunnis stuck with the British, and the British took those who stuck with them and formed a government."

Now, clearly, it was the Sunnis who were fighting, and the Shiites who were "sticking with" the occupying power, this time the Americans. "But the elections should be carried forward, whether the Americans like the results or not," he said. "This is determined by the people. We want an independent country." As for the Americans, "when they came people were happy but they made many, many mistakes in the occupation. After all these mistakes, now they will not leave. They will have their military headquarters established in Iraq and when they leave I do not know. The bases, the oil... And of course" -- he gestured at the voters, grinned, and, with a philosophical roll of his eyes, said -- "they are using Iraq for propaganda for their own elections: ‘Democracy and the Republicans.`"

3.

It was after one when we returned to the bureau to find the television pictures -- scores of Iraqis in line, waving their purple fingers, smiling in incomparably powerful images of democracy -- already making their way over the airwaves to greet the early risers in London, New York, and Washington. The voices over the images were enthusiastic, almost breathless, informing the viewer that officially 72 percent of Iraqis had turned out at the polls, a dramatic but mysterious number that within the hour would be transformed into "probably more than 80 percent" -- mysterious because, as I realized after a moment, there was simply no way, physically, to have arrived at such a figure.

Television correspondents in Baquba and at other locations in the ravaged "Sunni Triangle" were reporting, with great excitement, heavy turnouts -- "The Sunnis are voting, the Sunnis are voting" -- another piece of news which seemed unlikely and turned out, sadly, to be as much wishful thinking as the turnout figures themselves. The numbers were withdrawn that evening -- the spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq confessing that the 72 and 80 percent figures, repeated by on-air correspondents all day and run continuously as a crawl on CNN and other networks, had in fact been based on "estimated voter flow to the polls." But by that time they had done their work; the numbers, the breathless reports, all were needed to match the pictures that alone would determine that day`s story.

A voice from the Muthana Air Base a few hours before floated into my mind. It belonged to Captain Aaron Kalloch, an operations officer, who at the end of a long interview, with both of us growing tired, had spoken about a suicide car bomb attack the week before, a high-profile attempt on the headquarters and, presumably, on the life of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. "Boom! Remember that, the other day, that IED attack in Kindi Traffic Circle." He leaned forward and nearly shouted, as he gave his mocking version of the television broadcaster: "Boom!! Headlines on CNN: Chaos in Baghdad! Prime minister nearly assassinated! Boom!"

He leaned back in his chair. "Well, was it? Was it ‘chaos in Baghdad`? I mean, let`s take a look at that attack for a moment. What happened? The guy didn`t get close to Allawi`s headquarters. Allawi wasn`t even there. The guy slightly wounded two people. And the guy killed...himself! I mean, he killed himself! That was it! And that was the lead story of the day on CNN.

I ask you, should it have been?" He paused and glared at me, then answered his own question. "Nothing happened! Allawi was perfectly safe. The guy killed himself.... Nothing happened -- except that they scored an IO victory, and that stuff really pisses me off!" IO was military for "information operation" -- an event intended to turn the vital political war at the heart of any insurgency in one`s favor.

"The simple fact is that how things are perceived here is almost as important as how things actually are. And here IO is everything. Insurgency is relatively easy for the enemy because he`s got his own personal international IO platform...." He paused, waited.

And what is that?

"The US media!" he said. He paused again. "The fact is, whoever wins the IO battle here, wins. And this thing tomorrow, this is the event. If Iraqis come out to the polls, if people vote... I mean, there will be violence but the question is how effective that violence will be. If the AIF" -- anti-Iraqi forces -- "come after this -- and they will, they have to -- and people do vote, then that is it. They are done, it`s over. They may last one or two more years but they`ve lost. And they know it. And that`s the IO. Whoever wins the IO battle here, wins."

*

At the polling place I had admired the voters and their strangely complicated response to what it was they were doing. But I realized that "the IO" was not there but here before me now, on the television set, with the lines of voters and their smiles and purple fingers and the heavy breathing about "more than 80 percent" turnout. This was the IO. There was indeed violence, as Captain Kalloch had said-- that day would see in fact nine suicide bombings and perhaps fifty dead and its 260 insurgent attacks were the highest number of any single day of the occupation.[10] But that violence would not interfere with the IO, for that was established by the images early that day, and the violence, however pervasive, would not get on television. And it would not get on television in part because Iraq was effectively locked down -- the absence of vehicles meant explosions were limited to the size of a bomb that could be carried by a man on foot -- and the mobility of journalists was severely restricted (we could only see as many polling places as we could reach on foot, in my case two) and in part because of well-thought-out "IO rules" -- the most effective one being, in retrospect, that cameras, still and video, were admitted only into five predetermined and highly protected polling places.

I visited one of these in the afternoon, in the heavily Shia commercial neighborhood of Karrada, and found there a level of security far above that of the little school: one had to pass through cordons of US military, Iraqi military, Iraqi police, and finally Electoral Commission security. Four layers of security; each checked credentials and identification and the first three performed searches. There would be no suicide bombing before the television cameras.

*

During the more than two years since the Iraq war began Americans have seen on their television screens its four major turning points: the fall of Baghdad, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the "transfer of authority" to the interim Allawi government, and now the Iraq elections. Each has been highly successful as an example of the management of images -- the toppling of Saddam`s statue, the intrusive examination of the unkempt former dictator`s mouth and beard, the handing of documents of sovereignty from coalition leader L. Paul Bremer to Iraqi leader Iyad Allawi, the voters happily waving their purple fingers -- and each image has powerfully affirmed the broader story of what American leaders promised citizens the Iraq war would be. They promised a war of liberation to unseat a brutal dictator, rid him of his weapons of mass destruction, and free his imprisoned people, who would respond with gratitude and friendship, allowing American troops to return very quickly home.

With the exception of the failure to find WMDs, the images have fit so cleanly into the original narrative of the war that they could almost have been designed at the time the war was being planned. And because these images fit so closely with the story of what Americans were told the war would be, they have welcomed each of them with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, after the images faded, the events on the ground that followed refused to fit that original narrative. In this the January 30 election has been no exception.

*

As I write, two months have passed since Iraqis went to the polls and voted -- 58 percent of those who were registered, according to official figures, though likely fewer than half of those eligible.[11] No government has taken office, the national assembly elected in January still hasn`t chosen a prime minister, and the interim administration of Iyad Allawi has long since entered a state of drift, with ministries frozen in place, unable to issue orders or carry out policies. And, as General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, told CNN on March 27, "the longer we have a delay in the formation of an Iraqi government, the more uncertainty there will be. The more uncertainty, the greater chance for escalated violence." Though as an information operation, the elections had been an enormous success -- particularly in the United States, where the images reinvigorated the conviction, at least for a time, that the war made sense -- as a political fact in Iraq the results of the election were much more mixed.

"The real problem is the story here can`t be shown in images," said my friend, the television correspondent who, disgusted with "hotel journalism," left Baghdad before the election. "You can`t show the fear here with a television picture. You can`t show the atmosphere of paranoia. The story escapes the images -- the tools -- that we have to tell it." On Election Day, for example, the images could show clearly the beautiful, intricate ballot, with its hundred and ten-odd parties and coalitions -- but not the fact that there were really only three choices, each with enormous sources of money: the Kurdish list, with its funding from the Kurdish autonomous government, in the north; the Shiite list, with its image of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and its funding from the mosques in the south and the Iranians across the border; and the Allawi list, with its control of the interim government and its access to that government`s money and television. On Election Day, Kurds voted for the Kurdish list, Shiites voted for the Shiite list, a relative handful, about 12 percent, voted for the Allawi list -- and the Sunnis made their presence known by not voting at all. The election, in effect, was an ethnic census.

In the ideal vision of a post-Saddam Iraq, the people would have come out to bless the new political dispensation, in which the Shiites assume their rightful place as the majority party and the Kurds and especially the Sunnis, the erstwhile elite who throughout its modern history had ruled Iraq, take their place as proud, active, and politically vital minorities. This is not what happened on January 30. Shiites won a majority, but not enough under the peculiar rules imposed by the occupation to form a government. Kurds, turning out in enormous numbers for their single list, were overrepresented in the new assembly and gained, in effect, a veto over who would form the new government. And finally, little more than one in ten Iraqis came out and voted for Allawi, dashing American hopes that he could remain in power.

*

Television cameras, which could only show what was before them in the polling places, could not show the day`s critical actors, the Sunnis, who did not appear. The real story on Election Day was that the Sunnis didn`t vote. If the election was to mark the point from which Iraqis would settle their differences through politics and not through violence, it failed; for those responsible for the insurgency -- not only those planting suicide bombs but those running the organizations responsible for them and the leaders of the community that has shown itself sympathetic enough to the insurgents` cause to shelter them -- did not take part. The political burden of the elections was to bring those who felt frightened or alienated by the new dispensation into the political process, so they could express their opposition through politics and not through violence; the task, that is, was to attract Sunnis to the polls and thereby to isolate the extremists. And in this, partly because of an electoral system that the Sunnis felt, with some reason, was unfairly stacked against them, the election failed.

The images could not show, finally, the peculiar system of government under which those elected are now struggling to function -- a system in effect imposed by the American occupation in the interim constitution, known as the "transitional administrative law." That system demands, among other things, that the national assembly bring together two thirds of its votes to confirm a government, a requirement found in no other parliamentary system in the world. That requirement is an artifact of the larger conundrum of Iraqi politics: it was demanded by America`s critical Iraqi ally, the Kurds, who are deeply ambivalent about their connection to and role in an Iraqi state dominated by Shiites, and it was supported by the Americans. In effect the two-thirds requirement, and the political impasse it has fostered, is a legacy of the Americans` reluctance to confront the logical implication of their war to unseat Saddam Hussein and his Sunni elite: that there will come to power in Iraq a government dominated by the Shia, powerfully influenced by Islamic law and favorably inclined toward the United States` foremost enemy in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As I will write in a further article, these facts are vital to comprehending the dramatic difference between the encouraging images we are shown and the stubborn and bloody reality on the ground.

--March 31, 2005

[This is the first of two articles.]

1. See Steven Metz, "Relearning Counterinsurgency," a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute, January 10, 2005. I have slightly edited the language from the rough transcript.

2. See Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Iraq, Brookings Institution, March 25, 2005 (updated). The index gives a total of 220 "mass casualty bombings" of which 136 "reported so far were suicide bombings." The death toll from these "mass casualty bombings," including suicide bombings, Brookings estimates at 2,290, with 5,059 wounded. These numbers are certainly on the low side, though estimates vary a good deal.

3. See "Sources Say Hundreds of Iraq Attacks Planned," CNN, January 20, 2005.

4. See my "Delusions in Baghdad," The New York Review, December 12, 2003.

5. See Edward Wong, "American Jails in Iraq Bursting with Detainees," The New York Times, March 4, 2005.

6. "Never have elections been held under such difficult conditions, with a level of violence so high that the country had to be locked down for several days in order for the vote to be held." See Marina Ottaway, "Iraq: Without Consensus, Democracy Is Not the Answer," Policy Brief, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 2005.

7. See Dexter Filkins, "On Bus, Bicycle and Foot, Suicide Bombers Aim at a Shiite Holy Day," The New York Times, February 20, 2005.

8. See Iraq Index, p. 12. The real wave of kidnappings of foreign nationals began in April 2004, when forty-three were seized.

9. See especially Robert Fisk, "Curbs Leaving Big Holes in Reporting about Iraq," The Independent, January 17, 2005.

10. See John F. Burns, "US Shouldn`t Cut Force Soon, Iraqi Leaders Say," The New York Times, February 2, 2005.

11. The percentage, much reduced from election-day estimates of 72 to 80 percent, remains "soft," for it is unclear precisely how many Iraqis are registered to vote, and what percentage the Iraqis who are registered represents of those eligible. In any event it seems likely that fewer than half of those Iraqis eligible to vote did so. See Greg Mitchell, "Update: Officials Back Away from Early Estimates of Iraqi Vote Turnout," The Washington Post, February 1, 2005.

Mark Danner, a longtime New Yorker Staff writer, is Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and Henry R. Luce Professor at Bard College. His most recent book is Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, which collects his pieces on torture and Iraq in these pages. His work can be found at markdanner.com

This article appears in The New York Review of Books, April 28, 2005


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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/

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Protests Called for Saturday Against US Troop Presence

Wire services and Arab NewsSaturday, April 09, 2005

Protests Called for Saturday Against US Troop Presence

[urlWire services and Arab News]http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=61819&d=9&m=4&y=2005[/url] report:

"In the main southern city of Basra, three masked men shot dead an officer in the new Iraqi Army as he was dining Thursday, an army spokesman said. The same night, four US soldiers were wounded in the northern town of Shurgat when insurgents hurled a hand grenade at them, a US military statement said. Another US military statement yesterday said a US Marine died two days ago in a vehicle accident during combat operations in the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah, west of the capital. Also, a US soldier was killed by a bomb in northern Iraq yesterday, the US Army said. The soldier was killed around noon when a homemade bomb exploded near Hawijah, in Kirkuk province, a statement said without providing further details.



[urlNewly installed Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari]http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=61819&d=9&m=4&y=2005[/url] said Friday that Iraq needed technocrats and nationalists in high office. According to another official from the United Iraqi Alliance, Jawad al-Maliki, the Shiite religious parties will get the ministries of finance, petroleum, and interior. (The Interior ministry is like the US Homeland Security plus FBI, i.e. domestic security). The Sunni Arabs will be given the defense ministry, but ex-Baathists will be purged from it. The Kurds had badly wanted the petroleum ministry, but appeared to have lost out and have been offered the ministry of planning as a consolation prize.

[urlShiite religious nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr]http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=653961[/url] and some Sunni clerics have called for a demonstration at Firdaws Square in downtown Baghdad for Saturday against the continued presence of US troops in Iraq 2 years after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003.

As Sadrist clerics traveled Friday from the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala up to Baghdad, they came under sniper attack just south of Baghdad, and three were killed. Sunni guerrillas have targeted many Shiites in the region south of Baghdad.

posted by Juan @ [url4/9/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/protests-called-for-saturday-against.html[/url]

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The Independent
At last, it is time to commemorate the end of one Middle East conflict
Saturday, 9th April 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=627…


The vast sea of young Lebanese who were educated abroad during the conflict will not, I suspect, tolerate another civil war

How on earth do you celebrate a civil war? This is no idle question because in Beirut, the Lebanese - with remarkable candour but not a little trepidation - are preparing to remember that most terrible of conflicts in their lives, one which killed 150,000 and whose commemoration next week was originally in the hands of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri - who was himself assassinated on 14 February. Is this something which should be contemplated? Is this the moment - when all Lebanon waits for a Syrian military withdrawal and when the Hizbollah militia, itself a creature of that war, is being ordered to disarm by the United Nations - to remember the tide of blood which drowned so many innocents between 1975 and 1990?

On reflection, I think it probably is. The Lebanese have spent the past 15 years in a political coma, refusing to acknowledge their violent past lest the ghosts arise from their mass graves and return to stir the embers of sectarianism and mutual suffering. "Whatever you do, don’t mention the war" had a special place in a country whose people stubbornly refused to learn the lessons of their fratricidal slaughter.

For almost 10 years, my own book on the civil war was banned by Lebanon’s censors. Even Hariri himself told me he was powerless to put it back into the shops - ironically, it was a pro-Syrian security official whose resignation the Lebanese opposition is now demanding who lifted the ban last year - and none of Lebanon’s television stations would touch the war. It remained the unspoken cancer in Lebanese society, the malaise which all feared might return to poison their lives.

There clearly was a need to understand how the conflict destroyed the old Lebanon. When al-Jazeera broadcast from Qatar a 12-part documentary about the war, the seaside Corniche outside my home in Beirut would empty of strollers every Thursday night; restaurants would close their doors. Everyone wanted to watch their own torment. So, I suppose, did I.

Everyone I knew lost friends in those awful 15 years - I lost some very dear friends of my own. One was blown up in the US embassy on his first day of work in 1983; another was murdered with an ice-pick. One, a young woman, was killed by a shell in a shopping street. The brother of a colleague - a young man who helped to maintain my telex lines during the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut - was shot in the head when he accidentally drove past a gun battle. He died a few days later.

And so this 13 April, the centre of Beirut is to be filled with tens of thousands of Lebanese for a day of "unity and memory". There will be art exhibitions, concerts, photo exhibitions, a running and cycling marathon. Hariri’s sister Bahia will be staging the events which her murdered brother had planned. Nora Jumblatt, the glorious wife of the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt - one of the warlords of those ghastly days - will be organising the musical concerts.

The original 13 April - in 1975 - marked the day when Phalangist gunmen ambushed a busload of Palestinians in Beirut. The bus still exists, the bullet holes still punctured through its rusting skin, but it will be left to rot in the field outside Nabatea where it lies to this day. The only bullet holes visible to the crowds next week will be the ones deliberately preserved in the statue of Lebanon’s 1915 independence leaders, who were hanged in Martyrs Square, where a "garden of forgiveness" connects a church and a mosque and where Hariri’s body now rests, along with his murdered bodyguards. The square itself was the front line for the entire war. Who knows how many ghosts still haunt its hundreds of square metres?

Not far to the east is the infamous "Ring" highway where Muslim and Christian gunmen stopped all traffic in 1975 and walked down the rows of stalled cars with knives, calmly slitting the throats of families of the wrong religion. Eight Christians had been found murdered outside the electricity headquarters and Bashir Gemayel directed that 80 Muslims must pay with their lives. The militias kept on multiplying the figures. When you are in a war, you feel it will never end. I felt like that, gradually coming to believe - like the Lebanese - that war was somehow a natural state of affairs.

And, like all wars, it acquired a kind of momentum de la folie. The Israelis invaded, twice; the American Marines came and were suicide-bombed in their base at the airport. So were the French. The United Nations arrived in 1978 with Dutch soldiers and more French soldiers and Irish soldiers and Norwegian soldiers and Fijians and Nepalese and Ghanaians and Finns. Everyone, it seemed, washed up in Lebanon to be bombed and sniped at. The Palestinians were slowly drawn into the war and suffered massacre after massacre at the hands of their enemies (who often turned out to be just about everybody).

That the conflict was really between Christian Maronites and the rest somehow disappeared from the narrative. It was everyone else’s fault. Not the Lebanese. Never the Lebanese. For years, they called the war hawadess, the "events". The conflict was then called the "War of the Other" - of the foreigners, not of the Lebanese who were actually doing the killing.

A taxi driver who gave me a lift several years ago turned to me as we were driving through the streets and said: "Mr Robert, you are very lucky." And he meant that I - like him - had survived the war. I remember the last day. The Syrians had bombed General Michel Aoun out of his palace at Baabda - in those days, the Americans were keen on Syrian domination of Lebanon because they wanted the soldiers of Damascus to face off Saddam’s army of occupation in Kuwait - and I was walking behind tanks towards the Christian hills.

Shells came crashing down around us and my companion shouted that we were going to die. And I shouted back to her that we mustn’t die, that this was the last day of the war, that it would really now end. And when we got to Baabda, there were corpses and many people lying with terrible wounds, many in tears. And I remember how we, too, broke down and cried with the immense relief of living through the day and knowing that we would live tomorrow and the day after that and next week and next year.

But the silences remained, the constant fear that it could all reignite. No one would open the mass graves in case more blood was poured into them. It was in this sombre, ruined land that Hariri started to rebuild Beirut. It will be his new Beirut which will host next week’s brave festivities, its smart shops and stores and restaurants and bars - despite Hariri’s murder and the continuing crisis and the dark bombers who are still trying to re-provoke the civil war.

That Lebanon’s war did not restart with Hariri’s murder is a sign of the people’s maturity and of their wisdom, especially the vast sea of young Lebanese who were educated abroad during the conflict and who do not - and, I suspect, will not - tolerate another civil war. And so I think the Lebanese are right to confront their demons next week. Let them celebrate. To hell with the ghosts.

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[urlRichard Cohen, Washington Post#27599]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32733-2005Apr6.html[/url]

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washingtonpost.com
Sadr Supporters Demand U.S. Pull Out From Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39331-2005Apr…

By Antonio Castaneda
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, April 9, 2005; 7:37 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Tens of thousands of Shiites marked the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad with a protest against the American military presence at the square where Iraqis and U.S. troops toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein two years ago.

The protesters back Muqtada Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric whose militia led uprisings against U.S. troops last year, and their large numbers reflected frustration both with the U.S. government and anger toward the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.

"This huge gathering shows that the Iraqi people have the strength and faith to protect their country and liberate it from the occupiers," said Ahmed Abed, a 26-year-old who sells spare car parts.

U.S. officials, who are slowly handing security to Iraqi forces, have refused to set a timetable for withdrawal, saying the troops will stay until Iraqi forces are able to secure the country.

The protesters filled Firdos Square and spilled onto nearby avenues, waving Iraqi flags. Mimicking the famous images of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis pulling down a statue of Saddam as Baghdad fell, protesters toppled effigies of President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Saddam -- all dressed like Iraqi prisoners in red jumpsuits. Other effigies of Bush and Saddam were burned.

"Force the occupation to leave from our country," one banner read in English.

The Shiite protesters also called for the now-jailed Saddam to face justice, and they held up framed photos of Sadr`s father, a prominent cleric executed by Saddam. Mahdi Army militiamen searched people entering the demonstration area as Iraqi policemen stood to the side.

Sadr officials said the cleric did not attend the protest because of security concerns. He has largely stayed close to his home in the holy city of Najaf since a U.S.-led assault on his militia in the city in August 2004.

Sadr has wide support among impoverished and young Shiites but overall fewer followers than Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in the country.

Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq`s 26 million people, and thousands killed by Iraqi forces under Saddam.

Demonstrators swung from a statue said to represent freedom and constructed on the pedestal where Saddam`s statue once stood. They also acted out examples of prison abuse widely reported after photos were released showing U.S. soldiers piling naked inmates in a pyramid at Abu Ghraib prison.

Robed and turbaned Shiite clerics were seen among the crowd.

No violence was reported, although late Friday a senior Sadr official who had arrived from Karbala to take part in the protest was gunned down in the New Baghdad neighborhood. Fadhil al-Shawky died in the attack on his car. Two others were wounded.

U.S. and Iraqi security forces kept a close eye on the march, with U.S. soldiers standing behind blast walls topped with barbed wire and armed soldiers watching from rooftops. The protest was held in the shadow of the Sheraton and Palestine hotels, both of which have been home to foreign journalists and contractors.

Sadr had stayed out of the limelight since leading failed uprisings last year in the southern city of Najaf and in Baghdad`s Sadr City neighborhood. But he has stepped up criticism of the United States in recent weeks, mainly by organizing Saturday`s protest, which fell far short of the 1 million people he hoped would assemble.

Officials organized the demonstration with the Iraqi Interior Ministry`s promise of protection. A group of protesters and police spent all night securing the square. Roads in central Baghdad were closed to traffic as streets filled with people.

Sunni Muslim clerics also called on their followers to protest on the two year anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, but officials in the influential Association of Muslim Scholars refused to say Saturday where or when the protests would take place. Iraq`s Sunni minority was dominant under Saddam and is believed to make up the backbone of the country`s insurgency.

Jalil al-Shemari, a senior Sadr official, said the Sunnis would not be joining in the Shiite rally at Firdos Square.

During his Friday morning sermon in the capital, the head of an influential Sunni group accused coalition forces of "killing the Iraqi people daily."

"We demand that the occupation troops withdraw from Iraq. We don`t want them to do it immediately, but we want them to set a timetable for their withdrawal," said Sheik Harith al-Dahri, whose Association of Muslim Scholars is believed to have ties to Iraq`s insurgents.

Other marches were held across the country to demand that the United States set a timetable for its withdrawal. In the central city of Ramadi, thousands of protestors demonstrated in the al-Sufayaa neighborhood and at Anbar University, demanding that U.S.-led coalition forces set a withdrawal date.

Also Saturday, in the troubled northern city of Mosul, a car bomb detonated near a police patrol, killing at least two policemen and injuring 13 civilians, Dr. Baha al-Deen al-Bakry of the Jumhouri hospital said.

Brig. Gen. Watheq Ali, deputy police chief of the Nineveh province, said the blast was an assassination attempt against him, although he was unhurt. He said a suicide car bomber rammed a car into the rear vehicle in his seven-car police convoy as it was stopped at a traffic light.

© 2005 The Associated Press

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April 7, 2005
Q&A: The Next Steps in Iraq
Brown: Kurdish, Islamic Issues Key Questions for New Iraqi Government
http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=7994
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From the [urlCouncil on Foreign Relations,]http://www.cfr.org/[/url] April 7, 2005

Nathan Brown, an expert on Arab politics, says Iraq`s new government probably won`t make an August 15 deadline for drafting a new constitution. The two thorniest issues to resolve: the degree of Kurdish autonomy and Islam`s influence over national law. Iraq this week named a a Presidency Council and a prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, moves that Brown applauds, but he cautions, "there`s an awful lot more work left to do."

A senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on leave from George Washington University, Brown was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on April 7, 2005.








More than two months since the elections, the Iraqi National Assembly has finally chosen a new interim leadership. What does this signify?

It`s certainly a positive development, but there`s an awful lot more work left to do. They`ve settled some of the basic personnel questions, but it is not clear whether they`ve hammered out agreements on some of the matters of principle that divide them. They`ve made some headway there, but there is still a lot of work to do.

What are the "matters of principle?"

Perhaps the one that`s emerged as the most important in the negotiations has to do with the status of Kurdistan and, related to that, the status of [the city of] Kirkuk. Kurdistan already has some recognition as an autonomous entity within Iraq, but there are basic issues about division of revenue and about integration of Kurdistan into a federal Iraq. There is also the question of the autonomy of the Kurdish militia known as peshmerga

Those things I`m sure kept them busy in negotiations, but it is not clear that they have an agreement. On Kirkuk, it seems they`ve basically decided to postpone the issue. Kirkuk has a mixed population, but it is regarded by the Kurds as part of Kurdistan. According to the Kurdish reading of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), what has to happen is the non-Kurdish populations that moved into the area under Saddam Hussein should be encouraged to move out and the Kurds should be encouraged to move back in. And then the status will be settled. For the non-Kurdish parties, that sounds like, "Give us Kirkuk, and then we`ll negotiate about it."

Kirkuk was at one time a Turkmen city that the Kurds then populated, until they were thrown out by Saddam?

Yes. It`s got a mixed population. The protagonists there are the Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen. The Turkmen feel edged out by the Kurds.

Why is everyone interested in Kirkuk? Is it mostly the nearby oil reserves?

There`s oil, so it`s certainly connected with that. It`s connected perhaps with the viability of an independent Kurdish state. A lot of people think the Kurds are pressing it so heavily because they want to eventually link Kirkuk to an autonomous Kurdistan. If they could keep Kirkuk and control the oil revenue, an independent Kurdistan would be a more viable proposition.

The Turks have an interest in this, too. They`re wary of too much independence for Kurdistan.

Yes. The [Iraqi] Kurdish leadership seems to have decided to downplay its interest in independence for the present. That`s because they don`t have much international support. None of Iraq`s neighbors would be very enthusiastic about that, and it doesn`t seem like they have American support either. What it seems they`re doing is setting up the possibility--not necessarily as an outcome of this constitutional process, but at some point down the road when the international situation is more favorable--that the Kurdish leadership could again raise the option of breaking off from Iraq.

What`s the next issue?

The Kurdish issue was probably the thorniest. Islam is one on which it is clear there is passionate division. It`s much less clear how that debate will break down in practical terms; that is, what changes the various groups want to see. But there is a division between more secularly oriented Iraqis and those who wish to see a much more Islamic coloration to their political future.

How do you think it will play out?

The contest so far has been fought at the level of very general constitutional language for the most part, rather than on the level of detail. Nobody seems to dissent from the position that Islam should have some kind of official standing and some kind of official recognition, so a completely secular state is out of the question. And at the other end of the spectrum, a completely Iranian model under which clerics exercise some rule in day-to-day politics, is off the table as well. But almost anything in between is a possibility. It could be that laws are given a greater Islamic coloration. It could be that clerics, if not ruling day to day, are still consulted in important matters. It could be that you would have, especially in personal-status matters, a reversion to a situation in which religious law--as determined by religious scholars rather than by the state--plays a much greater role.

Prime Minister Jaafari, a Shiite, has been talking about the need to bring Sunnis, Kurds, everybody into the government. Do you think that sentiment will prevail at least for the writing of the constitution?

It has to prevail for the writing of the constitution, because so many people are given so many different points at which they can exercise a veto. It`s a process of virtually enforcing a consensus. So the question is: can a consensus be developed? Without a consensus, the process breaks down. If any three provinces vote against the adoption of the constitution, it is rejected. So, in effect, Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds all have a veto.

That requires a major effort to bring Sunnis into day-to-day politics.

Yes. On a constitutional level, I think that`s a little less difficult than it is with the Kurds, because most of the Sunni demands don`t focus on the content of the constitution. They focus on [pressing for an end to the] American presence, they focus a little bit on procedure. I don`t think, when writing the constitution, it`ll be that hard to make it more palatable to a Sunni audience. The trick will be to get Sunni leaders and the Sunni population on board in the process.

We`ve seen mixed signals recently, haven`t we? Some Sunni leaders are saying people should join the army and the security forces, but some others say that is meant to subvert those forces.

And, unlike the Kurdish population and the Shiite population, who have a set of clearly identifiable leaders, it`s much less clear who is speaking authoritatively for the Sunni population.

Is the National Assembly going to be a rubber-stamp body, or will there be divisions within it?

I think the National Assembly will be a real body. First, it`s given this important task of writing the constitution. That doesn`t mean every single member will be involved in drafting every single clause, but it means the most fundamental task Iraq has to face is the one that is given to the National Assembly. Even though the majority in the assembly comes from the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, that electoral alliance is a shaky affair that was put together for the purposes of an election and not for the purposes of governing.

And you`ve also got a sort of unhappy experience in viable parliamentary life in Iraq. You don`t have a clear cadre of expert parliamentarians. You don`t have a clear sense of who the leaders and followers are. So, I would expect the National Assembly to be a little bit of an inchoate body as it begins this process. It`s clearly a critical one, but it`s not one that is going to be able to act very cohesively.

There aren`t too many constitutions in the Arab world, are there?

That`s not quite true. At this point, there is a century and a half of experimentation with constitutional texts in the Arab world, so there is considerable experience on which to draw. Some of that experience is negative. That is, anybody who looks at other Arab countries might discover what not to do or how to close certain loopholes, and that sort of thing. The legal training in Iraq will be largely Arab in nature, so I would expect those people who are involved to at least be bringing in some of that Arab experience.

What previous constitutions in the Arab world would you point to that have some relevance? Were there some good constitutions written along the way?

There are sections of constitutions that might be worth looking at. If I were to point to the most liberal Arab constitution, I would probably point to the Palestinian one, one that has not been promulgated because they don`t have a state yet. But what they tried to do in that document is take some of the Arab constitutional tradition and steer it in a liberal direction.

For the most part, the Arab constitutional tradition is borrowed from Europe. And so it`s a question of taking structures and language that, over the last 50 to 75 years, have been steered in a very authoritarian direction. In those constitutions, there are all sorts of loopholes opened up for the president or the king to do whatever he wants.

Is Egypt`s constitution a good model?

Egypt has a very strong constitutional tradition. But its current constitution, which was passed in 1971, is an unwieldy document because it was created during a liberalizing moment, although Egypt was still a socialist state [under President Gamal Abdul Nasser]. It is fundamentally authoritarian, so you can find pretty much anything you want to in that document. In addition to its constitution, Egypt probably has the richest expertise in constitutional law in the Arab world. So, if the drafters of Iraq`s constitution are going to look for other Arab experts, Egypt might be one of the most likely places to turn to.

The Iraqis are supposed to have their constitution drafted by August 15. Do you think it`s likely they will seek an extension?

Yes. But I think they`ll be under domestic and international pressure not to do so, because everything has gone so slowly up to this date. But what the Transitional Administrative Law promises is not simply a constitution handed down from above, as is a pattern in the Arab world, but one that is supposed to be written as part of a participatory and public process. To jump-start discussions and expect any clear outcomes and all debates to be resolved by August 15 is, I think, very ambitious. If they try to stick to that deadline, my guess is we`ll wind up with a very skeletal constitution or perhaps a converging of the Transitional Administrative Law into a permanent constitution.

How long of a postponement is allowed by the TAL?

They can ask for one six-month postponement. They have to do so by the beginning of August.

All this presupposes a period of calm, but the country is still wracked by the insurgency.

Yes. What we`re essentially seeing is techniques for post-conflict situations being applied before we`re in a post-conflict stage.

Is this unusual?

Yes, but not unprecedented. Most countries that have perfectly calm politics don`t decide to rip up their constitution and start over again; it`s perfectly standard to have a constitution written in a period of crisis. The Iraqi situation is probably more extreme than most of its counterparts, however.

You`ve been studying moves toward reform in the Arab world. If the Iraqis can approve what seems to be a good constitution and go ahead with elections by, say, the middle of next year, is this going to have an impact on other Arab countries?

It probably will have an impact, but I don`t think it will have a tremendous one. Most Arab states, when you get to the reform issue, look inwardly. They`re certainly going to be aware this is going on in Iraq, but the agenda for reformers varies from country to country. I don`t expect any massive wave as a result of a successful Iraqi outcome. Maybe just a little bit of quiet jealousy.

Middle East expert Juan Cole has said the small Sunni representation in the assembly is going to be a big problem for this government. Is there a way around this?

There`s no way around it in the assembly itself. That body is elected and there are very few Sunnis in that body. The ways around it would be in the cabinet--but they`re not at the bargaining table to express their desires--and on the commission that writes the constitution.

I should add that the position of speaker of the National Assembly may turn out to be fairly significant, because in most Arab parliaments, the speaker is a fairly powerful agenda-setter. And it`ll be the National Assembly that`s writing the constitution. Speaker Hajim al-Hassani is a Sunni without a lot of party support in the body, so it`s not clear that he can act as a kind of dictatorial speaker that occurs in some Arab parliaments, but he still might be an influential figure.

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April 10, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Culture of Death, Not Life
By FRANK RICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/opinion/10rich.html?hp

IT takes planning to produce a classic chapter in television history. "We`ve rehearsed," Thom Bird, a Fox News producer, bragged to Variety before Pope John Paul II died. "We will pull out all the stops on this story."

He wasn`t kidding. On the same day that boast saw print, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, solemnly told the world that "facts are facts" and "it is now our understanding the pope has died." Unfortunately, this understanding was reached 26 hours before the pope actually did die, but as Mr. Smith would explain, he had been misled by "Italian reports." (Namely from a producer for Sky Italia, another fair-and-balanced fief of Rupert Murdoch.) Fox`s false bulletin - soon apotheosized by Jon Stewart, now immortalized on the Internet - followed the proud tradition of its sister news organization, The New York Post, which last year had the scoop on John Kerry`s anointment of Dick Gephardt as his running mate.

Yet you could also argue that Fox`s howler was in its way the most honest barometer of this entire cultural moment. The network was pulling out all the stops to give the audience what it craved: a fresh, heaping serving of death. Mr. Smith had a point when he later noted that "the exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment." Certainly not to a public clamoring for him to bring it on.
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Mortality - the more graphic, the merrier - is the biggest thing going in America. Between Terri Schiavo and the pope, we`ve feasted on decomposing bodies for almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their ubiquity rivaled that of TV`s top entertainment franchise, the all-forensics-all-the-time "CSI." To help us visualize the dying John Paul, another Fox star, Geraldo Rivera, brought on Dr. Michael Baden, the go-to cadaver expert from the JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson mediathons, to contrast His Holiness`s cortex with Ms. Schiavo`s.

As sponsors line up to buy time on "CSI," so celebrity deaths have become a marvelous opportunity for beatific self-promotion by news and political stars alike. Tim Russert showed a video of his papal encounter on a "Meet the Press" where one of the guests, unchallenged, gave John Paul an A-plus for his handling of the church`s sex abuse scandal. Jesse Jackson, staking out a new career as the angel of deathotainment, hit the trifecta: in rapid succession he appeared with the Schindlers at their daughter`s hospice in Florida, eulogized Johnnie Cochran on "Larry King Live" and reminisced about his own papal audience with MSNBC`s Keith Olbermann.

What`s disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What`s unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.

When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul`s vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.

This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush`s base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there`s even a children`s auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don`t convert before it`s too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series` 60 million.

These fables are of a piece with the violent take on Christianity popularized by "The Passion of the Christ." Though Mel Gibson brought a less gory version, with the unfortunate title "The Passion Recut," to some 1,000 theaters for Easter in response to supposed popular demand, there was no demand. (Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that at many screens the film sold fewer than 50 tickets the entire opening weekend.) "Passion" fans want the full scourging, and at the height of the protests outside the Schiavo hospice, a TV was hooked up so the assembled could get revved up by watching the grisly original on DVD.

As they did so, Mr. Gibson interjected himself into the case by giving an interview to Sean Hannity asserting that "big guys" could "whip a judge" if they really wanted to stop the "state-sanctioned murder" of Ms. Schiavo. He was evoking his punishment of choice in "The Passion," figuratively, no doubt. It was only a day later that one such big guy, Tom DeLay, gave Mr. Gibson`s notion his official imprimatur by vowing retribution against any judges who don`t practice the faith-based jurisprudence of which he approves.

This Wednesday the far right`s cutting-edge culture of death gets its biggest foothold to date in the mainstream, when NBC broadcasts its "Left Behind" simulation, "Revelations," an extremely slick prime-time mini-series that was made before our most recent death watches but could have been ripped from their headlines. In the pilot a heretofore nonobservant Christian teenage girl in a "persistent vegetative state" - and in Florida, yet - starts babbling Latin texts from the show`s New Testament namesake just as dastardly scientists ("devil`s advocates," as they`re referred to) and organ-seekers conspire to pull the plug. "All the signs and symbols set forth in the Bible are currently in place for the end of days," says the show`s adult heroine, an Oxford-educated nun who has been denounced by the Vatican for her views and whose mission is underwritten by a wealthy "religious fundamentalist." Her Julie Andrews affect notwithstanding, she is an extremist as far removed from the mainstream as Mel Gibson, whose own splinter Traditionalist Catholic sect split from Rome and disowned the reforms of Vatican II, not the least of which was the absolution of Jews for collective guilt in the death of Jesus.

It`s all too fitting that "Revelations," which downsizes lay government in favor of the clerical, is hijacking the regular time slot of "The West Wing." Perhaps only God knows whether it will prove as big a hit as "The Passion." What is clear is that the public eventually tires of most death watches and demands new meat. The tsunami disaster, dramatized by a large supply of vivid tourist videos that the genocide in Darfur cannot muster, was so completely forgotten after three months that even a subsequent Asian earthquake barely penetrated the nation`s Schiavo fixation. But the media plug was pulled on Ms. Schiavo, too, once the pope took center stage; the funeral Mass her parents conducted on Tuesday was all but shunned by the press pack that had moved on to Rome. By the night of his death days later, even John Paul had worn out his welcome. The audience that tuned in to the N.C.A.A. semifinals on CBS was roughly twice as large as that for the NBC and ABC papal specials combined. The time was drawing near for the networks to reappraise the Nielsen prospects of Prince Rainier.

If there`s one lesson to take away from the saturation coverage of the pope, it is how relatively enlightened he was compared with the men in business suits ruling Washington. Our leaders are not only to the right of most Americans (at least three-quarters of whom opposed Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case) but even to the right of most American evangelical Christians (most of whom favored the removal of Ms. Schiavo`s feeding tube, according to Time magazine). They are also, like Mel Gibson and the fiery nun of "Revelations," to the right of the largely conservative pontiff they say they revere. This is true not only on such issues as the war in Iraq and the death penalty but also on the core belief of how life began. Though the president of the United States believes that the jury is still out on evolution, John Paul in 1996 officially declared that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis."

We don`t know the identity of the corpse that will follow the pope in riveting the nation`s attention. What we do know is that the reality show we`ve made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right`s growing theocratic crusade.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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US `smuggles wounded troops home` under cover of darkness
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story…

10 April 2005

The Pentagon has been accused of smuggling wounded soldiers into the US under cover of darkness to avoid bad publicity about the number of troops being injured and maimed in Iraq. The media have also been prevented from photographing wounded soldiers when they arrive at hospital.

Records show that flights from military bases in Germany arrive in the US only at night. Officials say this is purely the result of flight-scheduling pressures and is not a deliberate tactic to minimise detrimental publicity. They also say that by leaving Europe later in the day soldiers are given a better chance to sleep well the night before.

But many campaigners believe otherwise. Just as the Bush administration has banned the media from taking photographs of the coffins of American troops killed in Iraq as they arrive in the US, opponents say it is now trying to cover up the number of wounded.

"The American public has very limited information about the real impact of this war," said Ellen Taylor, a spokeswoman for Code Pink, a peace group that has been protesting outside the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington, where the bulk of the wounded are taken. "I think that a lot of information about this war is being kept from the public. That is what we are protesting about."

It is not even clear how many troops have been injured since the start of President Bush`s "war on terror". The Pentagon says that around 12,000 troops have been evacuated from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, though because officials only list as casualties those soldiers directly hurt by bombs or bullets, the actual total of injured and wounded is believed to be closer to 25,000. Walter Reed says it has treated 4,000 troops injured in Iraq.

"Night-time arrivals are beneficial to the patient as they allow for a regular night of sleep and then for doctors in Europe to make the final determination on their ability to make the long flight, move patients from Landstuhl regional medical centre to Ramstein air base and board the plane," said a hospital spokeswoman, Lyn Kurkal. "There is no attempt by Walter Reed to hide the number of patients we receive. On the contrary, since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Walter Reed public affairs has issued a weekly press release that includes the number of medically evacuated patients received that week."

And a spokesman for the Air Mobility Command said: There are no policies that direct anything about night arrivals or avoiding public contact. Neither public relations nor public perception play a role in flight schedules."

The flights from Germany on a C-141 Starlifter aircraft can take up to 10 hours. But, given the six-hour time difference between the US and Germany, the wounded soldiers could leave at noon from Ramstein and still arrive at Andrews Air Force base near Washington by 4pm.

Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Operation Truth, a group set up for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, said: "[A cover-up] would fit in with everything else they have done. It would be part of an effort to keep the cost of this war away from the American public. It is not surprising, but it is depressing. It should piss people off."

At the beginning of 2003, Mr Bush issued a presidential order that the media should be banned from photographing the return of troops` coffins when they are flown into the US, usually at Dover air base in Delaware. Parents of dead soldiers have also often been banned from meeting the coffins. Controversy raged last year when the Pentagon released a series of photographs following a Freedom of Information Act filing, but later withdrew them.

But officials have also banned the media from taking pictures of the wounded being delivered to either Walter Reed or the National Naval Medical Centre in nearby Bethesda. Ms Kurkal told The Independent on Sunday: "We no longer allow such photos for patient-privacy reasons." However, a reporter from the online journal Salon was recently able to enter Walter Reed and photograph wounded troops without revealing their identities.

Nancy Lessin of Military Families Speak Out, a group made up of relatives of US troops, said: "The entire Bush administration has been trying to keep the cost of this away from the public. The whole issue of casualties and the toll has been very much hidden."


10 April 2005 19:42


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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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, April 10, 2005

Of Bents and Teaching

[urlDaniel Drezner maintains that there are virtually no political science]http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001983.html[/url] courses that deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict in the United States that have a "Zionist bent."

Well, I disagree, and I have lots of evidence for disagreeing.

But anyway, Drezner has misunderstood my point. I don`t give a rat`s ass whether those courses have a Zionist bent or not. I am saying that "bent" is not a relevant category of analysis when evaluating university teaching. Everybody has some bent. The question is, whether students come out of the class having learned to reason about a set of problems or not. The content is not as important, since they`ll forget a lot of the content anyway, and will receive it selectively, both during and after the class. But if you teach them to take things apart and see how they work, to think about social and political causation, to see how things work together, in a particular field, then they can produce their own knowledge and understanding about it thereafter. They can also question their own and the professor`s premises because they will have learned about hidden premises and how to bring them out in the open and interrogate them.

All this is as true of left/right issues, as well.

posted by Juan @ [url4/10/2005 01:30:00 PM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/of-bents-and-teaching-daniel-drezner.html[/url]

Up to 300,000 Demonstrate in Baghdad
Edmund Sanders reports that the crowds in downtown Baghdad protesting the US troop presence in the country may have been as large as 300,000. If it were even half that, these would be the largest popular demonstrations in Iraq since 1958! To any extent that they show popular sentiment shifting in Shiite areas to Muqtada al-Sadr`s position on the American presence, they would indicate that he is winning politically even though the US defeated his militia militarily.

Big demonstrations were also held in Ramadi and in Najaf.

In Baghad, Shaikh Mu`ayyad al-Khazraji, a Sadr aide, said that the demonstrations would continue, to pressure the parliament to demand a US withdrawal.

Al-Hayat reports that Muqtada urged his followers not to bear arms and were not to reply with gunfire if they were shot at by the Americans, saying that God would be responsible for defeating the Occupiers." The demonstrators demanded a swift trial of Saddam Hussein, a timetable for US withdrawal, the release of Iraqis detained by the US, and an end to the marginalization of the opposition. The demonstrators carried effigies of Saddam Hussein, President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, each labeled "International Terrorist." Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says that the crowds also demanded an end to torture in Iraqi prisons.

Off to the side a small crowd of Iraqi Christians joined in the demonstration, with placards saying, "We support the call of Sayyid Muqtada for national unity."

In a sermon read for him, Muqtada accused the United States of double standards-- allowing Israel to have the bomb but bothering Muslim powers who have a nuclear program.

The demonstration`s magnitude appears to have convinced prime minister designate, Ibrahim Jaafari of the Dawa Party, to begin speaking once again of a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops.

The United Arab Front in Kirkuk demanded the creation of a militia to protect the Arabs of that city from the Kurdish "security militias" [i.e. the Kurdish-dominated police force in the city]. Shaikh Wasfi al-Asi, the leader of the Front, said that Iraq is an Arab country and an inseparable part of the Arab world, and that it is inappropriate for Jalal Talabani to be president, because he is a Kurd and is trying to evict Arabs from Kirkuk. (Al-Asi is a good representative of the peculiar Iraqi Baath racism that ran wild in the Saddam era).

Telling Tidbits from Iraqi newspapers via BBC World Monitoring for April 5:



"Al-Mu`tamar publishes on the front page a 120-word report citing a source as saying that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani expressed reservations about giving ministerial posts to the members of the United Iraqi Alliance because they will be distracted from the most important task - drafting the constitution." . . .

Al-Adalah carries on page 1 a 300-word report citing National Assembly member Ali al-Dabbagh as saying that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on the assembly members to grant the Sunni Arabs "complete freedom" in nominating their candidate for the vice-presidential post . . .

Al-Da`wah carries on the front page a 100-word report citing Ahmad al-Safi, Al-Sistani`s representative and National Assembly member, as calling for taking into consideration the minorities` rights in drafting the constitution . . .

Al-Da`wah publishes on page 2 a 75-word report citing National Assembly member Maytham Hanzal in Dhi Qar as resigning from the National Assembly and that he wants to dedicate his time to teaching . . .

Al-Zaman publishes on the front page a 220-word report citing Khalid al-Marsumi, member of the Iraqi Communist Party`s Central Committee, describing the attack on his party`s headquarters in Al-Sadr City in Baghdad on 3 April as "ideological terrorism".

Al-Zaman publishes on the front page a 200-word report citing Sunni Waqf Chairman Dr Adnan Muhammad Salman al-Dulaymi urging the Iraqi government and US forces to release the more than 80 mosque imams, who have been detained since 9 April 2003 . . .

Al-Furat publishes on the front page a 120-word "exclusive" report citing a Saudi national, a former detainee at Abu Ghurayb Prison, describing the killing of a baby in front of his mother in the prison . . .

Al-Ufuq runs on page 4 a 200-word report citing Dr Hasan al-Janabi, the former adviser in the Water Resources Ministry, as saying that there is a shortage of drinking water, especially in the southern governorates.

Al-Ufuq publishes on page 5 a 100-word report stating that the cabinet has issued a resolution that bans dealing with 74 international pharmaceutical companies because they did not fulfil their commitments towards Iraq . . .

Al-Dustur publishes on page 6 a 1,000-word report describing life in Al-Batawiyyin District in central Baghdad. The report says that it is the main centre for criminal gangs, drug trafficking, prostitution, the trafficking of human organs, and other organized crimes . . .

Al-Da`wah runs on page 2 a 100-word report citing Karbala Municipality Director Abd Un as saying that the delay in municipality services in Karbala is due to the absence of the allocations for carrying out a campaign for removing the trash in the governorate . . .

Al-Bayan publishes on page 2 a 100-word report citing Municipality and Public Works Minister Nisrin Mustafa Barwari as saying that the ministry has reinstated 2,800 persons, who were dismissed for political reasons during the former regime . . ."

posted by Juan @ [url4/10/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/up-to-300000-demonstrate-in-baghdad.html[/url]

Friedman`s Slander of Middle East Studies and How it is Wrong and Ignorant

On April 7, 2005, in his New York Times [urlop-ed piece, Thomas Friedman wrote:]http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edpfried09040905apr09,1,3549395.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true[/url]


` Until the recent elections in Iraq and among the Palestinians, the modern Arab world was largely immune to the winds of democracy that have blown everywhere else in the world. Why? That`s a pretty important question. For years, though, it was avoided in both the East and the West.

In the West, it was avoided because a toxic political correctness infected the academic field of Middle Eastern studies -- to such a degree that anyone focusing on the absence of freedom in the Arab world ran the risk of being labeled an "Orientalist" or an "essentialist." `



I don`t know Tom Friedman well. I once had dinner with him and Lee Bollinger, just after September 11, at the university president`s house here at the University of Michigan, so I can say I`ve met him. I remember some of our conversation at that time. I argued, at a time when it seemed clear that the US would go to war with Afghanistan, that simply bombing the Taliban and al-Qaeda would not be enough. I said that the US had a responsibility to do nation-building in Afghanistan. Not only did we owe the country for helping devastate it by using it in as a proxy in our war with the Soviets, but if we did not help it out, it might well fall back into chaos and generate forces that might hit us again. Tom absolutely disagreed and, on free market grounds, argued that no attempt at government state building should ever be undertaken. I explained why I thought it was not only desirable but inevitable. He said, "Well, someone would have to show me how it could be done." I am glad to say that I clearly won this argument after the fact, and Tom seemed rather more enthusiastic about US nation-building a year later, when considering Iraq. Indeed, he now seems to want the US government to engage in vast social-engineering projects throughout the Middle East. Tom, I was just talking about Afghanistan. Even if I convinced you, I didn`t mean you to go quite this far.

In the friendliest of ways, I would now like to address the two paragraphs above, in which Tom rather surprisingly lashed out at the field to which he himself belongs. (He has a master`s degree in Middle East studies from St. Anthony`s at Oxford University, and surely that training-- with some of the same people who trained or influenced the rest of us in the field-- is part of the secret of Tom`s success as a journalist of the area).

He begins by wondering why the winds of democracy have not blown in "the Arab world" except recently "in Iraq and among Palestinians" (sic) (why not "and in Palestine"?). He says it is an important question that has been avoided by the academic Middle East studies field in the West, because that field was "infected" with a "political correctness" that made it impossible to speak of the problem of authoritarianism in the Middle East without risking being branded an "essentialist."

Now, there are at least four things wrong with these assertions.

First, it is not true that the recent elections in Palestine and Iraq were so unique. Lebanon had regular elections from 1943 until the civil war of the mid-1970s, which resumed in the 1990s. The Palestinians had what were widely regarded as relatively free and fair elections in 1996. And, important steps toward democratization were begun in Jordan in 1989, in Yemen after unification, in Morocco in 2002, and in Bahrain in 2002. Tom himself praised some of these developments at the time. These parliamentary elections were all flawed in important ways, and marred by continued aspects of authoritarianism, but they can`t be dismissed as insignificant. And, the elections in Palestine and Iraq, both held under conditions of foreign military occupation with substantial portions of the electorate engaged in a boycott and poor security conditions, were also deeply flawed. (In Iraq, where the very names of the candidates were largely kept secret for fear they would be assassinated, the election was anonymous and therefore in some real sense not a democratic election at all, but a sort of national referendum on a set of party lists.)

So Tom`s premises here are, well, downright weird, and contradict other things he has said in the past.

Then there is the inconvenient fact that political scientists such as Michael Hudson and others have in fact attempted to understand why the Arab world was an exception to the "third wave" of democratization. There is a fair literature on the subject by political scientists, of which Friedman seems, to my astonishment, completely unaware. Tom might enjoy reading Michael Hudson`s "Obstacles to democratization in the Middle East," Contention, vol. 5, no. ii, pp. 81-105, 1995, which took up the subject he says has been absent, and did it ten years ago! Then there is Tim Niblock, "Democratization: a theoretical and practical debate," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 25, no. ii, pp. 221-233, 1998. Or how about Fred Lawson`s "Syria resists the end of history," Middle East and North Africa: governance, democratization, human rights. Ed. P.J.Magnarella. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, pp. 67-82. Then there is Raymond Hinnebusch, "Liberalization without democratization in "post-populist" authoritarian states: evidence from Syria and Egypt," in Citizenship and the state in the Middle East: approaches and applications. Ed. N.A.Butenschon, Uri Davis, & M.Hassassian. Syracuse (USA): Syracuse University Press, 2000, pp. 123-145. Try Curtis Ryan and Jillian Schwedler`s "Return to democratization or new hybrid regime? The 2003 elections in Jordan," Middle East Policy, vol. 11, no. ii, pp. 138-151, 2004. This is just a small sample of an enormous scholarly literature. Is it really true that Tom has departed so far from his earlier training that he can`t even look articles up in Index Islamicus online, much less bother to read them?

Third, the way you would get accused of essentialism is to engage in it. This fancy word just means that you say things that depend on there being eternal essences of things. So, for instance, if you said, "Palestinians are now and always have been a violent, fanatical, and duplicitous race." -- that would be essentialism (also racism). You would be assuming that Palestinians have a shared and unvarying essence. If you said, "Arabs are incapable of democracy because their political instincts are always authoritarian"-- that would be essentialism. If you said that most Arab governments are authoritarian, and tried to explain why that was with reference to changing political, social or economic factors, then that would not be essentialist. It would be social science.

The fourth problem is that what Friedman has alleged about lack of critiques of authoritarianism in the region is completely untrue. I am going to be charitable and attribute his lapse of judgment to ignorance, or to listening to the wrong people and not reading enough in the field.

But I just did a few keyword searches in Lexis Nexis and on google, putting in the names of a few random major American scholars of Middle East studies. I tried to go back in time a bit, before the most recent controversies stemming from 9/11, so as to show that critiques have been being offered all along. I`ll let readers judge if "political correctness" deterred the persons below, who are central to the field, from critiquing authoritarian governance in the Middle East. Most academics mainly write journal articles and books, rather than op-eds, and relatively few get quoted in the press. So if I could keyword search the books written by Middle East studies scholars, I could give many more examples. But even what is below is enough to show that Tom is dead wrong.

Michael Hudson, Political Science, Georgetown University, and a past president of the Middle East Studies Association, quoted in The Toronto Star May 12, 1994, "Killing an Arabic dream The civil war in Yemen is destroying the region`s experiment in democracy and unity"


"Basically what you have in Yemen that`s causing it to fall apart are two regimes that never really were able to shake off their exclusivist, dictatorial mentality even though unity was, and still is, something that on the popular level Yemenis wanted and still want," Michael Hudson, professor of international relations at Georgetown University in Washington, told The Star.

Along with thousands of other foreigners, including Canadian oil company workers, Hudson was evacuated from San`a just a few days ago."




Rashid Khalidi (a past president of the Middle East Studies Association and professor of history at Columbia University) et al., The New York Times, January 20, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final



Human Rights Activist Disappears in Cairo

To the Editor:

Last Dec. 10, Mansour Kikhia, former Libyan Foreign Minister and twice Libya`s United Nations representative, disappeared while in Cairo for the annual meeting of the Arab Organization of Human Rights, of which he was a founder and director. The evidence suggests he was abducted and is alive but detained in Libya.

Since he left his United Nations post in 1980, Mr. Kikhia, a distinguished jurist and human rights activist, has been a prominent member of the Libyan opposition. In 1984 he joined other well-known Arab opponents of despots and oligarchies to establish the human rights organization, placing himself on the front line of the battle for democracy and decent government in the Middle East.

Now his enemies have struck back at him in a lawless and cowardly fashion. We call on the Egyptian authorities -- from whose territory Mr. Kikhia disappeared -- to mount a vigorous investigation of this breach of human decency. We call on the Libyan Government to cooperate fully in the search for him.

As friends and colleagues of Mansour Kikhia, whose bravery and principles we have long admired, we urge Arabs, Americans with an interest in the Arab world and human rights organizations not to rest until he regains his freedom. Nothing could be worse than to let the governments concerned think he will be forgotten.

EDWARD W. SAID, CLOVIS MAKSOUD
RASHID KHALIDI, SAMIH FARSOUN"
New York, Jan. 12, 1994




Joel Beinin, Professor of History, Stanford, former president of the Middle East Studies Association, [urlfrom his 2002 MESA Presidential Address:]http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/Bulletin/Pres%20Addresses/Beinin.htm[/url]


` The holders of state power have always tried to impose an intellectual agenda compatible with their interests, as students of Middle East history know from the attempts of the `Abbasid Caliphs al-Ma’mun (813-33) and al-Mu`tasim (833-42) to impose the rationalist mu`tazili doctrine on their subjects. And there have always been those who have struggled against the imposition of doctrines associated with state power, as we know from the ardent resistance of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855) to the mu`tazili doctrine. As some would have it, the victory of ibn Hanbal in this confrontation is part of "what went wrong" in Islamic societies. We could just as easily draw a different lesson: that when states attempt to impose an intellectual orthodoxy – even an "enlightened" one such as rationalism, secularism, modernization, Arab socialism, Marxism-Leninism, or neo-liberal economics and "freedom" – they inevitably generate a resistance, which may or may not itself be enlightened. And in combating that resistance they may very likely adopt cruel and authoritarian measures that will undermine the legitimacy of whatever "enlightened" ideas they espoused. The recent histories of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Iran, and Turkey offer volumes of evidence for this proposition. `



Andrew J. Pierre and William B. Quandt, "The `Contract` With Algeria; One Last Chance for the West to Help Stop the Civil War" The Washington Post, January 22, 1995, Sunday.

Quandt is a Vice Provost for International Affairs and professor of government at the University of Virginia, and long-time member of the Middle East Studies Association.


. . . leverage exists precisely because any Algerian regime will depend on solid relations with France and Europe, and to a lesser extent with the United States. Thus, a coordinated policy among all these external parties could help to strengthen the chance of Algerian democracy.

As the United States stakes out its position, several points are of particular importance:

A high-level American official should convey to Paris, the Algerian regime and opposition groups the United States` strong support for the end of violence through political dialogue between the military government and opposition forces. Algerians should be urged to begin a transitional process designed to create a legitimate government through free presidential and parliamentary elections. The Sant`Egidio document represents one step in this direction, and the regime`s own commitment to early elections is another potentially positive element. One may doubt the sincerity of some in the opposition and some in the regime who have spoken of democratic processes, but each side should now put the other to the test by engaging in serious talks."



Lisa Anderson, Dean and Political Scientist, Columbia University and a past president of the Middle East Studies Association, in Jane Perlez, "A Middle East Choice: Peace or Democracy," The New York Times, November 28, 1999, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

(- on the rise of a new generation of Arab leaders


` One common thread runs through the process: the new leaders are likely to emerge for reasons of bloodline rather than merit, and it gives some analysts pause, no matter how pro-Western or pro-peace these leaders are.

"These people are not being chosen for competence in modern society but for loyalty and kinship," said Lisa Anderson, the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. "There is not a layer of technocrats who appear to be poised to take the reins of power." `



That should be enough to show that Friedman`s statement is not only wrong but bizarre. Let me just add two other documents. Although Edward Said was trained in literary criticism and mainly taught and wrote about literature, and was not trained as or employed as a Middle East studies academic, he is clearly one of Friedman`s targets in the quote above, since he wrote against "Orientalism." But Said himself was a consistent and harsh critic of the lack of democracy in the Arab world.

Edward Said in The Guardian (London), January 12, 1991


"Because of this lopsided state of affairs militarism asumed far too privileged a place in the Arab world`s moral economy. Much of it goes back to the sense of being unjustly treated, for which Palestine was not only a metaphor but a reality. But, I ask myself, was the only answer military force of one sort of another: huge armies, brassy slogans, bloody promises, and, alas, a massive series of concrete instances, starting with wars at the top and working down to such things as physical punishment and menacing gestures at the bottom? I speak superficially and even irresponsibly
here, since I cannot have all the facts at my command, and I perhaps have no right to be passing judgments such as these.

BUT I do not know a single Arab who would disagree with these impressions in private, or who would not readily agree that the monopoly on coercion given the state and its army and police have almost completely eliminated democracy in the Arab world, introduced immense hostility between rulers and ruled, placed a much higher value on conformity, opportunism, flattery and getting along than on risking new ideas, criticism or dissent.

Taken far enough this produces exterminism, a notion that if you don`t get your way or something displeases you it is possible simply to blot it out. I do not doubt that that notion is behind Iraq`s aggression against Kuwait. What sort of muddled and anachronistic idea of Bismarckian `integration` is this, that wipes out an entire country and smashes its society with `Arab unity` as its goal? The most disheartening thing is that so many people, many of them victims of exactly the same brutal logic, appear to have identified with Iraq and not Kuwait. Even if one grants that Kuwaitis were unpopular (does one have to be popular not to be exterminated?) and even if Iraq claims to champion Palestine in standing up to Israel and the US, surely the very idea that a nation should be obliterated along the way is a murderous proposition, unfit for a great civilisation like ours. It is a measure of the dreadful state of political culture in the Arab world today that such exterminism is current, maybe even prevalent."



Although Iran is not an Arab country, you never know what the unit of analysis is in American journalism. So here`s something I wrote about Iran fully 15 years ago for a wide-circulation popular magazine.

Juan Cole writing in History Today, Mar., 1990:


"As measured by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Islamic Republic of
Iran has for the past decade achieved one of the worst human rights records of any country in the world. Of course, many of the government-sponsored summary arrests and executions carried out have targeted political groupings that posed an alternative to the clerical state. But the Khomeini regime has also persecuted communities that posed no particular threat to the Islamic Republic`s stability, most prominently the Baha`is."

posted by Juan @ [url4/10/2005 06:05:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/friedmans-slander-of-middle-east.html[/url]

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Sunday, April 10, 2005
War News for Sunday, April 10, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: Pakistani diplomat missing in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: US soldier killed in bomb attack in Hawija.

Bring `em on: Newly appointed local chief of police killed by gunmen in Haditha.

Bring `em on: Tens of thousands protest for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Five thousand protest for the end of the occupation in Ramadi.

Bring `em on: Aide to Cleric Muqtada Al Sadr assassinated and two guards wounded south of Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Car bomb explosion kills two policemen and injures 13 civilians in Mosul.

Bring `em on: A least five people killed when gunmen opened fire on their bus in Latifiyah.

Bring `em on: One interior ministry security guard fatally wounded after a fistfight breaks out between traffic policemen and security officials in Fallujah.

Bring `em on: Bodies of ten executed civilians found near Baquba.

Bring `em on: Fifteen Iraqi soldiers killed by insurgents in Latifiyah.

Has Iraq improved since the War?

This is the title of a BBC survey.

Please BBC!

Since the war?

Get one of your IT correspondents to read this blog.

Some comments from the survey;

Iraq has been made much worse for the ordinary citizen if news accounts are true. Women and children are especially at risk. Unemployment demoralizes people, as does the violence of war which appears to be never ending.
Janet, Saginaw Michigan US

No, Iraq is actually worse off. Bombing people and then forcing a puppet government into power has nothing to do with democracy.
Kevin Harrison, Northumberland, USA

The Bushies, the Blairites, and the Neocons will have you believing that "democracy" is coming to the Great Middle East through Iraq. This is nothing but a fantasy. The Iraqis have suffered long enough. Today, they still have no water, no sanitation, no electricity and no security. Give Iraq back to the Iraqi people.
Johnny Franco Arboine, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Who is Craig Murray?

As a straight-talking British Ambassador, Craig Murray unmasked the tyrannical "Karimov" regime, in Uzbekistan. While others kept quiet, our man in Tashkent hit the headlines, working tirelessly to expose the mass-murder at the heart of this Central Asian dictatorship.

But Jack Straw tried to silence Craig Murray. The reason? Uzbekistan`s dictator is a close ally of George Bush. And these days, any friend of George is also a friend of Jack`s.

As a British Ambassador, Craig Murray put his job on the line for the sake of the truth. Now he`s coming to Blackburn to expose the lies at the heart of Tony, Jack and George`s "War on Terror".

The Abu Ghraib attack

The Observer: To tackle the sprawling complex 20 miles west of the capital, which doubles as a US base, they used almost every type of weapon in their armoury. An internet statement purportedly from the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed it was the work of his group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and depicted a heroic, slick engagement which lasted several hours and deployed seven suicide car bombers. `Then the merciful brigades and Muslim soldiers clashed with the infidels.` This version, according to senior coalition commanders, was aimed at sympathisers in the Gulf who funded the insurgency and expected to see results before stumping up again.

The Americans painted a less dramatic picture, saying mortar rounds and rockets were followed by attacks by gunmen on foot. At one point, defenders destroyed a suicide car bomb before it reached the walls and rapid-response troops backed by Apache helicopters and artillery repulsed the rest of the attack after 40 minutes. While conceding its sophistication, a US spokesman said the assault did not breach the walls, free inmates or kill coalition forces and was therefore a failure, costing the insurgents dozens dead and wounded.

Only now have those caught in the crossfire given their version. It partly contradicts the US and al-Zarqawi statements by claiming there was chaos and panic on both sides and, in the aftermath, looting by US and Iraqi security forces. Mohammad, one of the adults who sheltered in the toilet with the children, including his three-year-old son, lives in Khan Dhari, a district near the jail inhabited by working-class Arab Sunnis hostile to the occupation.

As they do most Saturdays they met in the grounds of a primary school on the south-western side of the jail to play football. Guards in watchtowers would have seen that the group was mostly young children, said Mohammad. When rockets landed around them, guards returned fire wildly, apparently unconcerned about civilian casualties. Even when searchlights `turned the place into day`, US bullets continued hitting the school despite the absence of rebels there, he said.

At some point the jail gates opened and Humvees roared out - probably the rapid-response forces - only for a black Opel packed with explosives to slip into the convoy and blow up. `It was a hell of fire,` said Mohammad, a tall, wiry Islamic scholar, who said he saw charred Humvee engines and a human hand and leg.

Under the Cover of Darkness

The Independent: The Pentagon has been accused of smuggling wounded soldiers into the US under cover of darkness to avoid bad publicity about the number of troops being injured and maimed in Iraq. The media have also been prevented from photographing wounded soldiers when they arrive at hospital.

Records show that flights from military bases in Germany arrive in the US only at night. Officials say this is purely the result of flight-scheduling pressures and is not a deliberate tactic to minimise detrimental publicity. They also say that by leaving Europe later in the day soldiers are given a better chance to sleep well the night before.

But many campaigners believe otherwise. Just as the Bush administration has banned the media from taking photographs of the coffins of American troops killed in Iraq as they arrive in the US, opponents say it is now trying to cover up the number of wounded.

"The American public has very limited information about the real impact of this war," said Ellen Taylor, a spokeswoman for Code Pink, a peace group that has been protesting outside the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington, where the bulk of the wounded are taken. "I think that a lot of information about this war is being kept from the public. That is what we are protesting about."

Mismanagement of Reconstruction Funds

Down the Drain: Iraqi officials have crippled scores of water, sewage and electrical plants refurbished with U.S. funds by failing to maintain and operate them properly, wasting millions of American taxpayer dollars, according to interviews and documents.

Hardest hit has been the effort to rebuild Iraq`s water and sewage systems, a multibillion-dollar task considered to be among the most crucial components of the effort to improve daily life for Iraqis. Of more than 40 such plants run by the Iraqis, not one is being operated properly, according to the Bechtel Group, the contractor at work on the project. The power grid faces similar problems. U.S. officials said the Iraqis` inability to properly operate overhauled electrical plants contributed to widespread power shortages this winter. None of the 19 electrical plants that have had U.S.-funded repair work is being run correctly, a senior American adviser said.

An internal memo by coalition officials in Iraq obtained by the Los Angeles Times says that throughout Iraq, renovated plants "deteriorate quickly to an alarming state of disrepair and inoperability."

30 IEDs a Day

Army troops encounter about 30 IEDs a day, the highest level since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago. IEDs are typically made from artillery shells and other ordnance. But as many as 12 IEDs a day — or about 40 percent — are rendered inoperable before they can injure troops. "Because of a combination of better training, technology and intelligence, we are able to find these things and destroy them in place or disarm them," Bridges said.

Insurgents, which U.S. Central Command officials estimate number around 20,000, have placed bombs in roads and vehicles, on telephone poles and inside trash cans and dead animals, cars or trucks. In the months after the U.S. invasion, insurgents had ready access to hundreds of Saddam Hussein`s weapons caches, which have supplied explosives for IED strikes. IEDs are the top killer in Iraq, blamed for more than half of coalition forces killed or wounded.

How quickly we forget!

How quickly we forget.

How quickly priorities change.

Less than a year later, as Bush was preparing to invade Iraq, in search of weapons of mass destruction that we now know never existed, bin Laden was officially removed from the priority list.

On March 13, 2002, Bush declared, “I don’t where (bin Laden) is. I have no idea and I really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”

No, at that time, the priority was selling the nation on the need to attack Iraq, lest we fall victim to another such attack.

Bush rationalized that bin Laden’s terrorism network had effectively been dismantled, rendering him ineffective.

Evidently, the desire to bring the mastermind of the most terrible attack on U.S. soil to justice wasn’t very important anymore.

We had new terrorist threats to worry about: Hussein. Bush and his colleagues sold us on the idea that Hussein was developing all sorts of terrible weapons, including nukes, that threatened us all.

Who cares about the one man who actually planned such an attack, and succeeded?

Even if the Bush administration really believed its rhetoric about Hussein — which is dubious at best in light of recent revelations of how the CIA was pressured to shape its findings to justify a predetermined conclusion — how could it just cast aside any serious effort to capture bin Laden?

Do you remember how you felt on Sept. 11, 2001?

Do you remember how you felt upon learning that Osama bin Laden had planned the attacks, and then celebrated their success?

So why doesn’t anyone seem to remember that he’s still at large? Why isn’t capturing bin Laden still a priority?

I wish I had an answer.
# posted by Friendly Fire : 1:00 AM
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Saturday, April 09, 2005
Note to Readers, Saturday, April 9, 2005

No update today. I`m a slacker. I took the day off, rented a Cessna 150 and flew down to Scappoose, Oregon. I shot some circuits, then flew down the Columbia to the Pacific and up the coast to Hoquiam. Shot a few more circuits, refueled and came home. Great flying weather: low clouds, variable winds aloft, and scattered rain squalls. I love running scud. Flying a single-engine, high-wing two-seater in marginal weather is the most fun you can have while wearing clothes. Logged 4.2 hours and I`m pooped.

Here`s an open thread for alert readers.


YD
# posted by yankeedoodle : 7:34 PM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 08, 2005

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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DEBAKEL UM HILFSPROJEKTE

Hunderte Millionen Dollar im Irak vergeudet

Die US-geführten Entwicklungsprojekte im Irak sind einem Zeitungsbericht zufolge ein finanzielles Desaster. Keine einzige der technischen Anlagen funktioniere ordnungsgemäß, heißt es laut "Los Angeles Times" in einem internen Bericht. Hunderte Millionen Dollar seien verschwendet worden.



ANZEIGE




Washington - Grund für die Pleite seien häufige Bedienfehler und mangelnde Wartung der Anlagen. Von den 44 an Iraker übergebenen Anlagen im Wasser- und Abwasserbereich sowie 19 Anlagen zur Stromversorgung funktioniere nicht eine einzige vorschriftsmäßig, schreibt die "Los Angeles Times" heute unter Berufung auf einen internen Bericht der von den USA geführten Koalition.

Die sanierten Anlagen seien schnell baufällig oder sogar funktionsunfähig, hieß es darin. Deswegen habe es im Winter vielerorts zu wenig Strom gegeben. In einem Bericht an den US-Kongress hat das Außenministerium nach Angaben des Blattes vorgeschlagen, rund 600 Millionen Dollar für zusätzliche Instandhaltungsprogramme zum Schutz der US-Investitionen auszugeben.

US-Vertreter machen Angaben der Zeitung zufolge schlechte Ausbildung der Mitarbeiter, logistische Probleme und eine Fortsetzung der zu Zeiten von Ex-Präsident Saddam Hussein praktizierten "gleichgültigen Arbeitsmoral" verantwortlich. Außerdem hätten Aufständische die Mitarbeiter der Anlagen immer wieder eingeschüchtert, so dass niemand lange haben bleiben wollen. Als weiterer Grund werden Machtkämpfe zwischen der Zentralregierung und Beamten in den Regionen über die Bezahlung der Projekte und Gehälter angegeben.

Dagegen macht die irakische Seite den Angaben zufolge den Vorwurf, dass sie von frühen Planungen bei der Instandsetzung ausgeschlossen worden sei und dass sie nicht die notwendigen finanziellen Mittel für die Wartung erhalte. Aus ihrer Sicht hätten die US-Truppen den Irakern mehr Mitbestimmung einräumen müssen, welche Projekte gebaut und wie das Geld eingesetzt würden.

US-Truppen sollen noch zwei Jahre bleiben

Und auch die Militärpräsenz ist ein stetiger Kostenfaktor für die USA: Trotz der jüngsten Proteste gegen ausländische Soldaten im Irak sollen nach den Worten des neuen irakischen Präsidenten Dschalal Talabani die amerikanischen Truppen noch zwei Jahre im Land bleiben. In diesem Zeitraum könne es geschafft werden, die neue Armee und die Sicherheitskräfte aufzubauen, sagte Talabani heute dem Nachrichtensender CNN. In der Zwischenzeit sei der Irak darauf angewiesen, dass die von den USA geführte Koalition vor Terroristen und der Einmischung von außen schütze.

Nach den Worten von Talabani wird es im Irak keine Regierung auf der Grundlage der islamischen Rechtsprechung, der Scharia, geben. Die Gründung eines unabhängigen kurdischen Staates bezeichnete Talabani als kein realistisches Ziel.

Die Verfahren gegen Ex-Präsident Saddam Hussein und dessen Führungskreis sollen nach den Worten von Talabani innerhalb von Wochen nach der Regierungsbildung beginnen. Saddam und den anderen Inhaftierten sei die Wahl des Präsidenten und Ministerpräsidenten im Fernsehen gezeigt worden, um ihnen die neue Art der Demokratie im Irak zu verdeutlichen. Danach komme man nicht durch Putsch oder Verschwörung an die Macht, sondern durch freie Wahlen.

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PART 6: Outsourcing public security
By Henry C K Liu
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GD09Dj01.html
PART 1: The failed-state cancer
PART 2: The privatization wave
PART 3: The business of private security
PART 4: Militarism and mercenaries
PART 5: Militarism and the war on drugs

Public security is the prime function of government. Public security is supposed to be provided by government to all citizens equally regardless of levels of wealth. It is one of the basic political goods government is obliged to provide equally to all. It is as sacred to democracy as the principle of one person, one vote.

When public security is privatized, there is a structural danger that adequate protection, or at least added protection needed to meet newly perceived threats, is available only to those who can afford to pay for it. When the rich and the corporate population can get additional needed security from private contractors for a fee, political pressure on government to provide adequate public security for the general public is invariably weakened, just as the proliferation of private education reduces political pressure to improve public education. With income disparity increasingly institutionalized in market economies, the privatization of public security amounts to institutionalizing inequality in government protection, just as the privatization of other government services institutionalizes inequality in the delivery of other basic political goods by government. The US Supreme Court has long since declared the segregation of education by race unconstitutional, yet segregation of education by wealth continues to be widely accepted in the United States, despite an obvious coincidence between race and poverty.

In response to increasingly inadequate security protection provided by government against rising levels of threat from terrorism and crime, a key characteristic of failed statehood, private security services have emerged as a major business sector. Government policies in recent decades have institutionalized income disparities, leading to trends of increased needs for government protection from threats generated by breakdowns in social cohesion; yet such increased needs are left unequally met by trends to privatize government services. Such a combination of trends erodes the role of government at both ends and is the most glaring evidence of the failed-state syndrome.

Security in the homeland
In recent years, the US government has escalated its commitment of funding to homeland-security needs. Including supplemental funding, the federal budget allocated only US$17 billion ($62 per capita) to homeland security in fiscal year 2001, which ended on September 30, when, until September 11 of that year, massively destructive threats from terrorism had still been just a theoretical proposition. The homeland-security budget after September 11, 2001, increased to $29 billion ($105 per capita) in fiscal year 2002. In fiscal year 2003, the federal budget for homeland-security activities was $38 billion ($135 per capita). In fiscal year 2005, it was $45.9 billion ($164 per capita). President George W Bush administration`s budget request for fiscal year 2006 calls for $49.9 billion ($169 per capita) in total funding for homeland security, an increase of approximately 8.6% in real (inflation-adjusted) terms over the fiscal year 2005 budget. While the rate of rise in federal expenditure has moderated, the rate of increase in the need for homeland security has not. The slowdown in the rise in the federal budget for homeland security can only be explained by a shift of the cost to the private sector.

A 2003 review by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) suggests that the economic impact of increased homeland-security spending will be relatively small, and that it is unlikely to have major effects on the fiscal discipline of the government or on productivity in the private sector. Government spending on homeland security accounted for 0.35% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2003 - an amount only one-tenth the size of national-defense outlays. In conjunction with this spending, even if the private sector were to double its security-related inputs, the report estimates that the total annual direct costs of homeland security would be only $72 billion, or 0.66% of 2003 GDP. Moreover, such a doubling of inputs would at most reduce the private sector`s labor productivity level by only 1.12%.

The report attaches two caveats to its conclusion. First, the results do not suggest that the economic damage of the September 11 terrorist attacks is negligible. The findings focus solely on the economic effects of the expenditures undertaken to prevent and prepare for future incidents. Second, the results do not suggest that homeland security is unimportant. The study is in essence focused only on the cost side of a cost-benefit analysis. The benefits of homeland security are not easy to measure. One simply cannot estimate or verify how many terrorist activities, if any, are being prevented because of increased security measures, or that if and when an catastrophic attack does take place, how much of its likelihood of occurrence would have been reduced by added security spending.

Clearly, it is difficult to put a value on the heightened sense of safety that the homeland-security program provides. If such a program is viewed as insurance against loss from terrorist catastrophe, then the absence of catastrophe will have justified the cost of the insurance. Yet the value of prevention is not automatically positive. A false sense of security can come from the power of suggestion that when something is being done, some positive effect will result. It is known as the Hawthorne Effect, named after the General Electric Co experiment in Hawthorne, New York, to search for optimum lighting levels for highest efficiency in productivity by varying the levels of lighting. The experiment discovered that changes in lighting levels caused productivity to increase more than any fixed level of lighting. Workers are energized when they feel that they are being fussed over.

However, real prevention depends on the real effectiveness of the spending. If directed toward wrong targets, spending may not prevent anything. Worse yet, it may divert focus and resources from the real targets. Nevertheless, given the relatively small expense of prevention as compared with the cost of failure, proponents of the homeland-security program argue that even if it should prevent just one major incident over the next several years, the return on homeland-security expenditures would more than justify the cost. Further, spending buys political coverage from criticism of officials and administrations. Unfortunately, the same generous rationale is not applied to the expenditure of removing the root causes of terrorism, ie, global socio-economic injustice.

Privatization of homeland security reduces government expenditure by shifting part of the cost to the private sector. Private security spending contributes more than government spending to increases in GDP, and thus it minimizes the economic burden of security. The way the US plans to keep the increased cost of homeland security to minimum adverse economic impact is through the voodoo magic of input-output econometrics. When homeland security is privatized, its expenditure becomes a growth industry. Thus, by the rules of econometrics, preventing loss from threats to homeland security is an input, and security spending becomes an output that adds to GDP and creates little adverse impact on the economy as a whole, albeit the price is systemic inequality of protection. Further, econometric analysis ignores the fact that if the need for security is reduced, the output could have been directed toward more constructive uses.

For example, after September 11, the US Congress provided the pharmaceutical industry with incentives to develop drugs for terrorism-related illnesses, including protection from normal product liability and proposals to extend patent rights on medication unrelated to homeland security. This reduces the expenditure of government research, but raised the price of drugs generally by delaying the entrance of generic drugs that are cheaper than brand-name drugs.

The measure of economic failure
The science of econometrics deals with economic measurements used to estimate the magnitude of quantitative relationships among economic variables within a model of the economy. It is used to test hypotheses and forecast outcomes, with wide application to business forecasting and market planning. There are two kinds of economic variables in a model: endogenous variables that are found within the model; and exogenous variables that are introduced from outside the model. Security threats are exogenous variables in an econometric model since their levels and intensity are independent of the internal construct of the model. Economists seek insights by examination of data. This is known as the inductive approach. They also attempt to validate or disprove existing theories by comparing theoretical claims against empirical data. This is known as the hypothetical approach. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, their difference is analogous to different starting points in a conceptual circle.

William Stanley Jevons (1835-82), an English economist and logician, simultaneously with Viennese economist Carl Menger and French economist Leon Walras launched the Marginalist Revolution of 1871-74 (diminishing marginal utility) that gave rise five decades later to neo-classical economics, which emphasizes the phenomenon of exchange over production. Marginalist theory of value puts forth the idea that the "natural value" of a good is determined only by its subjective scarcity, ie the degree to which people`s desire for that good exceeds its availability. When clean water was in abundance, it had no economic value, even though its value to life is paramount. When industrialization pollutes the Earth`s water supply, clean water commands a high price. Thus pollution, like security threats, serves an economic function in neo-classical economics. Privatization of water depends on water pollution for its economic justification.

The focus on scarcity is behind the rise of market capitalism where price is not determined by the cost of production but by scarcity of supply. The cost of oil production remains around $4 a barrel on land and $7 a barrel offshore. It is scarcity that has driven the price of oil above $50 per barrel in recent months. The cost of production for additional copies of Microsoft`s Windows is near zero, yet each copy can sell for $200 because Microsoft controls the supply through its intellectual property rights.

Marginal utility gives rise to market failure through the emergence of monopolies and cartels whose purpose is to keep prices high by limiting supply rather than increasing production. It robs society of the material benefits of rising productivity from advanced technology. Surplus food from efficient agro-technology is dumped in the sea to keep prices high while billions starve around the world. Money is constantly kept scarce to maintain its value while poverty is kept widespread in a world of idle production overcapacity made possible by technological progress. If overcapacity were to be fully utilized, prices would have to fall or wages would have to rise to increase public purchasing power to absorb the added products. Both options are destabilizing to the state of scarcity without which the entire science of economics would have to be rethought. Thus workers are kept unemployed or underemployed to cut down on the production of goods they cannot afford on their low wages. The concept of marginal utility has created as much misery for mankind as racism, by keeping basic human needs at a constant level of scarcity. States that tolerate a failed market are by definition failed states.

In 1803, Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), in examining the evolution of trade between Britain and Brazil, observed that demand for a particular set of goods can only be expressed by equivalent supply of another set. Supply, therefore, "creates" its own demand. Almost all of classical and most neo-classical theory is based on this simple, even tautological, assertion. Say`s Law concludes that general gluts cannot exist. Classical economists assert that unemployment and market failures were due to excess supplies over demands of particular commodities and not excess supplies (or gluts) of commodities generally as a whole. David Ricardo (1772-1823) notes: "Mistakes can be made, and commodities not suited to demand may be produced - of these there may be a glut" and that "it is at all times the bad adaptations of the commodities produced to the wants of mankind which is the specific evil, and not the abundance of commodities. Demand is only limited by the will and power to purchase." John Stuart Mill (1806-73) concurs by noting that in these situations, "production is not excessive, but merely ill-assorted". Ricardo and Mill extended this proposition to savings and investment. If one produces more than one consumes, then the surplus is saved and, by definition of terms, invested. No one would produce in excess of consumption needs if one does not have a desire either to exchange it or invest it. Supply, therefore, generates demand. This relationship virtually all the classical economists held to be an irrefutable truth.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) and French economist J C L Simonde de Simonde (1773-1842) are the exceptions who believed general gluts could exist. They reasoned that income is distributed among workers, entrepreneurs and landowners receiving wage income, profit and land rents respectively. And landowners will receive a portion of income, but they may choose not to consume it. And when they don`t, there will be a general glut (excess supply of goods) even though the investment-savings identity still holds. Thus all classical economists, except for Malthus and Simonde, were generally in agreement over the validity of Say`s Law, at least in the long run. They all also agree on the identity of savings and investment as well as the separation of output from price theory. The most famous under-consumption cycle theory was laid out by John Maynard Keynes in his General Theory (1936).

The neo-classical story is often captured in diagrammatic form by the idea that equilibrium prices and quantities of goods are determined jointly and simultaneously by the demand and supply for goods. Yet demand is blocked by the need to skim off surplus value in the form of return on capital through profits, which can only come from lowering wages before the level of cost of material and capital needed to produce goods. Price is always the sum of cost of material, capital and labor. Of the three costs, labor is the only flexible variable. Yet if wages consistently fall below the level of prices for goods, a downward spiral of overproduction and unemployment will result, which is the basis of business cycles and long waves.

According to the theory of marginal utility, since fear drives up demands for security, the demand and therefore the price for private security will rise if the supply of government provided security is reduced. Higher prices for private security are not inflationary if the value of the benefit (perceived safety) also rises. Thus rising fear from terrorism is good economics in that it creates rising demand for private security services at rising prices that are not inflationary because of rising fear, and contributes to a rising GDP. Such is the warped logic of econometrics employed by the FRBNY review on the economic impact of terrorism-induced homeland-security expenditure.

The inductive approach has a long history of producing esoteric, at times bizarre theories. Jevons discerned from data evidence of a sunspot-driven business cycle (1875, 1884). Clement Juglar (1819-1905), a French doctor, statistician and father of business-cycle theory, was an early proponent (1862) of the development of an economic theory of the business cycle by identifying the "Juglar seven-to-11-year industrial cycle" that has since been associated with his name. His findings on credit cycles spurred the subsequent efforts of overinvestment theorists. Juglar saw in financial tables evidence for a credit-driven cycle. Similarly, Henry Ludwell Moore (1869-1958), a student of Menger in Vienna and an early disciple of Walras in France, was the only American member of the original Lausanne School grouping around the Frenchman Walras and the Italian Vilfredo Pareto. The central attribute of the Lausanne School was its development of general equilibrium theory and its extension of the applicability of the neo-classical approach to economics. Moore also delved deeply into discovering the connection between commodity business cycles and equilibrium theory. His theory of the cycle was externally driven by eight-year cycles of rainfall. His magnum opus, Synthetic Economics (1929), was a Herculean attempt to estimate Walras` general equilibrium system. Moore used the inductive approach in 1914 to argue for a weather and astral-driven cycle.

The hypothetical approach was also used by economists to attempt to fit data to demand curves, as represented by Nikolai D Kondratiev (1892-1931?), Russian economist and founder of the Moscow Institute for Business Conditions. Kondratiev identified the half-century "long wave" in his famous 1922 tract and 1926 article "The Long Waves in Economic Life". One of the architects of the first Soviet Five Year Plan, he was imprisoned in a Siberian camp in which he died some time in the 1930s. Wesley C Mitchell and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) used the hypothetical approach in their research. NBER today is the official diagnostician of recessions in the US economy. The measurement of business cycles was the main topic in the hypothetical approach. The NBER does not record Kondratiev Cycles (or "long waves") as its researchers do not believe these cycles exist. Nonetheless, four Kondratiev waves have been identified:

1. The Industrial Revolution (1787-1842) is the most famous Kondratiev wave: the boom began in about 1787 and turned into a recession at the beginning of the Napoleonic age in 1801 and, in 1814, deepened into a depression. The depression lasted until about 1827, after which there was a recovery until 1842. As is obvious, Kondratiev rode on the development of textile, iron and other steam-powered industries after 1842.

2. The Bourgeois Kondratiev (1843-1897): After 1842, the boom re-emerged and a new Kondratiev wave began, this one as a result of the railroad age in Northern Europe and the US and the accompanying expansion in the coal and iron industries. The boom ended approximately in 1857 when it turned into a recession. The recession turned into a depression in 1870, which lasted until about 1885. The recovery began after that and lasted until 1897.

3. The Neo-Mercantilist Kondratiev (1898-1950?): The boom began about 1898 with the expansion of electric power and the automobile industry and lasted until about 1911. The recession that followed turned into depression in about 1925 and lasted until around 1935. This third wave entered into a recovery immediately afterward, which one might suspect lasted until around 1950.

4. The Fourth Kondratiev (1950- 2010?). There has been much debate among believers on the dating of the fourth wave, largely because of the confusions generated by the low fluctuation in price levels and the issue of Keynesian policies, and hence this debate is yet to be resolved. Perhaps the most acceptable set of dates is that the boom began around 1950 and lasted until about 1974, wherein recession set in. When (and if) this recession fell into its depression phase may be more difficult to ascertain (circa 1981?), but what has been more or less agreed upon is that in 1992 (or thereabouts) the recovery began and has been projected to give way to a boom, and thus a new Kondratiev wave, around 2010 or so.

Simon Kuznets (1901-85), neither a Keynesian nor an econometrician, took his cues from Mitchell`s institutionalism. His initial work was on the empirical analysis of business cycles (1930) - a 15-20-year cycle he identified was later attached to his name, the "Kuznets Cycle". Kuznets was also one of the earliest workers on developmental economics, in particular collecting and analyzing the empirical characteristics of developing countries. His major thesis, which argued that underdeveloped countries of today possess characteristics different from those that industrialized countries faced before they developed, helped put an end to the simplistic view that all countries went through the same "linear stages" in their history and launched the separate field of development economics - which now focused on the analysis of modern underdeveloped countries` distinct experiences. Among his several discoveries that sparked important theoretical research programs was that of the inverted U-shaped relation between income inequality and economic growth; he also discovered the patterns in savings-income behavior. Kuznets won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1971 while he was at Harvard University.

Private security industry giants
Wackenhut Services, a subsidiary of the Wackenhut Corp, provides security services to private and public clients, including facilities operations and maintenance, emergency preparation and response, fire protection, hazardous-material management, and security and law-enforcement services. The company also operates a homeland-security division that provides border security, information analysis, and emergency response for situations involving chemical agents, biological warfare, and weapons of mass destruction. US government and public agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Energy, and the US Army, are paying clients.

The late George R Wackenhut, a former US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, built the Wackenhut Corp into an international security firm that promoted the use of private guards at prisons, airports and nuclear power plants. From the McCarthy era on, when a communist could be found hiding under almost every bed in the United States, the country`s appetite for private security escalated into hysteria. George Wackenhut cashed in by persuading thousands of communities and government agencies to put private guards in public jobs, a move long resisted in vain by law-enforcement officials. Started in 1954 as a three-man detective agency in Miami, the struggling company turned to providing guard services to stay afloat and later earned contracts with Lockheed Martin and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to protect classified projects from communist spies. To impress potential clients, Wackenhut dressed his guards in helmets and paratrooper boots, and he recruited former members of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the FBI and elite military forces to join management and the company`s board. Over the next four decades, Wackenhut personnel guarded corporate buildings during labor strikes, managed security for airlines at nearly 90 airports, and supplemented municipal services such as fire fighting and emergency medical services in several small communities. Its guards patrolled the Atomic Energy Commission`s nuclear test site in Nevada and even a handful of US embassies.

The company`s expansion into prison security and other correctional operations in the 1980s became its most profitable move. It was one of the first private security firms hired by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and has since received federal contracts from the US Marshals Service and the immigration and customs enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security. The privatization of prisons has had its critics and Wackenhut`s guards have been accused of abusing inmates in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. The Wackenhut Correction Corp, the company`s prisons subsidiary, now manages more than 40,000 prison beds, mostly in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

According to a head count taken in the middle of 2002, the 50 US states, the District of Columbia and the federal government held 1,355,748 prisoners (two-thirds of the total incarcerated population), and local municipal and county jails held 665,475 inmates, with a total of more than 2 million inmates. US jails held one of every 142 US residents. Males were incarcerated at the rate of 1,309 inmates per 100,000 men, while the female incarceration rate was 113 per 100,000 female residents. Of the 1,200,203 state prisoners, 3,055 were younger than 18 years of age. In addition, adult jails held 7,248 inmates under 18. As of June 30, 2002, state and federal correctional authorities held 88,776 non-citizens, a 1% increase from the 87,917 held a year earlier. Sixty-two percent were held in state prisons and 38% in federal institutions. Privately operated prisons held 86,626 inmates. By comparison, the US has 983,000 hospital beds, less than half of the number of prison beds. That is a failed-state syndrome if there were ever one.

As his company grew, Wackenhut recruited prominent directors such as Clarence M Kelley, former head of the FBI; James J Rowley, former director of the US Secret Service; and Frank C Carlucci, former US defense secretary and former CIA deputy director. Before president Ronald Reagan appointed him director of central intelligence, William J Casey was Wackenhut`s outside legal counsel. Such connections fueled speculation that the company was a front for the CIA, which Wackenhut denied.

Wackenhut, outspoken in his conservative politics, was occasionally seen as overly zealous in his investigative assignments. In 1967, when governor Claude R Kirk Jr of Florida appointed him chief of a private police force to investigate organized crime, Wackenhut was criticized for saying publicly that he and his officers would not limit themselves to suspected criminals but would "investigate everyone and anyone who needs investigating". The police force was short-lived, but the company`s tactics created a dispute again in 1991, when a congressional inquiry found that it had spied on an environmental advocate by installing miniature cameras in his hotel rooms and illegally taking documents from his home in his absence.

Kroll is another major private security company. Its experts in security, protection, engineering, business continuity and emergency management help clients prevent, prepare for and respond to the many threats they face at home and abroad that the state fails to provide. Kroll`s approaches are designed to respond quickly to changing threat conditions and ensure operational continuity in the wake of a crisis. Global threats are forcing companies to take a harder look at their security programs. From assessment to implementation, clients are told they can benefit from Kroll`s seamless integration of services, resulting in a more efficient, cost-effective security program, albeit at times outside the law even if technically not illegal. Kroll experts develop proactive, tiered approaches that can respond quickly to changing threat conditions and help ensure operational continuity in the wake of a crisis. Private security programs can be free of civil-rights restraints. Kroll`s 2003 sales were $485.5 million, with year-on-year sales growth of 67.9%. Last May 18, Kroll Inc and Marsh and McLennan Companies (MMC), the insurance broker now under investigation, announced that they had entered into a merger agreement under which MMC would acquire Kroll Inc in a $1.9 billion cash transaction. In October, New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer sued Marsh & McLennan, the world`s largest insurance broker, accusing it of rigging bids and fixing prices while steering business to insurers that paid the highest placement fees. In January, Marsh agreed to pay $850 million to settle the suit, in line with placement fees it collected in 2003, and agreed to change its business practices. Marsh took a pretax charge of $618 million in the fourth quarter for the settlement, in addition to a $232 million charge taken in the third quarter. The New York-based company reported a 2004 fourth-quarter loss of $676 million, or $1.28 a share, compared with a profit of $375 million, or 69 cents a share, a year earlier. In essence, US taxpayers paid for MMC settlement costs.

Washington Group International Inc, based in Boise, Idaho, with approximately 27,000 employees at work in more than 40 US states and more than 30 countries, provides professional, scientific, management, and development services in more than two dozen major markets. Founded in 1964 by Dennis R Washington in Missoula, Montana, the company rose to the top of the civil-construction market in Montana, and expanded into mining, industrial construction, and environmental clean-up work. As his company grew into a major regional firm, Washington`s vision for the future continued to expand also, leading to a series of acquisitions that produced the international powerhouse the company is today. In 1993, Washington Construction Co expanded its heavy civil-construction operation when it merged with Kasler Corp, a California-based firm with large-scale operations in heavy civil construction. In 1996, Washington Construction acquired Morrison Knudsen, gaining an 84-year heritage of mining, engineering and construction globally. With the acquisition, the company had capabilities and services that reached across five markets: infrastructure, mining, industrial/process, energy and environment, and power. In 1999, the company acquired the government-services operations of Westinghouse Electric Co, becoming a science and technology services leader. In 2000, the company expanded its market leadership by acquiring Raytheon Engineers and Constructors to produce one of the largest companies in the industry.

Today, Washington Group holds leading positions in six top markets and a service offering that spans the entire range of its clients` needs, unifying a vision that has been 10 years in the making. Being the undisputed leader in the destruction of US stockpiles of chemical weapons, Washington Group has contracts with the US government worth more than $4.2 billion to design, build, operate, and close chemical-weapons destruction plants at four sites in the United States. Washington Group`s Westinghouse Savannah River Co has operated since 1989 the 803-square-kilometer Savannah River Site (SRS) for the US Department of Energy (DOE). The site is home to the Defense Waste Processing Facility, the largest high-level radioactive-liquid stabilization plant in the world. The site`s approximately 9,000 employees are engaged in environmental remediation and maintenance of the nation`s nuclear stockpile. Washington Group`s involvement at SRS is ever changing from production of weapons-grade plutonium and tritium during the Cold War to cleanup and disposal today. The SRS continues to meet the changing needs of the DOE.

Cold War nuclear deterrence was based on the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) with long-range delivery systems armed with independently targetable re-entry warheads. The SRS in South Carolina was constructed in the early stages of the Cold War. The site`s main purpose was to produce basic materials used in the fabrication of nuclear weapons, primarily tritium and plutonium-239. The five reactors built at the site produced weapons-grade nuclear materials that were used in weaponry as well as plutonium-238 for power sources for NASA deep-space missions. The SRS has operated for almost half a century. When Westinghouse Savannah River Co took over the site in 1989, its task was to re-engineer and upgrade three of the five 1950s-era nuclear reactors that produced plutonium and tritium.

By the end of the decade the global balance of power had shifted. With the end of the Cold War, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the role of the Savannah River Site and other DOE defense-related facilities changed.

Washington Group`s history at the SRS is one of dealing with the changing needs of the DOE. It is a large and complex site and one of the many challenges the company tackles is how to adapt to new DOE missions and changing national priorities. As a result of privatization of DOE functions, private profit became a legitimate factor in the deliberation in the nation`s nuclear policy.

With the passage of arms-reduction treaties, the need for plutonium and tritium declined. The SRS mission shifted from nuclear armament to disarmament in areas such as groundwater remediation, cleaning up inactive waste sites, and waste management, pollution that had been part of the armament process. By the middle of the 1980s, construction was started on a major facility that would immobilize high-level radioactive waste and convert it into a durable glass form through a process called vitrification. The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) would become the world`s largest system for stabilizing radioactive waste in glass.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, heightened the United States` awareness of the wide-ranging consequences of such attacks. To reduce America`s vulnerability to terrorism and other disasters, President Bush issued the National Strategy for Homeland Security (NSHS) to protect public health and safety and key assets vital to US government, economy and morale. Its mission is twofold: 1) to mobilize the entire nation in a concerted effort to protect its homeland from terrorists and 2) to ensure a high level of security in a free and ever-changing society.

Washington Group International sees itself playing a crucial role in homeland security, helping to prevent, protect, and prepare for catastrophic threats to the US as well as developing recovery techniques should such attacks occur. These efforts are focused on protecting military bases, both at home and abroad, securing critical infrastructure against modern threats, such as dirty bombs, by utilizing innovative detection and mitigation systems. Washington Group provides a wide range of engineering, construction, and threat-analysis services to government customers. These specialized services include: Real-time threat simulation; security vulnerability analysis and mitigation; emergency and crisis response; security-related technology integration and deployment; hazard assessment; and threat and consequence assessment.

Washington Group International claimed a leading role in ridding the US and the world of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when operations began last August 9 at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (ANCDF) in Alabama. Over the next seven years, Washington Demilitarization Co and its subsidiary, Westinghouse Anniston, is scheduled to destroy hundreds of thousands of chemical weapons stored at the Anniston Army Depot.

In the former Soviet Union (FSU), Lugar-Nunn legislation is providing funding to help former Soviet states dismantle their arsenals of WMD. Washington Group International is the first foreign organization successfully to license and design, construct and operate a Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) facility in the FSU. Washington Group was awarded six contracts by the US Defense Department`s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to build a Neutralization and Dismantling Facility (NDF) in Dniepropetrovsk, Ukraine, where the company disassembled, eliminated, disposed and salvaged SS-19 missiles.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine, a country of 52 million people, inherited the world`s third-largest nuclear arsenal. There were more than 180 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with more than 1,200 warheads on Ukrainian territory. The stockpile consisted of 133 SS-19s and 46 SS-24s armed with nuclear warheads. There were an additional 14 SS-24s present in Ukraine but not deployed with warheads. Ukraine also inherited several dozen bombers with nuclear capabilities that were armed with approximately 600 air-launched bombs and more gravity bombs. As many as 3,000 tactical weapons rounded out the arsenal that totaled about 5,000 strategic and tactical weapons. A trilateral agreement signed in January 1994 by the US, Russia and Ukraine that would send the nuclear warheads back to Russia was the first step in making Ukraine a nuclear-free nation.

Washington Group went to Ukraine in 1994 in a partnership with Thiokol, a rocket-motor maker. Thiokol needed a company with construction and engineering experience for work in the FSU. The US partners won the contract that turned into a disassembly and elimination project with the Defense Nuclear Agency, later renamed the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. From 1994 through 2003 the Department of Defense awarded Washington Group a series of contracts to disassemble, dispose, eliminate, salvage and store Soviet ICBMs for the DTRA. An early contract called for the design, construction management and operation of a 2694-square-meter Neutralization and Dismantling Facility (NDF) in the southern oblast of Dniepropetrovsk, a Soviet industrial/technology center that had produced trucks from 1944 until May of 1951, when production switched to ballistic missiles. During the final stages of the Cold War, Leonid Kuchma directed operations at the Dniepropetrovsk plant that produced missiles, space-launch vehicles, satellites and rocket engines. In the waning years of the Soviet regime, maintenance on the facility diminished as the Soviet economy collapsed. After the dissolution of the USSR, Kuchma became Ukraine`s prime minister (1992-93) and then its second president in July 1994. He remained in power until January 23, 2005, when his hand-picked successor, Viktor Yanukovych, lost the presidential election to Viktor Yushchenko.

Guardsmark is the world`s largest employer of former FBI agents and also one of the largest security firms in the United States. Guardsmark operates in some 400 cities in North America, where it provides security services to the financial, utility, transportation, and health-care industries. The company offers security guards, private investigation, and drug-testing services. It consults with architects and builders to design security programs. Guardsmark also conducts background checks (employment, education, and criminal history) and provides outsourcing services (Peoplemark). Chairman and president Ira Lipman owns the company, which he founded in 1963.

Allied-Barton Security Services, formerly Allied Security, is one of the largest private security firms in the US. The company serves more than 2,100 clients through more than 60 offices in 37 states. The company primarily provides security guards and staffing services for shopping malls, office buildings, hospitals, corporate complexes, and universities, but also offers 24-hour alarm monitoring, closed-circuit television systems, access-control systems, and burglar- and fire-alarm systems. In addition, Allied Security provides consulting services and facility assessment. The company, which is owned by MacAndrews and Forbes Holdings, has acquired and merged with Barton Protection Services. Sales in 2003 were $550 million, year-on-year sales growth was 10%, and it had 23,000 employees, boasting year-on-year employee growth of 21.1%.

Inter-Con Security Systems, one of the largest private security consulting firms in the US, provides custom-designed security programs for commercial, governmental, and industrial clients in 25 countries on four continents. Its services include security consulting, protection, investigations, and training. It also provides security-guard and patrol services. Inter-Con`s clients have included NASA, the Academy Awards, and the US government. The company, founded in 1973, is owned by chief executive officer Rick Hernandez and the Hernandez family. Sales in 2003 were $1 billion, and the company had 25,000 employees.

Run by former US Secret Service agents, Vance International, a part of SPX`s Security and Investigations Unit, offers executive protection, uniformed guards, investigations and training. It also provides asset protection and temporary labor for companies during strikes or natural disasters. Serving corporations and government agencies, as well as the occasional celebrity, Vance International has been called the "Rolls-Royce" of security firms; clients have included Bill Gates, Nelson Mandela and Arnold Schwarzenegger. President and chief executive officer Chuck Vance founded the firm in 1984, acquired by SPX in 2002.

Security on the cheap
By September 2001 there were an estimated 1 million to 2 million workers in some 13,000 private security companies in the US, and some say there are now twice as many private security workers as police officers. The number of workers in the industry grew nearly 20% in the last decade, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it will continue to increase as companies beef up security to allay fears of crime, vandalism and terrorism.

These guards, however, are not police officers. Instead, they are uniformed watchmen, usually unarmed, who patrol airports, shopping malls, private businesses and college campuses. As companies downsize, they often have their security personnel - typically provided by third-party contractors - perform two jobs at once. These "guards" also double as receptionists or customer service workers. Even the government, in efforts to cut costs, sometimes subcontracts security in prisons and federal buildings to private security companies.

And of course, these companies have been used to break union picket lines and defend strikebreakers. Public-sector unions are also keeping a wary eye on the small but growing trend of private security guards replacing unionized public employees. Unlike their public-sector or in-house counterparts, these private security guards are not highly trained or well paid.

And while many in the security industry, including the managers of some security companies, are pushing for national standards concerning training and skill level, the industry does not pay enough to attract and maintain qualified personnel. Richard Marinaro, Long Island director of Boston-based Unico Security Services, told Newsday in 1998 that the security companies "can`t get people at these wages, and we`re in competition with the McDonald`s and the Wendy`s [fast-food chains] of the world". Yet the jobs that these guards are asked to do - working eight-hour shifts without a lunch break, showing restraint and judgment when dealing with the general public, serving as witnesses in court - require more skill, training, and dedication than working in fast food.

Stories of shoddy work and/or theft by the security guards who are supposed to protect people and property are surprisingly commonplace among the companies that specialize in providing private security in the US. For example, workers for Argenbright, a company that provides workers for security checkpoints in airports, were involved in four airport security breaches in less than a year in 1997-98, as well as one that required an evacuation of the United Airlines terminal at Chicago`s O`Hare Airport in 1999. In April 2000, federal prosecutors also found that Argenbright officials at Philadelphia International Airport routinely falsified records, hired convicted felons, and provided low-paid employees with answers to federally required tests for baggage screeners.

One trend that has coincided with the increase in incidents involving private security and their low wages is the industry`s drift toward consolidation. Last August, Pinkerton, a subsidiary of Sweden-based Securitas, merged with Burns International Corp, another industry leader, to create a private security giant with more than 600 offices internationally and annual revenue of more than $2.5 billion. Two Pennsylvania companies, Allied Security and SpectaGuard, also merged in 2000, making the company the largest independently held security company in the country and giving it business in more than 250 cities across the US.

With consolidation has come corporatization of the industry, something that in the eyes of some industry insiders has led industry leaders to sacrifice quality service for an image that sells. "Pinkerton sold out to a low-end, minimum-wage type of service," said Roger Schmedlen, president of Loss Prevention Concepts Ltd, a Michigan-based security consulting agency, as he described Pinkerton`s entry into lower-level watchman service in the early 1980s. "They put out all of these slick brochures and took on a national advertising campaign, and it changed the industry. They have some great pictures of guys that look like Superman, but government studies show that the typical security guard doesn`t have much more than an eighth-grade education, and is elderly." But Pinkerton, and most other companies, also offer more "high end" security guards - ones who are better trained, more skilled, and better paid. "There are some really good guards out there," Schmedlen noted. "But a lot of these companies just go for the low bid and take it."

Ultimately, these companies, which have reaped the benefits of exploding demand for security guards in the US, have skimped on wages whenever possible to maximize profit. "They`re profit-making enterprises, and they have stockholders and shareholders," explained one industry observer. "In any kind of safety operation, the bulk of the expense goes towards personnel compensation. So if you want to try to make a profit, the first thing you make cuts in are wages and benefits."

With its low wages, low standards, and poor working conditions, the private-security industry is one that, on the surface, seems ripe for unionization. But a provision of the National Labor Relations Act stipulates: "No labor organization shall be certified as the representative of employees in a bargaining unit of guards if such organization admits to membership, or is affiliated directly or indirectly with an organization which admits to membership, employees other than guards" (source: Section 159, Title 29 of the US Labor Code). This provision, known more commonly as the "Guard Law", gives management the right to refuse workers` petitions to join a union such as the Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), or any other international union that has members outside of the security sector. While it was originally written to prevent potential conflicts of interest in labor disputes (if United Auto Workers guards were assigned to defend against a UAW plant strike, for example), it also serves to undermine efforts by unions to gain an organizing foothold in the industry.

There is, however, a loophole that unions can use to gain recognition. Management can voluntarily choose to recognize guards as part of a larger union, as some have in card-check elections. Argenbright airport workers in Los Angeles and San Francisco were able to do this when they voted to join the SEIU. Mitigating circumstances, such as public pressure or the fact that many companies prefer to deal with a union instead of individual employees, have helped international unions gain recognition from some of these security companies. And while other security guards have the option of joining other small, unaffiliated unions that represent only security personnel, still less than 10% of the US industry is organized.

As with many of the increasing number of low-paying service jobs that have sprung up in the past decade, the growing ranks of private security guards represent another challenge for organized labor. If they are going to maintain their foothold among the blue-collar workforce, unions need to adapt and adjust to the realities of exploitative industries that will continue to sacrifice both quality service and decent wages until their workers gain a decent voice on the job.

The employees of the private security sector, in essence a private army, are greater in number than the soldiers in the US Army. This private army thrives on social instability and state failure. These private security companies have no financial incentive to promote peace and stability. The dependence of the state on their contracted service gives them an influential voice in formulating state policies. Security threat is big business and any reduction of threats in fact threatens the economy.

Markets provide a variety of incentives to producers, their customers, and local communities to guard against a wide range of risks, including the possibility of terrorism. Private producers of goods and services generally will benefit from safe operating practices (including physical security) and the purchase of insurance to help limit any financial losses. But the incentives for private businesses to reduce their vulnerability to attack, and the potential losses for those who would be affected, may be inadequate when the private costs of the threat of terrorism are lower than the social costs, or equivalently, when the private benefits from security measures are less than the social benefits.

Private costs would be closely associated with damages to production and distribution facilities and the harm to industry workers, as well as the potential loss of business. But the total social costs could go further and include the harm or loss of life to individuals such as the neighbors of a targeted facility or the consumers of a tainted product, damage to the local environment, and negative effects on other businesses dependent on the targeted industry. If the product of the targeted industry became a potential weapon in attacks elsewhere, the social costs could be broader still. For example, stolen chemicals could be used to attack an office building. If the disparity between private costs and social costs is significant, the result is that private firms have insufficient incentive to meet social objectives.

Many of the US government programs that existed before September 11 are intended to bring private and social costs into line. Many firms had long been subject to extensive government intervention because of the dangers that those industries` operations or products can pose to public safety, environmental quality, and local economies.

Existing government programs provide a starting point for examining possible new efforts. Those programs may be adequate to prompt businesses to address much or all of the increased terrorist threat. But if private efforts are inadequate, policy options for prompting additional efforts will probably build on the incentives generated by existing requirements. Cost-effective policies for enhancing homeland security may involve expanding some programs that have non-security goals while reducing others. For example, programs that were intended primarily to help protect the public from relatively common threats, such as industrial accidents or food contamination, could be expanded to help address the terrorist threat. But programs that were intended to disseminate information on critical industries, such as the production and storage capacities of hazardous facilities, might need to be curtailed to keep that information out of the hands of terrorists.

If a chemical-production facility were subject to an attack, for example, the ensuing fire or explosion could expose the surrounding community to dangerous toxins. That added exposure would represent a social cost that the private firm would not face - especially if the damage exceeded the limits of the owner`s insurance coverage and other financial resources. As a result, the owner would have less incentive than otherwise to guard against such attacks, scale back operations, or relocate. Current government programs affecting the safety of chemical-plant operations and supporting local emergency preparations are a response to that social cost and also contribute to homeland security. However, the increased awareness of the terrorist threat since September 11, if not the threat itself, also may indicate a need to step up security efforts since the social benefits of spending on security have increased.

The type of intervention that would force industry to internalize the costs of security and for which it would bear the immediate costs would include requirements to take preventive measures, assessment of penalties for failing to take certain actions, or imposition of taxes on certain activities or products.

The type of intervention that would have the government socialize the cost - so that everyone paid for the enhanced security - would include new programs that rewarded industry for taking measures to protect vulnerable facilities or make those facilities less dangerous, for example, by supporting the adoption of safer production processes or the use of safer chemicals. Alternatively, rather than force or pay industry to make certain changes, new programs could help inform nearby residents of the dangers of an attack or inform industry of currently available options for reducing its vulnerabilities.

The use of mercenaries in war
The Guardian reported that with the casualty toll ticking ever upward and troops stretched thin on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration is looking to mercenaries to help control Iraq. These soldiers-for-hire are veterans of some of the most repressive military forces in the world, including that of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and South Africa`s apartheid regime. In February 2003, Blackwater USA, a North Carolina-based Pentagon contractor, began hiring former combat personnel in Chile, offering them up to $4,000 a month to guard oil wells in Iraq. The company flew the first batch of 60 former commandos to a training camp in North Carolina. These recruits will eventually wind up in Iraq where they will spend six months to a year.

"We scour the ends of the Earth to find professionals - the Chilean commandos are very, very professional and they fit within the Blackwater system," Gary Jackson, the president of Blackwater USA, told the Guardian early last year. While Blackwater USA is not nearly as well known as Halliburton or Bechtel - two mega-corporations making a killing off the reconstruction of Iraq - it nevertheless is doing quite well financially thanks to the White House`s "war on terror". The company specializes in firearms, tactics and security training, and in October 2003, according to Mother Jones magazine, the company won a $35.7 million contract to train more than 10,000 sailors from Virginia, Texas and California each year in "force protection".

Business has been booming for Blackwater, which now owns, as its press release boasts, "the largest privately owned firearms training facility in the nation". In an interview with the Guardian, Jackson said: "We have grown 300% over each of the past three years [before March 2004] and we are small compared to the big ones. We have a very small niche market - we work towards putting out the cream of the crop, the best."

The practice of using mercenaries to fight wars is hardly new, but it has become increasingly popular in recent years. During the first Gulf War (1990-91), one out of every 50 soldiers on the battlefield was a mercenary. That number climbed to one in 10 during the Bosnian conflict (1996). Currently there are thousands of Bosnian, Filipino and US soldiers under contract with private companies serving in Iraq. Their duties have ranged from airport security to protecting Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Apart from Chile, the other popular source for military recruits is South Africa. The United Nations recently reported that South Africa "is already among the top three suppliers of personnel for private military companies, along with the UK and the US". There are more than 1,500 South Africans in Iraq today, most of whom are former members of the South African Defense Force and South African police.

According to the Cape Times, among the South African companies under contract with the Pentagon are Meteoric Tactical Solutions, which "is providing protection and is also training new Iraqi police and security units", and Erinys, a joint South African-British company, which "has received a multimillion-dollar contract to protect Iraq`s oil industry," the Cape Times reported early last year.

The recruitment of its citizens, however, leaves the Chilean and South African governments less than happy. The Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act prohibits South African citizens from direct participation as a combatant in armed conflict for private gain. Michelle Bachelet, Chile`s former defense minister, ordered an investigation into whether such recruitment was legal under Chilean laws. Bachelet also was troubled by stories that soldiers on active duty were leaving the company to sign up as mercenaries.

It is also only a matter of time before US soldiers grow unhappy with the presence of mercenaries in their midst. The high salaries and shorter terms of employment offered to mercenaries will inevitably make a serious dent on the military`s budget. As Blackwater`s Jackson acknowledged in the Guardian, "If they are going to outsource tasks that were once held by active-duty military and are now using private contractors, those guys [on active duty] are looking and asking: Where is the money?"

Raenette Taljaard, a member of the South African parliament, has describes the ubiquitous reach of this "booming cottage industry" of private security companies: "In addition to becoming an integral part of the machinery of war, they are emerging as cogs in the infrastructure of peace. US-allied military officials and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are quickly becoming familiar with the `brand services` provided by companies." In the era of neo-liberal globalization, war has become just another industry to be outsourced.

Next: Lessons of the Thirty Years` War for the "war on terrorism"

Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.

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Es ist noch nicht lange her, da wurde McCain bei den Vorwahlen zu den 2000 Präsidentschaftswahlen von den Bush-Clique als Spion Vietnams bezeichnet. Übrigens war das die selbe Gruppe, die Kerry wegen seines Vietnamdienstes verleumdet hat. (Swift Boot Veterans)

DER SPIEGEL 15/2005 - 11. April 2005

USA

Der Zweck und die Mittel
Von Georg Mascolo, Washington
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,350546,00.html

Abu Ghureib und Guantanamo: Die Sondergesetze im Kampf gegen Terroristen, die das Weiße Haus durchsetzte, lassen sich nicht länger halten. Dafür sorgen Gerichte und konservative Senatoren wie John McCain, der grausame Verhörmethoden anprangert.

Blanke Wut beherrscht jetzt diesen Mann. Das ist nicht mehr der leise, souveräne Senator John McCain, einer der wenigen Politiker, denen es die Nation nicht übel nimmt, wenn sie gegen den beliebten Präsidenten auftreten. Er darf das; er ist so gut wie makellos, ein konservativer Republikaner, dem niemand Profilsucht vorwirft. Eine Ausnahme unter den Senatoren, der Typus, aus dem, nach Bush, ein Präsident werden könnte.

Der Zorn hat ihn in einer Sitzung des Streitkräfte-Ausschusses gepackt, Verursacher ist ein Vizeadmiral. Albert Church hat im Auftrag von Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld untersucht, wer die Schuld an der Folterung von Gefangenen im US-Gewahrsam trägt. Herausgefunden hat er erwartungsgemäß: niemand so richtig, außer eben den berühmten faulen Äpfeln, die es schließlich in jeder Armee gebe und die selbstverständlich auch bestraft würden. Kein Ergebnis, mit dem McCain sich abfinden will. Church rasselt Zahlen herunter: Todesfälle in US-Haft (er nennt 6, später korrigiert das Pentagon auf 26), Verfahren gegen Peiniger in Uniform (bislang 15). McCains Hände ballen sich zu Fäusten. Er will nicht wieder nur über die Soldaten reden. Sondern über Politiker, über die wirklich Verantwortlichen.

"Gibt es nach der Genfer Konvention einen Unterschied zwischen einem Taliban-Kämpfer, der in Afghanistan gefangen wurde, und einem Terroristen, den wir in Omaha festsetzen?", fragt der Senator. Es ist eine Fangfrage, und Church rutscht auf seinem Stuhl unruhig hin und her. Die ganze Welt kennt die Antwort. Ein Terrorist hat keinen Anspruch auf die Schutzgarantien, welche die Genfer Konvention für Kriegsgefangene vorsieht. Ein im Afghanistan-Krieg festgenommener Taliban-Soldat aber hat Ansprüche darauf, wenn denn die Regierung Bush sich nicht weigerte, ihn als Kriegsgefangenen zu behandeln. Das war der Anfang des fragwürdigen Sonderrechts im Kampf gegen den Terrorismus.

Was das bedeutet, hat McCain am eigenen Leibe erfahren. "Wissen Sie, dass auch die Nordvietnamesen amerikanische Gefangene so eingestuft hatten?", fährt der Senator den Admiral an.

McCain war fünfeinhalb Jahre lang Gefangener der Nordvietnamesen, 1967 schossen sie den jungen Piloten über Hanoi ab. "Frankenstein" nannte er seinen Aufseher und Peiniger, der ihn trat, bis die Zähne splitterten und die Rippen brachen. McCain wollte sterben. Zweimal versuchte er, sich in seiner Zelle mit einem Hemd aufzuhängen. Die Wärter haben es verhindert.

Heute sieht der Senator in der Präsidenten-Entscheidung, die Genfer Konvention außer Kraft zu setzen, eine Art Ursünde amerikanischer Außenpolitik. Die Vereinigten Staaten befürchteten nach dem 11. September 2001 weitere Anschläge und suchten nach Informationen, um das zu verhindern. Wer in Gefangenschaft geriet, sollte um jeden Preis zum Sprechen gebracht werden. Die Genfer Konvention, die vorschreibt, dass ein Gefangener lediglich seinen Namen, sein Geburtsdatum und den militärischen Rang angeben muss, stand da nur im Wege. "Die Grausamkeiten entstanden", schrieb die "New York Times" über den Church-Auftritt, "weil die Spitze der Bush-Regierung entschied, sich künftig nicht mehr an die Regeln zu halten."

Seit nunmehr elf Monaten müssen die Amerikaner mit der beunruhigenden Gewissheit leben, dass auch eigene Soldaten und Geheimdienstagenten zu Grausamkeiten fähig sind, um den Willen ihrer Gefangenen zu brechen. Dafür stehen die Bilder von Abu Ghureib, die Bilder der zu menschlichen Pyramiden aufgetürmten oder an Hundeleinen über den Gefängniskorridor gezerrten irakischen Häftlinge. Die Soldatin Lynndie England wird deshalb ab Mai vor Gericht stehen.

Das alles sei das Werk einer einzelnen, sadistischen Nachtschicht gewesen, erklärte die US-Regierung, und so will es auch Church glauben machen. Aber Abu Ghureib war auch anderswo.

Es gibt Berichte über Häftlinge im Irak, in Afghanistan und in Guantanamo, denen brennende Zigaretten in die Ohren und Klistiere in den After geschoben wurden. Die kotbeschmiert in kühlschrankkalten Räumen ausharren mussten und stundenlang mit Rockmusik beschallt wurden. Über Hundeführer, die Wetten eingingen, welcher Delinquent sich zuerst in die Hose machen würde, wenn sie ihre Tiere von der Leine ließen. Über Soldaten, die fünf Tage lang die Beine eines Häftlings malträtierten, bis er starb. Über Scheinexekutionen und Folter, bei der das Opfer immer wieder unter Wasser getaucht wird, bis es glaubt zu ertrinken.

Wie Senator McCain plädieren auch Demokraten im Kongress für umfassende parlamentarische Untersuchungen. Vor allem die noch immer geheimen Einzelheiten des "Rendition"-Programms wollen sie jetzt aufgeklärt wissen - die von der CIA organisierte Überstellung von Terrorverdächtigen an Staaten mit Foltertradition.

Die CIA-eigenen Jets, welche die Häftlinge transportierten, sind in 40 Ländern 600-mal gelandet. Ziele waren die Brennpunkte des internationalen Terrors: 30-mal Jordanien, 19-mal Afghanistan, dazu häufige Stopps im Irak, in Ägypten, Libyen, Guantanamo und anderswo.

Lange Zeit nahm Amerika den Rechtsbruch als patriotischen Preis im Krieg gegen den Terrorismus hin. Die Nachsicht mit der Regierung scheint jedoch vorbei zu sein. Nicht einmal Haftbefehle gegen amerikanische Agenten werden CIA-intern inzwischen ausgeschlossen. In Europa ermitteln Staatsanwaltschaften, weil mindestens drei der ins Visier amerikanischer Terrorfahnder geratenen Verdächtigen gekidnappt wurden. Sie lebten in Schweden, Italien und Deutschland. Khaled el-Masri aus Ulm brachte eine Namensverwechslung vier Monate in einer Zelle in Afghanistan ein. Immerhin hat sich die US-Regierung für den Irrtum und die Entführung entschuldigt.

"Folter ist nicht akzeptabel, wir überstellen niemanden in ein Land, in dem gefoltert wird", behauptet Präsident Bush. Das klingt gut. Aber einige der Verantwortlichen, die sich vorwerfen lassen müssen, die Exzesse begünstigt zu haben, hat er sogar belohnt und befördert.

Der Jurist Jay Bybee, der im August 2002 das berüchtigte Memo mitverfasste, wonach der Präsident jede Art Verhörmethode genehmigen darf, solange der Delinquent nicht stirbt oder bleibende physische Schäden erleidet, ist inzwischen Bundesrichter. Alberto Gonzales, der als Rechtsberater des Präsidenten das Gutachten ohne Widerspruch weiterleitete, brachte es zum Justizminister. Vor seinem Amtsantritt erklärte er bei der Senatsanhörung, dass US-Geheimdienstler Gefangene misshandeln dürften, solange es sich dabei nicht um amerikanische Staatsbürger handele und solange sie im Ausland gefoltert würden.

Der Zweck heiligt die Mittel, das ist die Logik dieses Sonderrechts.

Mittlerweile haben sich allerdings Gerichte gefunden, die anderer Ansicht sind. Sie verlangen faire Verfahren für die Insassen von Guantanamo. Sie verweigern die Überstellung Verdächtiger zum Beispiel an den Jemen, solange die Garantie fehle, dass diese dort nicht gefoltert würden. Und im März hat ein Gericht verfügt, dass der seit knapp drei Jahren einsitzende US-Bürger José Padilla, der angeblich eine sogenannte schmutzige Bombe zünden und damit radioaktive Strahlung freisetzen wollte, binnen 45 Tagen angeklagt oder aber freigelassen werden muss.

Die Regierung führte erst kürzlich einen Prozess, um zu verhindern, dass geheime Unterlagen über Folterzwischenfälle an Menschenrechtsorganisationen übergeben werden, und verlor ihn. Nun sind Zehntausende Dokumente aus dem Pentagon und dem FBI zugänglich und widerlegen die Behauptung, Übergriffe hätten nur vereinzelt stattgefunden.

In Bagdad wiesen Häftlinge Brandspuren im Nacken und blaue Flecken im Gesicht auf; zwei Militärs fotografierten, wie einem Gefangenen immer wieder ins Gesicht geschlagen wird. Sie zeigten einem Vorgesetzten die Bilder, der sie sofort konfiszierte. Einem Sergeanten, der Meldung über Misshandlungen machte, attestierte sein Vorgesetzter, er sei psychisch auffällig.

"Wahnsinn in Ramadi" heißt ein Video mit Kriegserlebnissen von Nationalgardisten aus Florida: Einem Schwerverletzten wird ins Gesicht getreten, ein GI dreht einen Sterbenden so, dass der Kameramann Ein- und Austrittswunde der Kugel filmen kann. Weil Offiziere das Verhalten nur als "unangemessen" einstufen, wurde kein Verfahren eingeleitet.

Die erschreckendsten Schilderungen stammen nicht aus dem blutigen Chaos des Irak, sondern aus dem Gefangenenlager Guantanamo auf Kuba. Sie stützen sich nicht etwa auf die womöglich zweifelhaften Berichte Freigelassener, sondern auf Aussagen dort eingesetzter Soldaten.

"Am anderen Ende des Flurs fand ein sehr lautes Verhör statt, ich habe mich entschieden, es mir lieber nicht anzuschauen", schrieb ein Kriminalbeamter in einer E-Mail an einen Kollegen. Seine Vorgesetzten protestierten beim kommandierenden General gegen die Verhörmethoden der verantwortlichen Soldaten. Doch der fertigte den Einspruch ab. "Das FBI mag seine Art haben, mit diesen Dingen umzugehen, wir haben unsere Marschorder vom SecDef", womit der "Secretary of Defence" Rumsfeld gemeint ist.

Erik Saar arbeitete sieben Monate als Arabisch-Dolmetscher in Guantanamo. Der ehemalige Feldwebel hat über diese Zeit und seine Erlebnisse ein Buch geschrieben, das bald erscheinen soll. Noch ist nicht klar, welche seiner Schilderungen aus dem Innenleben des Lagers die Zensoren des Pentagon im vermeintlichen Sicherheitsinteresse der Nation streichen werden.

Saars Enthüllungen, von denen bereits Auszüge kursieren, lesen sich wie das Skript für einen schlechten Pornofilm. Er schildert Soldatinnen, die sich vor angeketteten Häftlingen entblößen, ihre Brüste an ihnen reiben und jede Erektion bejubeln. Das sei als Taktik deklariert worden, um die Gefangenen durch Demütigung zum Sprechen zu bringen, schreibt Saar.

Häufig hätten die Frauen gegenüber ihren Gefangenen obendrein behauptet, ihre Periode zu haben. Gläubige Muslime fühlten sich danach als unrein.

Viele der Praktiken, welche die Bush-Regierung in den ersten Jahren nach den Anschlägen in New York und Washington anwandte, gibt es nach Versicherung von Insidern heute nicht mehr.

Beim Geheimdienst CIA laufen insgesamt sechs interne Untersuchungen; eine neue Dienstanweisung verpflichtet die Agenten, sofort den Schauplatz zu verlassen, sollte das Militär "Techniken jenseits von Fragen und Antworten" anwenden.

Das ist ein schwacher Trost für Senator McCain, den die Quälereien seiner vietnamesischen Folterer gezeichnet haben. Er hat oft erklärt, es sei "unser Respekt vor allen Menschenrechten", der Amerika fundamental von Terroristen und "Schurkenstaaten" unterscheide. Und für diesen Unterschied will er weiter kämpfen: gegen Admiräle, das Pentagon und den Präsidenten - wer auch immer die Grenzen überschreitet.

© DER SPIEGEL 15/2005

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Dieser Bericht kommt aus Washington und dort wird die Lage anders eingeschätzt als im Irak selbst.

April 11, 2005
U.S. Commanders See Possible Cut in Troops in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/politics/11military.html?h…

WASHINGTON, April 10 - Two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the American-led military campaign in Iraq is making enough progress in fighting insurgents and training Iraqi security forces to allow the Pentagon to plan for significant troop reductions by early next year, senior commanders and Pentagon officials say.

Senior American officers are wary of declaring success too soon against an insurgency they say still has perhaps 12,000 to 20,000 hard-core fighters, plentiful financing and the ability to change tactics quickly to carry out deadly attacks. But there is a consensus emerging among these top officers and other senior defense officials about several positive developing trends, although each carries a cautionary note.

Attacks on allied forces have dropped to 30 to 40 a day, down from an average daily peak of 140 in the prelude to the Jan. 30 elections but still roughly at the levels of a year ago. Only about half the attacks cause casualties or damage, but on average one or more Americans die in Iraq every day, often from roadside bombs. Thirty-six American troops died there in March, the lowest monthly death toll since 21 died in February 2004.

Attacks now are aimed more at killing Iraqi civilians and security forces, and have been planned with sinister care and timing to take place outside schools, clinics and police stations when large daytime crowds have gathered.

Several top associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose network has claimed responsibility for many of the most deadly attacks, have been captured or killed in recent weeks. American commanders say it now takes longer for insurgents to regroup and conduct a series of attacks with new tactics, like the one on the night of April 2 against the Abu Ghraib prison that wounded 44 Americans and 13 Iraqi prisoners.

While senior commanders say the insurgency is still mostly driven by Iraqis, small numbers of foreign fighters who carry out most of the suicide bombings are still sneaking into the country, mainly from Syria.

The overall number of insurgents has remained virtually unchanged since last fall, even though hundreds, maybe thousands, have been killed or captured, suggesting that the insurgency can still attract the unemployed, disaffected and even enough true believers to keep the pool from drying up. American commanders also fear that the fledgling Iraqi government and security services are riddled with informants despite thorough vetting of applicants, officials say.

The American military`s priority has shifted from waging offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police officers. Iraqi forces now oversee sections of Baghdad and Mosul, with American forces on call nearby to help in a crisis. More than 2,000 American military advisers are working directly with Iraqi forces.

More Iraqi civilians are defying the insurgents` intimidation to give Iraqi forces tips on the locations of hidden roadside bombs, weapons caches and rebel safe houses. The Pentagon says that more than 152,000 Iraqis have been trained and equipped for the military or the police, but the quality and experience of those forces varies widely. Also, the Government Accountability Office said in March that those figures were inflated, including perhaps tens of thousands of police officers who are absent from duty.

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Interviews with more than a dozen senior American and Iraqi officers, top Pentagon officials and lawmakers who have visited Iraq yield an assessment that the combination of routing insurgents from their sanctuary in Falluja last November and the Iraqi elections on Jan. 30 has given the military operation sustained momentum, and put the Bush administration`s goal of turning Iraq over to a permanent, elected Iraqi government within striking distance.

"We`re on track," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. But the insurgency "kills virtually every day," he warned. "It`s still a very potent threat."

This view of steady if uneven progress is shared by virtually all senior American commanders and Pentagon officials interviewed, who base their judgments on some 50 to 70 specific measurements from casualty figures to assassination attempts against Iraqi government officials as well as subjective analyses by American commanders and diplomats. They recall how plans a year ago to reduce American forces were dashed by resurgent rebel attacks in much of the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad, and in Shiite hot spots like Najaf. And they express concern that a huge, last-ditch suicide attack against a prominent target, like the new Iraqi National Assembly, could deal the operation a severe blow. "I worry about being excessively optimistic," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on March 29.

Precisely when and how many American forces withdraw from Iraq hinges on several factors, including the security situation, the size and competence of newly trained Iraqi forces, and the wishes of the new Iraqi government. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, told CNN two weeks ago that if all went well, "we should be able to take some fairly substantial reductions in the size of our forces" by this time next year.

General Casey has declined to describe the size of any possible troop reductions, but other senior military officials said American force levels in Iraq could drop to around 105,000, or about 13 brigades, by early next year, from the 142,000 now, just over 17 brigades.

Even some of the administration`s toughest critics now express cautious optimism about an Iraq operation that costs more than $4 billion a month, as the nascent political process and slowly improving economy appear to drain away tacit support for the insurgency from the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians the military calls "fence-sitters."

"We`ve gained some real military traction over the past several months, but we`d be naïve to think that the insurgency is over," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and former officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. "We`re there militarily for the long haul."

American officials say the insurgency is still a mix of former Baath Party loyalists, Iraqi military and security service officers, Sunni Arab militants and terrorists like Mr. Zarqawi. Rather than focusing on their numbers, commanders say they are more concerned with what the insurgents can do. These groups are well armed and well financed, but are suffering some recruiting problems that are increasingly forcing them to form tactical partnerships to carry out their attacks, officials said.

"They`re slowly losing," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, a senior aide to General Myers who commanded the Fourth Infantry Division in Iraq last year.

Helping the situation is that, as the Iraqi security forces gain more confidence and experience, Iraqi residents have put more trust in them. "We are gaining more victories because people are now cooperating more with us," Maj. Gen. Adnan Thabit, the head of 11,000 Iraqi police commandos and other security forces, said in an interview.

Senior officers say the increased pressure on insurgents is driving many of them out of safe havens in Mosul, Samarra and Baghdad, and into the desert. Senior officials say it is notable, although not clearly understood, how the insurgency seems to be moving in more of a set-piece fashion than it did in its early period.

The Abu Ghraib attacks, for example, were coordinated, small-unit strikes by 40 to 60 insurgents, though they were largely ineffective, officers say.

"At this point, we are all concerned they may be changing tactics," Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas III, the senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, said in an interview. "It`s still too early to tell."

Commanders are also concerned that the attacks are being aided by a growing network of informants, some of whom appear to be in lower levels of the new Iraqi civilian administration and security forces.

"They have tentacles that reach all through the new government and the new military," said Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan, the top American air commander in the Persian Gulf region. The concern about infiltration by former Hussein loyalists has slowed, to some degree, the reforming of Iraqi security forces at all levels. "Picking senior leadership has been slower initially than I think anyone liked because the vetting process had to be so carefully done," General Myers said, adding that the process now is "moving faster, and faster and faster."

Indeed, the biggest remaining challenges are recruiting new Iraqi leaders at all levels of command, and training the new Iraqi police, American officers say.

Officials say that in training Iraqi forces as well as filling the ranks of the new Interior and Defense Ministries, they seek to strike a balance between pressing them to assume more responsibilities quickly, and not doing so before they are ready.

"We don`t want a rush to failure," said Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham, the Joint Staff`s deputy director of operations, who recently ended a tour as head of American forces in northern Iraq.

"There has been a steady increase, particularly since the elections, in the capabilities and numbers of Iraqi units," Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American trainer in Iraq, said in an e-mail message. "However, there is still a huge amount of work to be done to help them achieve the capability of conducting independent counter-insurgency operations."

How quickly those Iraqi forces take over security duties will dictate the timetable of the American withdrawal. General Myers said senior Iraqi leaders had discussed with him a possible long-term economic and security partnership with the United States, after most troops go home.

Even then, sizable numbers of Special Operations forces, intelligence personnel and surveillance systems will probably remain in Iraq or nearby countries to help quell the insurgency. Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said, "I think we`re there for a long time."

Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Iraqi Proposes Broader Amnesty
Citizens Who Killed In Battle Would Qualify
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42580-2005Apr…

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 11, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, April 10 -- Iraq`s new president called Sunday for extending amnesty to Iraqi insurgents who had killed combatants, possibly including U.S. and Iraqi troops, as part of a drive that he said could help end attacks within months.

Jalal Talabani, speaking on his first day of work in the white and gilt presidential offices after his inauguration Thursday, excluded clemency for al Qaeda and other foreign armed groups operating here.

As for killings by Iraqi insurgents, Talabani said: "There are two kinds of killing: In battle or in action, this could be covered by the amnesty. Those who are involved in killing innocent people, detonation of car bombs, killing people in mosques and in churches, these would not be covered by the amnesty."

Talabani did not say specifically whether the amnesty would apply to fighters who had killed U.S. troops, other foreign troops or Iraqi security forces. Nor did he elaborate on how an amnesty program would work.

Iraq`s new assembly speaker, Hachim Hasani, said last week when Talabani broached the topic of amnesty in his inaugural speech that the president was speaking about an amnesty by presidential order, after consultation with the new government.

The interim government put in place after U.S.-led troops routed President Saddam Hussein in March 2003 offered an amnesty to Iraqi insurgents that excluded rapists, kidnappers and killers.

Talabani said amnesty must be only a part of a program that draws Iraqi insurgents into efforts to build democracy, strengthen the economy, diminish public support for insurgents and block their attacks militarily.

"With a comprehensive policy, we can eradicate terror in the country within months," said Talabani, a Kurdish former rebel leader and Sunni Muslim elected last week by the new National Assembly.

Leaders in the government increasingly have drawn a line between Iraqi insurgent groups, with which they will seek common ground, and foreign groups, with which they won`t.

"It is essential that we separate those who came from outside the country, like all those organizations affiliated with al Qaeda, from Iraqis," Talabani said. "We must seek to win over the Iraqis to the democratic process going on in the country and fight the criminal gangs" from outside the country.

Talabani also said he would work to secure the release of hundreds of people loyal to Moqtada Sadr, a firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric, from U.S. detention. Sadr`s followers, who have twice fought U.S. troops, have pledged to follow peaceful and democratic ways, Talabani said, and have asked for his help with the detainees. "I will do my best to release them," he said.

Talabani spoke in the audience room of his new offices. A white-haired man in his early seventies who has given up the rebel trim of his youth and middle age, Talabani waited for a reporter on a chair in the presidential offices and pulled an already knotted tie over his head for the interview.

Many Iraqi Kurds backed the U.S. drive to topple Hussein, and Talabani, unlike the majority of Iraqis in opinion polls, said he was in no hurry to see U.S. troops leave.

"The war was not the best way, but it was the only way to liberate Iraq," Talabani said. "For that, I am grateful for those who came and sacrificed their lives for this thing. If there was not a sacrifice, you would see me in the mountains, not here in Baghdad! In the caves! You know, the airplanes would come bombard us."

Talabani`s election by lawmakers Wednesday makes him the first member of Iraq`s long-oppressed minority to fill the presidency and the highest-ranking Iraqi Kurd in a half-century.

Talabani and his two vice presidents have veto authority and other powers, although their duties are largely ceremonial. Their first job Thursday was naming Ibrahim Jafari, a Shiite former opposition leader, as prime minister.

Jafari`s appointment sealed one of the myriad deals by which Iraqi politicians are doling out posts in an intended national-unity government meant to bring together the Shiite majority, Kurds, Sunni Muslims and secularists.

Negotiators met with former interim president Ayad Allawi on Sunday in an effort to bring his 40-seat secular bloc into the governing coalition, said the interim deputy prime minister, Barham Salih.

Kurds and other secular politicians hope that the inclusion of Allawi`s group would offset any religious tilt by Shiite lawmakers, who won the largest share of seats in the 275-seat parliament.

Talabani said Sunday that he would oppose any move to substitute Islamic law for the current civil code on marriage, divorce, inheritance and other family matters. He said he welcomed the influence Iraq`s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, had had on building the government so far, including drawing out the Shiite vote.

Talabani also said he thought any renewed effort by the new government to remove members of Hussein`s Baath Party from the government and military should spare the hundreds of thousands who committed no crime or abuses.

But the new government cannot ignore the suffering of the victims of Hussein`s Baath-led institutions, particularly Shiites and Kurds, he said.

"They were poisoned and they were massacred. There are hundreds of thousands of victims from these two groups," he said. "Of course these people are hating very much Saddam`s Baathists. We must also take into consideration the desire of these people in dealing with these criminals.``

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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[urlBolton`s Tough Style, Record Face Scrutiny]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42539-2005Apr10.html[/url]

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The fire that`s smouldering under Bush

The Republicans are in trouble without an anointed successor
Peter Preston
Monday April 11, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1456576,00.ht…

Guardian
The most pulsating polls of the moment have nothing to do with the Tories closing the gap or falling further behind - according to which Sunday paper you`re reading. Indeed, their findings have nothing directly to do with Britain 2005 at all. (We`ll do indirectly in a moment.)

These are the polls that measure a re-elected George Bush`s popularity, and thus the "dividend" he intended to spend on "being Bush". Strange news: there is no dividend. And George, at this point of the second term, is the least popular president of the US since the second world war.

Let`s (from Gallup`s March ratings) put figures on that claim. Harry Truman in March 1949 stood at 57% approval. Dwight Eisenhower in 1957 had 65%, Lyndon Johnson in 1965 a full 69%. Richard Nixon (1973) retained 57%. In more recent times, Ronald Reagan (1985) held at 56% and Bill Clinton (1997) at 59%. Last month`s Bush score was 45%. This month it has crawled up a point or two, but still runs flat bottom of the pack.

How can this possibly be? Well, issues coagulate. Only one American in three is happy about the state of the economy. Petrol prices are taking a terrible toll - and connecting with the continuing toll in Iraq. A US majority (52%) now regrets going to war. Bush`s showpiece social-security plan has opened and closed like Michael Frayn`s Democracy on Broadway.

But one thing seeps into another. The Terri Schiavo tragedy - born-again Republicans on Capitol Hill rushing round to tell hard-working doctors and Florida judges what to do - didn`t play well. And, whether by osmosis or accident, dominant House figures like Tom DeLay, the majority leader, are coming up slimy as investigative reporters get to work. There`s a sense of grim, debilitating business as usual.

Where`s the momentum of last November and of a clear victory that laid doubts about 2000`s narrow squeak to rest? There is no momentum, because - not so deep down - there is no future for this administration. America`s newspapers, week by week now, record those big-and-small-name Republicans hiring extra aides, preparing policy positions, jetting away to eat rubber chicken in New Hampshire or Iowa. Whither Rudy Giuliani? Which way John McCain? Whatever happened to brother Jeb?

Democrats, in defeat and returning hope, can hit the trail again without raising too much dust: John Edwards and John Kerry are wending their ways separately this time, Hillary Clinton pursues ambition along a dedicated path. But Republicans don`t know which way to go.

Will there be a Bush inheritance come 2008, a fat, happy slice of America that likes big government, big deficits and rightwing tub-thumping? Or will the Republicans split open wide as they ponder the micro-management of ordinary people`s lives, poor Terri Schiavo`s lingering legacy?

The crucial point - the point that reaches right back to Eisenhower - is that every previous modern second-term president has had his succession in order as he settled down to four more years. The vice-president was there to be anointed. The flickering flame had a designated carrier.

Only George W lacks that sense of continuity. There are occasional, slightly bizarre tales about Dick Cheney getting ready to run, but no wonder cures for a chronic heart condition to give them credibility. After Bush, for the moment, there is only a huge question mark, and a vacuum that must be filled by a party making up its mind in the open and in office, the various challengers competing dissonantly to offer something different.

Some commentators, of course, are keen on term limits. But these always limit what presidents - even with a clear successor named - can achieve during that last quarter of their time in power. Without that succession in place, as we see, the rot sets in far earlier.

It doesn`t give the opposition instant clout. The Democrats are still in the doldrums. But it divides and enervates the party of government, sets it arguing and manoeuvring and concentrating on a future that may never happen. It is one damned row after another.

In short, George Bush, the alleged master of the world, has failed to get his front parlours and waiting rooms organised. And already that failure begins to drag him down. Get your succession policy wrong in a chattering world of personality-charged politics and nothing goes right. That`s the fire smouldering under Bush. It is the blaze beginning to consume France as Jacques Chirac falters. It is also the fact behind the smoke of the past few days in Britain.

Tony Blair - much impressed by what his chum José María Aznar seemed to have achieved in Spain - thought he could set a limit on his own term. But Aznar had his succession in order and his party under strict control - he still lost. Blair`s only visible strategy seemed to be trying to make sure that his obvious successor got shafted somewhere along the road to 2009.

Well, we know now that this didn`t work. The chorus of the polls and commentators hails the triumph of the indispensable Gordon, the humiliation of a suddenly peripheral Tony.

The debate between the pair, in the nature of things, seems to be centred on policy, on privatisations, public spending et al: but the reality is cruder and starker than that. Blair is paying for his folly of doubt last year - the debate in his own head about carrying on or not. His wobble ended when he gave himself four more years, but those years are not his to bestow.

It`s a crisp conversation over cocktails when the G8 comes to London this summer. What`s the giddy limit, George? Search me, prime minister: I`m the last one to know.

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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, April 11, 2005

Allawi resigns, Joins New Government
Iyad Allawi has consented to join the new Iraqi government. He is demanding 4 of 31 cabinet posts for his Iraqiya Party, which only has 40 seats in the 275-member parliament, including at least one important cabinet post.

Allawi has now submitted his resignation as prime minister and is dissolving his government, in accordance with the interim constitution, according to al-Zaman.

BBC world monitoring for April 10 reported:


"Al-Dustur publishes on the front page a 50-word report quoting Sa`d Jawad, official spokesman of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, as announcing that it is expected that the National Assembly will discuss today, 10 April, a number of issues related to "violations" committed by Iyad Allawi`s former government."



NPR, April 7, reported on corruption scandals in the Allawi government as well:


Mr. RADHI AL-RADHI (Commission on Public Integrity): (Through Translator) The Allawi government used secrecy in all its financial proceedings, and this is against the transparency principle which was adopted in the new Iraq. In the coming days, Iraq will witness many prosecutions concerning the corruption that happened in the ministries.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Radhi says that almost no ministry in Iraq has clean hands, but the most egregious examples of corruption have come from the ministries of housing, electricity and health.



Makes you wonder if Allawi decided to join the government because if he remained in the opposition he was open to being investigated by his religious Shiite enemies, who were already threatening to proceed in that way.

Allawi was the candidate backed by the CIA and US ambassador John Negroponte. Despite his enormous advantages of incumbency, and his blanket presence on Iraqi television and radio in the run-up to the election, his Iraqiya list got only 14 percent of seats in parliament and did even worse in provincial elections. His only signfificant support appears to have been the secular-leaning middle classes of Baghdad and Basra, who were easily outvoted by the religious Right among the Shiites. Allawi shot himself in the foot by becoming too associated with the Americans, who are no longer popular in Arab Iraq, and by enthusiastically endorsing the destruction of Fallujah late last fall.

Allawi`s crushing defeat in the open elections engineered by Grand Ayatollah ended President George W. Bush`s forward policy in the Middle East. The religious Shiite parties would never put up with a US attack on Iran, and they are likely to find ways of supporting Amal and Hizbullah in Lebanon over time. Nor is it likely that they will moderate Hizbullah.

Initially Allawi had decided to remain in the opposition, which would have been just fine with the religious Shiites who won the election. But the Kurds and the Americans wanted to see a government of national unity where Allawi and the secular, largely ex-Baathist Shiites retained at least a little influence inside the new state.

Al-Zaman reports that the cabinet posts set aside for Sunnis have been reduced from 6 to 4 (to accommodate Allawi`s list?) This is not good news for national reconciliation.

The change came in part because the religious Shiites and Kurds have decided that the distribution of cabinet posts will be in accordance with the percentage of seats each major bloc gained in parliament. Thus, 27% will go to the Kurds, 53% to the religious Shiites, etc. Allawi`s list would get about 4 or 14%, and the Sunni Arabs if they also got four would actually be much over-represented (they won`t see it that way).

In addition to the prime minister, there will now be two vice premiers, according to the same newspaper. One will be Ahmad Chalabi, as vice premier for security affairs. The other will be a Kurd, Barham Saleh. The interim constitution had not specified any office such as vice premier.

Jalal Talabani was on Wolf Blitzer on Sunday on CNN. He seemed constantly confused. He referred to the new prime minister as "Ibrahim Allawi" (He meant Ibrahim Jaafari, whose name he forgot when he was nominating him as PM last week!) And he clearly confused Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with Muqtada al-Sadr for a while. Blitzer pressed him on Muqtada and Talabani at length said he was also a criminal like Zarqawi. Since Muqtada has something close to 30 supporters in parliament, and since Talabani may at some point need their votes, this equation of Muqtada with Zarqawi might have been unwise. I couldn`t even tell if that is what Talabani really meant to say.

posted by Juan @ [url4/11/2005 06:10:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/allawi-resigns-joins-new-government.html[/url]



Life Imprisonment for Saddam?


[urlAre the guerrillas fighting in Iraq demanding]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/life-imprisonment-for-saddam-are.html[/url] that Saddam not be executed as one of their conditions for coming in from the cold? Adrian Blomfield reports from Baghdad that leaders of the Fidayi Saddam and Jaish Muhammad (Sunnis, including some former military officers who adopted political Islam) have been in back-channel communications with the new Iraqi government about the grounds on which they might give up their fight. One stipulation is that Saddam not be executed.

This demand would anyway be easy for Jalal Talabani to grant, since he is a long-time opponent of the death penalty (a lot of Iraqis feel that the country has seen enough executions, anyway).

But my sense of the religious Shiites and most Kurds is that they want to see a hanging.

Personally, I am still afraid that a media trial of Saddam will provoke a lot of communal violence as the crimes of the regime are rehearsed. Although most Sunnis are not implicated in those crimes, they were disproportionately committed by Sunni Arabs, and it is not clear we really want to draw the attention of the people of Kirkuk to them at this juncture.

Meanwhile, the new vice president, Ghazi al-Yawir (a Sunni), held consultations Sunday with Hareth al-Dhari, the leader of the fundamentalist Association of Muslim Scholars. Al-Dhari continued to refuse to have anything to do with the new government, according to al-Zaman.

posted by Juan @4/11/2005 06:30:00



US Millions in Iraq Wasted

I saw Lewis Black, the comedian, in Detroit last month. Lewis does angry humor. But at one point he went on a rant about how you just had to look around Detroit to see how the Congress was allowing our cities to deteriorate, and he flew into a genuine rage. A little sheepish, he admitted, "That was a private moment, and I`m sorry you had to see it. Note to self: just getting mad without a joke is not cool."

It is such a shame that there is virtually nothing going on on the streets downtown Detroit in the evening. Even the Borders closes at 7 pm. A single block in Greektown and the casinos are the only exceptions, as far as downtown shops go. An entertainment venue like Cobo Hall is designed so that the suburbanites can actually exit into its parking lot from the freeway, and never have to deal with the city at all. Because Detroit fell below a million in population with the last census, it even lost a good deal of Federal aid.

The true cost of the Iraq misadventure is consistently underestimated by the Bush administration, which does not even include the extra funds in the budget deficit! They even [urlsneak the wounded soldiers back into this country]http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=627924[/url] so that the public does not get an accurate sense of the war`s human costs for Americans.

So in light of the complete disinterest of the US government in the quality of life in much of the United States, an item like the below is especially maddening.
[urlT. Christian Miller of the Los Angeles Times reports that:]http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/235817-4276-010.html[/url]

"Iraqi officials have crippled scores of water, sewage and electrical plants refurbished with U.S. funds by failing to maintain and operate them properly, wasting millions of American taxpayer dollars, according to interviews and documents.

Hardest hit has been the effort to rebuild Iraq`s water and sewage systems, a multibillion-dollar task considered to be among the most crucial components of the effort to improve daily life for Iraqis. Of more than 40 such plants run by the Iraqis, not one is being operated properly, according to the Bechtel Group, the contractor at work on the project.

The power grid faces similar problems.



Miller quotes Bechtel and others as saying that Iraqis lack training and are lazy, explaining why the refurbished plants are not being kept up.

But there is another possible explanation. The American contractors that did the work, did it in the American way. The Iraqi engineers and technicians had their own techniques and equipment and spare parts. After the Gulf War in 1991, they were able to get the electricity grid back up, using indigenous methods, in less than a year.

It was widely alleged that the Americans spent far too much on the work done, and that local Iraqi firms could have done it better, cheaper and more quickly. And the problem of putting in a lot of unfamiliar American equipment may well be that Iraqi technicians don`t know how to work it or keep it up without special training.

Miller doesn`t appear to have spoken to any of the Iraqi engineers at the plants, who might have been able to say something about all this. The Iraqi bureaucrats to whom he spoke complained that they did not have the money it took to keep up the facilities. (Since sabotage of oil pipelines has been very successful, this excuse may well be true).

Someone with knowledge of the matter also suggested to me that some problems may derive from just jerry-rigging a patchwork of old, dilapidated French, German and Russian equipment, hastily and somewhate haphazardly, and that this method, too, might be producing the subsequent failures.

Imagine what a few billion dollars from US AID could do for downtown Detroit. Bush is wasting it instead on plants in Iraq that probably can`t even be kept up afterwards.

Note to self: Just getting angry without a joke is not cool.

posted by Juan @ [url4/11/2005 06:20:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/us-millions-in-iraq-wasted-i-saw-lewis.html[/url]

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The Crusaders

Christian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7235393?rnd=…

By BOB MOSER

It`s February, and 900 of America`s staunchest Christian fundamentalists have gathered in Fort Lauderdale to look back on what they accomplished in last year`s election -- and to plan what`s next. As they assemble in the vast sanctuary of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, with all fifty state flags dangling from the rafters, three stadium-size video screens flash the name of the conference: reclaiming america for christ. These are the evangelical activists behind the nation`s most effective political machine -- one that brought more than 4 million new Christian voters to the polls last November, sending George W. Bush back to the White House and thirty-two new pro-lifers to Congress. But despite their unprecedented power, fundamentalists still see themselves as a persecuted minority, waging a holy war against the godless forces of secularism. To rouse themselves, they kick off the festivities with "Soldiers of the Cross, Arise," the bloodthirstiest tune in all of Christendom: "Seize your armor, gird it on/Now the battle will be won/Soon, your enemies all slain/Crowns of glory you shall gain."

Meet the Dominionists -- biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government. As the far-right wing of the evangelical movement, Dominionists are pressing an agenda that makes Newt Gingrich`s Contract With America look like the Communist Manifesto. They want to rewrite schoolbooks to reflect a Christian version of American history, pack the nation`s courts with judges who follow Old Testament law, post the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and make it a felony for gay men to have sex and women to have abortions. In Florida, when the courts ordered Terri Schiavo`s feeding tube removed, it was the Dominionists who organized round-the-clock protests and issued a fiery call for Gov. Jeb Bush to defy the law and take Schiavo into state custody. Their ultimate goal is to plant the seeds of a "faith-based" government that will endure far longer than Bush`s presidency -- all the way until Jesus comes back.

"Most people hear them talk about a `Christian nation` and think, `Well, that sounds like a good, moral thing,` says the Rev. Mel White, who ghostwrote Jerry Falwell`s autobiography before breaking with the evangelical movement. "What they don`t know -- what even most conservative Christians who voted for Bush don`t know -- is that `Christian nation` means something else entirely to these Dominionist leaders. This movement is no more about following the example of Christ than Bush`s Clean Water Act is about clean water."

The godfather of the Dominionists is D. James Kennedy, the most influential evangelical you`ve never heard of. A former Arthur Murray dance instructor, he launched his Florida ministry in 1959, when most evangelicals still followed Billy Graham`s gospel of nonpartisan soul-saving. Kennedy built Coral Ridge Ministries into a $37-million-a-year empire, with a TV-and-radio audience of 3 million, by preaching that it was time to save America -- not soul by soul but election by election. After helping found the Moral Majority in 1979, Kennedy became a five-star general in the Christian army. Bush sought his blessing before running for president -- and continues to consult top Dominionists on matters of federal policy.

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost," Kennedy says. "As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

At Reclaiming America, most of the conference is taken up by grassroots training sessions that supply ministers, retirees and devout churchgoers with "The Facts of Stem-Cell Research" or "Practical Steps to Impact Your Community with America`s Historical Judeo-Christian Heritage." "We`re going to turn you into an army of one," Gary Cass, executive director of Reclaiming America, promises activists at one workshop held in Evangalism Explosion Hall. The Dominionists also attend speeches by supporters like Rep. Katherine Harris of Florida, who urges them to "win back America for God." In their spare time, conference-goers buy books about a God-devised health program called the Maker`s Diet or meet with a financial adviser who offers a "biblically sound investment plan."

To implement their sweeping agenda, the Dominionists are working to remake the federal courts in God`s image. In their view, the Founding Fathers never intended to erect a barrier between politics and religion. "The First Amendment does not say there should be a separation of church and state," declares Alan Sears, president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a team of 750 attorneys trained by the Dominionists to fight abortion and gay marriage. Sears argues that the constitutional guarantee against state-sponsored religion is actually designed to "shield" the church from federal interference -- allowing Christians to take their rightful place at the head of the government. "We have a right, indeed an obligation, to govern," says David Limbaugh, brother of Rush and author of Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity. Nothing gets the Dominionists to their feet faster than ringing condemnations of judicial tyranny. "Activist judges have systematically deconstructed the Constitution," roars Rick Scarborough, author of Mixing Church and State. "A God-free society is their goal!"

Activist judges, of course, are precisely what the Dominionists want. Their model is Roy Moore, the former Alabama chief justice who installed a 5,300-pound granite memorial to the Ten Commandments, complete with an open Bible carved in its top, in the state judicial building. At Reclaiming America, Roy`s Rock sits out front, fresh off a tour of twenty-one states, perched on the flag-festooned flatbed of a diesel truck, a potent symbol of the "faith-based" justice the Dominionists are bent on imposing. Activists at the conference pose for photographs beside the rock and have circulated a petition urging President Bush to appoint Moore -- who once penned an opinion calling for the state to execute "practicing homosexuals" -- to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The other side knows we`ve got strongholds in the executive and legislative branches," Cass tells the troops. "If we start winning the judiciary, their power base is going to be eroded."

To pack the courts with fundamentalists like Moore, Dominionist leaders are planning a massive media blitz. They`re also pressuring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist -- an ally who`s courting support for his presidential bid -- to halt the long-standing use of filibusters to hold up judicial nominations. An anti-filibuster petition circulating at the conference blasts Democrats for their "outrageous stonewalling of appointments" -- even though Congress has approved more nominees of Bush than of any president since Jimmy Carter.

It helps that Dominionists have a direct line to the White House: The Rev. Richard Land, top lobbyist for the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, enjoys a weekly conference call with top Bush advisers including Karl Rove. "We`ve got the Holy Spirit`s wind at our backs!" Land declares in an arm-waving, red-faced speech. He takes particular aim at the threat posed by John Lennon, denouncing "Imagine" as a "secular anthem" that envisions a future of "clone plantations, child sacrifice, legalized polygamy and hard-core porn."

The Dominionists are also stepping up efforts to turn public schools into forums for evangelism. In a landmark case, the Alliance Defense Fund is suing a California school district that threatened to dismiss a born-again teacher who was evangelizing fifth-graders. In the conference`s opening ceremony, the Dominionists recite an oath they dream of hearing in every classroom: "I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified, risen and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe."

Cass urges conference-goers to stack school boards with Dominionists. "The most humble Christian is more qualified for office than the best-educated pagan," says Cass, an anti-abortion activist who led a takeover of his school district`s board in San Diego. "We built quite a little grass-roots machine out there. Now it`s my burden to multiply that success all across America."

Cass points to the Rev. Gary Beeler, a Baptist minister from Tennessee who got permission for thousands of students to skip class and attend weeklong events that he calls "old-time revivals, with preaching and singing and soul-saving and the whole nine yards." Now, with support from Kennedy, Beeler is selling his house and buying a mobile home to spread his crusade nationwide. "It`s not exactly what I planned to do with my retirement," he says. "But it`s what God told me to do."

Cass also presents another small-town activist, Kevin McCoy, with a Salt and Light Award for leading a successful campaign to shut down an anti-bullying program in West Virginia schools. McCoy, a soft-spoken, prematurely gray postal worker, fought to end the program because it taught tolerance for gay people -- and thus, in his view, constituted a "thinly disguised effort to promote the homosexual agenda." "What America needs," Cass tells the faithful, "is more Kevin McCoys."

While the dominionists rely on grass-roots activists to fight their battles, they are backed by some of America`s richest entrepreneurs. Amway founder Rich DeVos, a Kennedy ally who`s the leading Republican contender for governor of Michigan, has tossed more than $5 million into the collection plate. Jean Case, wife of former AOL chief Steve Case -- whose fortune was made largely on sex-chat rooms -- has donated $8 million. And Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino`s Pizza, is a major source of cash for Focus on the Family, a megaministry working with Kennedy to eliminate all public schools.

The one-two punch of militant activists and big money has helped make the Dominionists a force in Washington, where a growing number of congressmen owe their elections to the machine. Kennedy has also created the Center for Christian Statesmanship, which trains elected officials to "more effectively share their faith in the public arena." Speaking to the group, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay -- a winner of Kennedy`s Distinguished Christian Statesman Award -- called Bush`s faith-based initiatives "a great opportunity to bring God back into the public institutions of our country."

The most vivid proof of the Christianizing of Capitol Hill comes at the final session of Reclaiming America. Rep. Walter Jones, a lanky congressman from North Carolina, gives a fire-and-brimstone speech that would have gotten him laughed out of Washington thirty years ago. In today`s climate, however, he`s got a chance of passing his pet project, the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act, which would permit ministers to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, effectively converting their tax-exempt churches into Republican campaign headquarters.

"America is under assault!" Jones thunders as his aides dash around the sanctuary snapping PR photos. "Everyone in America has the right to speak freely, except for those standing in the pulpits of our churches!" The amen chorus reaches a fever pitch. Hands fly heavenward. It`s one thing to hear such words from Dominionist leaders -- but to this crowd, there`s nothing more thrilling than getting the gospel from a U.S. congressman. "You cannot have a strong nation that does not follow God," Jones preaches, working up to a climactic, passionate plea for a biblical republic. "God, please -- God, please -- God, please -- save America!"


(Posted Apr 07, 2005)

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Baghdad Burning
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_riverbendblog_a…
The Cruel Month...
Thousands were demonstrating today all over the country. Many areas in Baghdad were cut off today for security reasons and to accomodate the demonstrators, I suppose. There were some Sunni demonstrations but the large majority of demonstrators were actually Shia and followers of Al Sadr. They came from all over Baghdad and met up in Firdaws Square- the supposed square of liberation. They were in the thousands. None of the news channels were actually covering it. Jazeera showed fragments of the protests in the afternoon but everyone else seemed to busy with some other news story. Thanks to E. for sending me this link. [urlCheck out the protest here.]http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5723[/url]

BBC and EuroNews were busily covering the wedding between Prince Charles and the dreadful Camilla. CNN was showing the Pope`s funeral. No one bothered with the demonstrations in Baghdad, Mosul, Anbar and the south. There were hundreds of thousands of Shia screaming "No to America. No to terrorism. No to occupation. No to the devil. No to Israel." The numbers were amazing and a little bit frightening too.

Ever since Jalal Talbani was named president, there have been many angry Shia. It`s useless explaining that the presidential chair is only symbolic- it doesn`t mean anything. "La izayid we la inaqis." As we say in Iraq. "It doesn`t increase anything, nor does it decrease anything." People have the sense that all the positions are `symbolic`- hence, why shouldn`t the Shia get the head symbol? The disturbing thing is how the Kurds could agree to have someone with so much blood on his hands. Talbani is known for his dealings with Turkey, Britain, America and other and his feuds with Barazani have led to the deaths of thousands of Kurds.

The weather is warm now. We often turn on the ceiling fan (or panka) in an attempt to move around the muggy air. April is a month of fresh beginnings all over the world but in Iraq, April is not the best of months. April is a month of muggy warmth and air thick with dust and sand- and now of occupation. We opened the month with a dust storm that left the furniture in our houses sand-colored with an opaque layer of dust. We breathed dust, ate dust and drank dust for a few days. The air is clearer now but everything is looking a little bit diminished and dirty. It suits the mood.

Two years and this is Occupation Day once more. One wonders what has changed in this last year. The same faces of April 2004, but now they have differing positions in April 2005. The chess pieces were moved around and adjusted and every one is getting tired of the game.

Who was it that said April was a cruel month? They knew what they were talking about...

- posted by river @ 11:19 PM

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Apr 12, 2005

House of Saud re-embraces totalitarianism
By John R Bradley
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD12Ak01.html

Residents of the tiny provincial capital of Saudi Arabia`s northernmost province last week witnessed a grisly scene in the main public square: the corpses of three militants tied to poles, on top of which were placed their severed heads. The three - who returned to the kingdom after fighting in Afghanistan - were beheaded in Sakaka, the capital of al-Jouf province, after being convicted of murdering the region`s deputy governor, a top religious court judge and a police chief. They also killed a Saudi soldier, and kidnapped a foreign national.

That small-scale rebellion in al-Jouf, along with a prison riot and a rare public demonstration in support of the Palestinians, occurred in a region that is a power base of the al-Sudairy branch of the al-Saud ruling family. The branch, known as the "Sudairy Seven", includes King Fahd and his six full brothers, who hold most of the key government posts. Saudi officials admitted in January last year that the rebellion`s three leaders had attracted the support of dozens of locals. At one stage, perhaps fearing an explosion of violence or even a popular uprising, some 8,000 soldiers from the National Guard were deployed in the nearby city of Tabuk.

At its height in 2003, the unrest had seemed to represent in microcosm the kingdom-wide tensions that threatened to spill over into a general uprising. The rebellion`s end, then, with the crudely symbolic public display of its leaders` heads on poles, could now likewise be seen as marking the al-Saud`s triumph over the most extreme of its homegrown enemies - at least for now.

The al-Saud regime appears to have got the upper-hand in its battle with radical Islamists. Al-Qaeda`s suspected chief in Saudi Arabia, Saleh al-Aoofi, was reportedly among at least 16 militants killed last week in three days of fierce gun battles with security forces in the north of the kingdom. Another two of the 26 most-wanted terrorists were confirmed killed in that and another clash in the capital Riyadh, leaving only three from the list still at large.

Through its actions against militants and close, behind-the-scenes cooperation with US, British and French intelligence services, the regime has convinced all but the most entrenched anti-Saudi voices in Washington that it is a crucial and reliable ally in the global "war on terrorism". Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto leader, is expected to meet with US President George W Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch later this month, signaling the importance Bush continues to place on US-Saudi relations (notwithstanding the pre-election excitement over the issue). Partial elections for municipality councils, dismissed by the vast majority of Saudis as a waste of time and in which even many senior princes did not bother to set an example by voting, have meanwhile given other pro-al-Saud voices in the West - who often have links to Saudi-funded think-tanks and/or the arms and oil industries - an additional reason to champion the regime as a force for modernization and democratization.

In reality, the opposite is true. The regime is not giving up power or changing its historically repressive domestic policies in the face of opposition, but - more predictably - closing ranks and reasserting its totalitarian rule. Emboldened by its success in the domestic "war on terror", which got under way only after their rule was directly threatened, the al-Saud is flexing its other muscles so that the masses, too, are left in no doubt that it is back in total control. As with other Arab regimes, it is using the "war on terror" to silence all dissent, but in ways that have peculiar Saudi characteristics.

A few days after the al-Jouf executions, for instance, six Somali nationals were beheaded together in Jeddah for the crime of armed robbery. The six killed no one, meaning the punishment was grossly unfair, even by the standards of Saudi Arabia`s strict code of Islamic Sharia law. The Somalis had served their initial five-year sentence, and had also been flogged; they were not even aware before being led to the chopping block that they had suddenly been sentenced to death, according to human rights groups. Hailing from an impoverished, war-ravaged country whose government can be guaranteed to ignore the sorry plight not only of its citizens abroad but even those at home, the Somalis were easy prey for a regime eager to do whatever it can to instill fear in the restless Saudi population.

In the two years following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when reformist voices were in the ascendancy and pressure from Washington meant the al-Saud had to at least pretend to behave like civilized rulers, it was reported in domestic newspapers that there was an increasing recognition that the death penalty was not working as a deterrent. But at least 40 people have been publicly beheaded this year alone, more than during the whole of last year. And while there had been a wider debate in the Saudi media about the social causes of crime, now scare stories blaming "African immigrants" abound in a government-sponsored campaign aimed at diverting attention away from the real causes: corruption, massive unemployment and a lack of respect for authority.

The treatment of Saudi gay men, too, seemed to be improving when international uproar followed an Interior Ministry statement in January 2002 that three men in the southern city of Abha had been "beheaded for homosexuality". The report provoked widespread condemnation from gay and human-rights groups in the West - and a swift denial from an official at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC. Tariq Allegany, an embassy spokesman, said the three were beheaded for the sexual abuse of boys, adding: "I would guess there`s sodomy going on daily in Saudi Arabia, but we don`t have executions for it all the time."

The kingdom`s Internet Services Unit, responsible for blocking sites deemed "unIslamic" or politically sensitive, even unblocked access to a home page for gay Saudi surfers after being bombarded with critical emails from the US. A S Getenio, manager of GayMiddleEast.com, said at the time Saudi Arabia seemed concerned about the bad publicity blocking the site would bring, "at the time it was involved in a multi-million dollar advertising campaign in the US to improve its image".

Now the al-Saud have no such inhibitions. The website is once again blocked, and the Saudi religious police - acting on "tip offs" - are raiding gay gatherings in Jeddah on an almost monthly basis. More than 100 young men caught dancing and "behaving like women" at a private party were sentenced this month to a total of 14,200 lashes, after a trial behind closed doors and without defense lawyers. The men were also given jail sentences of up to two years. This witch-hunt, like the one targeting "African immigrants", also serves to deflect public attention from the royal family`s indulgence and mismanagement. But it additionally makes the al-Saud seem more Islamist than the Islamists, as they try to steal the radicals` clothes to shore up support among the masses.

The paradox, then, is that instability in the kingdom over the past two years, interpreted in the West as possibly threatening the regime`s very existence, in the end helped it not only survive but consolidate its iron grip on power. It was one factor, for instance, that sent the price of a barrel of oil skyrocketing to all-time highs.

At the same time, the violence hindered, rather than helped, those who were pushing for peaceful democratic changes. No one knows that better than Saudi Arabia`s three leading reformists and their lawyer, who are languishing in jail in Riyadh after calling for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and an independent judiciary. Peaceful public demonstrations have been ruthlessly crushed, with some of the participants sentenced to lashings and jail.

Their organizer, Saad al-Faqih, who heads the London-based opposition group The Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, was bizarrely linked by the US to an alleged plot by a Saudi to kill Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the details conveniently "leaked" to the New York Times. Then, with backing from the United Kingdom government, the US got him listed by the United Nations as an al-Qaeda supporter and funder. This whole travesty was hastily concocted, say other Saudi dissidents, at the behest of the al-Saud, who were beginning to realize with alarm that al-Faqih`s calls for change could potentially lead a peaceful revolution.

The kingdom now has an estimated US$60 billion budget surplus, and has announced massive new infrastructure projects. Flush with cash, the regime again seems to be resorting to the tried and tested, following the strategy of spending ostentatiously to keep the people happy or satisfied, or at least not dissatisfied, just as had been the case in the oil boom years of the 1970s. Once again, it wants to be seen as the goose laying the golden egg. But it is fool`s gold.

The regime has always sought to buy the loyalty of the Saudi people by providing a cradle-to-grave welfare system, and crush all those who refused to play the game. But by once again dealing with the symptoms and not the causes, the regime is merely tightening the lid on a pressure cooker in an attempt to delay the inevitable. And what worked in the 1970s, with a population of less than 10 million, will not work with a population of 24 million.

The hoped-for stability is therefore delusional in a country where underlying social and economic problems are not being addressed, and to where thousands of Saudi jihadis will return in due course from neighboring Iraq. Indeed, unconfirmed reports on Islamist websites say dozens of Saudi jihadis have returned to the kingdom from Iraq in recent months specifically to plan a fresh wave of attacks against the oil industry, following an unprecedented call by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden last December for just such attacks.

All the talk now on Islamist websites is about the remarkably vulnerable Saudi oil pipeline network. It is not a matter of if, but when, those attacks start to take place, in a second wave of violence that will once again punish the al-Saud regime for burying its head in the oil-rich sand.

John R Bradley is the author of Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis. He has reported extensively from Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East for many publications, including The Economist, The New Republic, Salon, The Independent, The London Telegraph, The Washington Times, and Prospect. See his website.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Monday, April 11, 2005
War News for Monday, April 11, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: Two car bomb explosions and subsequent firefight between US forces and insurgents reported in al-Qaim.

Bring `em on: Confirmation that the missing Pakistani diplomat was in fact kidnapped in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Four civilians injured in car bomb explosion near a US convoy in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: American soldier wounded in car bomb attack on US convoy in Ramadi.

Bring `em on: Member of provincial council and his driver shot dead by gunmen in Mosul.

Bring `em on: One Iraqi guardsman killed and three others wounded in roadside bomb attack in Farhad.

Bring `em on: Manager of power station kidnapped in Buhruz.

Bring `em on: Three Iraqis gunned down on the roadside in Iskandariya.

Bring `em on: Sunni muslim scholar shot dead in Mahmudiya.

US soldier died Sunday of non-hostile injuries sustained last Wednesday.

The Independent report that there are signs that there is growing discontent amoung Iraqis that some hardcore insurgency/terrorist groups are targeting Iraqis as well as occupying forces.

The Iraqi Government are reported to have captured the son of a half-brother of Saddam Hussein.

The Daily Mirror breaks with a story that US troops are scheduled to stay in Iraq until 2009 (and by implication British troops also) because contract tender forms for civilian workers disclose a huge expansion of interrogation and detention centres in Iraq to remain in place for a minimum four more years. The paper reports that the proposed employment contract contains the following term: "No persons supporting operations will be allowed to reside off a US secure facility, or travel unless in a military secured convoy."

The Financial Times report that followers of Moqtada al Sadr plan to stage an even bigger protest than the 300,000 who attended last Saturday`s rally in Baghdad campaigning for the withdrawal of occupation forces from Iraq.

International Law and the Geneva Convention

Who said Quaint? American forces were yesterday accused of violating international law by taking two Iraqi women hostage in a bungled effort to persuade fugitive male relatives to surrender. US soldiers seized a mother and daughter from their home in Baghdad two weeks ago and allegedly left a note on the gate: "Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention." It was signed Bandit 6, apparently a military code, and gave a mobile phone number. When phoned by reporters an American soldier answered but he declined to take questions and hung up.

Salima al-Batawi, 60, and her daughter Aliya, 35, were blindfolded, handcuffed and driven away in a Humvee convoy on April 2, leaving the Arab Sunnis of Taji, a suburb north of the capital, incandescent. Instead of surrendering, her three sons, Ahmad, Saddam and Arkan, alerted the media. None of them are called Muhammad, but it is believed that the note referred to Ahmad and that the Americans wanted all three brothers.

The brothers have spent time in Abu Ghraib jail, but have never been charged and say they are citrus farmers with no connection to the insurgency. Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Kent, of the 3rd infantry division, said the women had been seized as suspected insurgents in their own right and not as a bargaining chip.

After six days in a US jail near Baghdad airport the women were released without charge.

Journalists demand answers

Remember Eason Jordan and now this?

The Institute of Maltese Journalists has joined the International Federation of Journalists in calling on the United States government to end all speculation over "targeted killings" of journalists and media staff by providing "credible and convincing" reports on incidents in which 14 media staff have been killed since the invasion of the country in March 2003. "The United States stands accused of failing to meet its obligations to deliver justice and fair treatment to the victims of violence by its own soldiers," said IFJ general secretary Aidan White in a letter to President George Bush on Friday. Similar letters calling for the US to carry out an exhaustive investigation into these cases have been sent by IFJ affiliates to US officials.

April 8 marks the second anniversary of the US attack on Baghdad`s Palestine Hotel, which at the time contained scores of reporters and media people reporting on the US invasion. Two journalists were killed and others wounded. On the same morning, a journalist was killed when the Baghdad offices of the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera was attacked by US fighter planes. The IFJ says there are another 11 other cases of unexplained killings in which US soldiers were involved that require answers.

The Real Story on Election Day

The real story on Election Day was that the Sunnis didn`t vote. If the election was to mark the point from which Iraqis would settle their differences through politics and not through violence, it failed; for those responsible for the insurgency -- not only those planting suicide bombs but those running the organizations responsible for them and the leaders of the community that has shown itself sympathetic enough to the insurgents` cause to shelter them -- did not take part. The political burden of the elections was to bring those who felt frightened or alienated by the new dispensation into the political process, so they could express their opposition through politics and not through violence; the task, that is, was to attract Sunnis to the polls and thereby to isolate the extremists. And in this, partly because of an electoral system that the Sunnis felt, with some reason, was unfairly stacked against them, the election failed.

The images could not show, finally, the peculiar system of government under which those elected are now struggling to function -- a system in effect imposed by the American occupation in the interim constitution, known as the "transitional administrative law." That system demands, among other things, that the national assembly bring together two thirds of its votes to confirm a government, a requirement found in no other parliamentary system in the world. That requirement is an artifact of the larger conundrum of Iraqi politics: it was demanded by America`s critical Iraqi ally, the Kurds, who are deeply ambivalent about their connection to and role in an Iraqi state dominated by Shiites, and it was supported by the Americans. In effect the two-thirds requirement, and the political impasse it has fostered, is a legacy of the Americans` reluctance to confront the logical implication of their war to unseat Saddam Hussein and his Sunni elite: that there will come to power in Iraq a government dominated by the Shia, powerfully influenced by Islamic law and favorably inclined toward the United States` foremost enemy in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As I will write in a further article, these facts are vital to comprehending the dramatic difference between the encouraging images we are shown and the stubborn and bloody reality on the ground.

Vote Rigging

Zimbabwe or Ukraine? No. Great Britain.

On April 4, Richard Mawrey QC, acting as an election commissioner, issued a judgement in a civil hearing quashing the result of two local authority elections in Birmingham held June 10 last year.

Mawrey’s 192-page judgement stated that the polls in the Aston and Bordesley Green electoral wards were corrupted by “massive, systematic and organised” vote-rigging by Labour members, with the aim of offsetting a collapse in the party’s vote due to the Iraq war.
# posted by Friendly Fire : 12:38 AM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 09, 2005

Apr.05: 13

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Der Benzin Preis ist eins der wichtigsten Themen in den USA. Der Preis ist gegenüber den normal üblichen Preisen stark gestiegen.
[url]http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgas_index.asp[/url]
San Francisco 2,99$ und 1,93$ in NJ. Für eine Gallone (3,787 l)

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Und eins darf man bei diesen Zahlen nicht vergessen, die US-Buchführung ist äußerst kreativ.
Bei der Berechnung der Inflation werden einige Posten ausgeklammert, um diese niedriger aussehen zu lassen.
Im Gegensatz zu den deutschen Versuchen die Arbeitslosenquote ehrlicher zu machen, hat man in den USA zu einer Reihe Tricks gegriffen, um die Quote niedrig zu halten, obwohl in den offiziellen Statistiken auch ca 12m Leute aufgeführt werden, werden immer die 7,6m als Zahl aufgeführt. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm
Wenn man nicht offiziellen Quellen glauben kann, liegt die Zahl wohl bei 25m und das nur auf dem Bereich ohne Landwirtschaft.
Nur das meiste in den USA läuft über Befragungen und da ist immer mit Abweichungen zu rechnen. Es ist nicht einmal sicher wieviel Menschen in den USA sich aufhalten. Die offizielle Statistik spricht von hochgerechneten 300m, andere sagen es sind schon 320m Menschen, die in den USA leben

Wages Lagging Behind Prices
Inflation has outpaced the rise in salaries for the first time in 14 years. And workers are paying a bigger share of the cost of their healthcare.
By Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wages11apr11,0,5092199…

April 11, 2005

For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut.

The growth in wages in 2004 and the first two months of this year trailed inflation, compounding the squeeze from higher housing, energy and other costs.

The result is that people like Victor Romero are finding themselves falling behind.

The 49-year-old film-set laborer had to ditch his $1,100-a-month Hollywood apartment because his rent kept rising while his pay of $24.50 an hour stayed flat.

"There`s no such thing as raises anymore," Romero said.

This is the first time that salaries have increased more slowly than prices since the 1990-91 recession. Though salary growth has been relatively sluggish since the 2001 downturn, inflation also had stayed relatively subdued until last year, when the consumer price index rose 2.7%. But wages rose only 2.5%.

The effective 0.2-percentage-point erosion in workers` living standards occurred while the economy expanded at a healthy 4%, better than the 3% historical average.

Meanwhile, corporate profits hit record highs as companies got more productivity out of workers while keeping pay increases down.

Some see climbing profits and stagnant wages as not only unfair but also ultimately unsustainable. "Those that are baking the larger pie ought to see their slices expanding," said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

But higher wages could hurt the economy by stoking inflation further. Employers might pass the costs on to consumers in higher prices, and that in turn might prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more aggressively, possibly slowing the recovery or even triggering a recession.

For now, workers` wallets are being pummeled by something of a perfect storm of economic forces: a weak job market, rising health insurance premiums and other inflationary pressures.

The biggest factor is the slack employment market, which means there is little pressure on businesses to boost pay. "They take advantage of you because there`s no work and anyone will work for anything," Romero said.

Although the unemployment rate has dropped to a relatively low 5.2%, that figure doesn`t count the hundreds of thousands of jobless people who`ve given up their searches and dropped out of the labor market at a greater rate than anytime since 1988. At the same time, the cost of health premiums has skyrocketed, eating into the pool of corporate cash set aside for raises. Although pay rose only about 2.4% last year, benefit costs jumped almost 7%.

With benefits factored in, workers` total compensation did outpace inflation in 2004, even if they didn`t see it in their paychecks. But employers also are requiring workers to pay a greater share of their premiums.

"Healthcare has eroded the wage base," said Janemarie Mulvey, chief economist with the Employment Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank in Washington.

"In the long run, we can`t continue like this. If healthcare keeps crowding out wages forever, something`s got to give."

The squeeze is especially intense on the 47% of the workforce whose employers don`t directly provide their health insurance. For lower-income workers, who are more likely to be uninsured, the falling value of their wages is even more serious because they`re more likely to live paycheck to paycheck. And rising food and energy prices take a proportionately higher toll on the poor than on the rich.

Historically, periods when wage growth is outpaced by inflation rarely last more than 18 months. That`s partly because businesses don`t want their employees` living standards to fall, as that injures morale, said Trewman Bewley, a Yale University economist who has studied wage activity during economic downturns.

Many economists figure it`s only a matter of time until workers can pry more money out of their employers to catch up to inflation again. If economic growth remains robust, as many forecasters predict, workers may gain greater leverage to negotiate wage hikes.

"Chances are that those workers that have problems getting by because of higher fuel prices will probably tell their employers, `I can`t make it,` " said John Lonski, chief economist at Moody`s Investors Service.

That hasn`t played out for Brian Chartier. The 29-year-old Glendale resident handles inventory for a Los Angeles manufacturing company. No one there, he said, has gotten a raise in two years.

"They`re able to do this and I haven`t quit, because where am I going to go?" he said. "There are no jobs."

While his salary remained flat, rising healthcare premiums kept eating up more and more of Chartier`s take-home pay, so he dropped out of his employer`s insurance program. His rent is also climbing.

As Chartier loaded bags of groceries into his Honda Civic last week, he boasted that they were full of bargains. "I don`t get a single thing that`s not on sale," Chartier said. "I can`t afford to anymore."

Despite the failure of their wages to keep pace with inflation, American consumers have kept shopping. Consumer spending has continued to rise. Analysts say that`s partly because some shoppers are thinking less about their paychecks and more about their biggest asset: their homes.

Home prices rose 21.1% in Southern California and 9% nationwide from February 2004 to February 2005, sheltering consumers, and the economy, from much of the pinch of higher prices.

"There`s been a wealth effect afoot throughout much of the recession and the recovery," said Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, "because no matter what people`s incomes were doing, their wealth was improving — their biggest assets, their homes, were accruing."

As inflation sparks higher interest rates, most economists expect the housing market to cool, making shoppers more dependent on their paychecks. And even those who have seen their paper wealth rise phenomenally aren`t happy about rising costs and stagnant pay.

Corina Swatz has seen the value of her Silver Lake home triple in about a decade. But neither she nor her husband has gotten a raise in more than a year. Meanwhile, gas prices have forced them to shell out $55 to fill the tank of their Chevy Tahoe.

"I used to spend $600 a month [on groceries]. Now I spend $800," Swatz, a mother of two, said as she made her weekly Costco run last week. The increased value of her home gives her only so much solace. "We`re hanging in there."

The danger is that people like Swatz, despite their home equity cushion, may pull the rug out from under the economic expansion by reining in their spending.

That`s what Gabriel Torres has done. The 56-year-old cook, who lives in Hollywood, hasn`t gotten a raise in years but pays ever-higher prices to fill his Nissan Xterra. He and his wife have come up with a solution: Cut down on driving.

"We don`t go out much," Torres said. "We used to. But now we only drive when we really have to."



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Dr. Gal Luft: Bin Laden’s Out to Destroy U.S. Economy
Monday, April 11, 2005 / 2 Nisan 5765
http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=79998

Dr. Gal Luft, Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security says Osama Bin Laden’s main goal is the destruction of the U.S. economy - and that, so far, he appears to be succeeding.


Dr. Luft told David Miller of INN Television at the recent Jerusalem Conference that the main goal of the radical Islamic Jihad movement is to “bring the U.S. economy to its knees.” That movement, spearheaded by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, started to plan its moves against the United States after it attributed Moscow’s exit from Afghanistan to Soviet economic difficulties resulting from the war.

Now Bin Laden thinks he can do the same thing to the United States, but more so. Dr. Luft explains that Bin Laden is deliberately focusing on U.S. economic targets. Al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was planned to strike at the epicenter of the American economy. That attack, which cost the American taxpayer one trillion dollars in damages, and the subsequent war in Afghanistan and Iraq, are “bleeding” the American economy of its wealth.

Dr. Luft says that Bin Laden is also attempting to disrupt the American economy by causing the price of oil to rise. He claims that the sabotage of oil pipelines in Iraq and attacks on foreign oil workers in Saudi Arabia succeeded in raising the price of oil by $10-$15 per barrel.

That price rise alone cost the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars in lost wealth. To add salt to the wound, this money, ironically, is being transferred to America’s enemies in the Middle East, such as Iran. Iran and radical Saudi groups then use their oil riches to finance the Jihad, which is dedicated to destroying the United States.

But this vicious cycle, where America finances its own enemies as well as the wars to fight them, can be broken, said Dr. Luft. He told Miller that the U.S. has actually made some significant strides in reducing American dependence on foreign oil. He explains that in the 1970’s, 30% of electric power was produced from oil - while today that percentage stands at zero.

What America has to do, asserts Dr. Luft, is to drastically revamp the inefficient transportation sector. He proposes that the United States lead a massive international project to improve transport fuel efficiency. He points out that the technology already exists. “There’s no need for new research and development” to have cars running on 60-70 miles per gallon, he explains.

Dr. Luft claims that improving fuel economy in the transportation sector is the most important thing the U.S. can do to strengthen its economy “and win the war on terror.”

So far, however, without U.S. leadership on this issue, it appears that Bin Laden is gaining the upper hand. “Bin Laden says he wants oil to go up to $140 per barrel. Based on what he’s done so far this year, he’s on his way to getting it,” Dr. Luft lamented.

But Dr. Luft is confident that with the right leadership, the U.S. has the potential to turn the situation around. “We believe that in 20 years… we can reduce oil demand significantly in the transport sector and almost eliminate all U.S. oil imports," he said.

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Tomgram: Michael Klare on Blood, Oil, and Iran
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2312

While our media is filled with stories on the Bush administration and Iran, they almost invariably focus on the Iranian nuclear program (or European negotiations and U.S. non-negotiations about the same). You could read our press for weeks at a time -- if you didn`t stray onto the business pages -- and not be aware that Iran sits on a sea of oil and natural gas. In fact, I don`t think it`s an exaggeration to say that, for long stretches, a typical newspaper reader or prime-time TV news viewer, or, for that matter, an NPR listener, would have just about no way of knowing that our world runs on oil. Of course, our local gas stations are informative enough on the subject these days, so this reality is lost on few people. Still, the sort of piece that hit the front page of the British Financial Times the other day -- IMF warns on risk of ‘permanent oil shock` -- is not normally a front-page commonplace for us.

This has a certain importance when, in the British and Israeli press and on the Internet, rumors and reports abound that either the Bush administration or the Israeli government (in coordination with Bush officials) or both are planning air attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities as early as this June (with hopes of an oil-regime change in Tehran); or when the Washington Post reports on months of Iranian air-space infringement and air-defense testing on the part of American unmanned aircraft, and Seymour Hersh reports on American Special Forces (or Kurdish agents) moving in and out of Iran, again possibly in preparation for future attacks. (By the way, an interesting counter-argument against the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran appeared in the Asia Times recently.)

It`s strange that, when it comes to news articles on Iran, oil plays just about no role whatsoever; that, as was true with Iraq before the invasion of 2003, it is little short of a taboo subject. Fortunately, we have Michael Klare, whose book Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America`s Growing Dependency on Imported Oil (as I`ve said before) is an indispensable volume for understanding our moment. Below, Klare does what should be done in our mainstream press -- he seriously considers the role of Iran`s oil and natural gas reserves, and other energy-related matters in the Bush administration`s Iran planning.
Tom

Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran
By Michael T. Klare

As the United States gears up for an attack on Iran, one thing is certain: the Bush administration will never mention oil as a reason for going to war. As in the case of Iraq, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) will be cited as the principal justification for an American assault. "We will not tolerate the construction of a nuclear weapon [by Iran]," is the way President Bush put it in a much-quoted 2003 statement. But just as the failure to discover illicit weapons in Iraq undermined the administration`s use of WMD as the paramount reason for its invasion, so its claim that an attack on Iran would be justified because of its alleged nuclear potential should invite widespread skepticism. More important, any serious assessment of Iran`s strategic importance to the United States should focus on its role in the global energy equation.

Before proceeding further, let me state for the record that I do not claim oil is the sole driving force behind the Bush administration`s apparent determination to destroy Iranian military capabilities. No doubt there are many national security professionals in Washington who are truly worried about Iran`s nuclear program, just as there were many professionals who were genuinely worried about Iraqi weapons capabilities. I respect this. But no war is ever prompted by one factor alone, and it is evident from the public record that many considerations, including oil, played a role in the administration`s decision to invade Iraq. Likewise, it is reasonable to assume that many factors -- again including oil -- are playing a role in the decision-making now underway over a possible assault on Iran.

Just exactly how much weight the oil factor carries in the administration`s decision-making is not something that we can determine with absolute assurance at this time, but given the importance energy has played in the careers and thinking of various high officials of this administration, and given Iran`s immense resources, it would be ludicrous not to take the oil factor into account -- and yet you can rest assured that, as relations with Iran worsen, American media reports and analysis of the situation will generally steer a course well clear of the subject (as they did in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq).

One further caveat: When talking about oil`s importance in American strategic thinking about Iran, it is important to go beyond the obvious question of Iran`s potential role in satisfying our country`s future energy requirements. Because Iran occupies a strategic location on the north side of the Persian Gulf, it is in a position to threaten oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, which together possess more than half of the world`s known oil reserves. Iran also sits athwart the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which, daily, 40% of the world`s oil exports pass. In addition, Iran is becoming a major supplier of oil and natural gas to China, India, and Japan, thereby giving Tehran additional clout in world affairs. It is these geopolitical dimensions of energy, as much as Iran`s potential to export significant quantities of oil to the United States, that undoubtedly govern the administration`s strategic calculations.

Having said this, let me proceed to an assessment of Iran`s future energy potential. According to the most recent tally by Oil and Gas Journal, Iran houses the second-largest pool of untapped petroleum in the world, an estimated 125.8 billion barrels. Only Saudi Arabia, with an estimated 260 billion barrels, possesses more; Iraq, the third in line, has an estimated 115 billion barrels. With this much oil -- about one-tenth of the world`s estimated total supply -- Iran is certain to play a key role in the global energy equation, no matter what else occurs.

It is not, however, just sheer quantity that matters in Iran`s case; no less important is its future productive capacity. Although Saudi Arabia possesses larger reserves, it is now producing oil at close to its maximum sustainable rate (about 10 million barrels per day). It will probably be unable to raise its output significantly over the next 20 years while global demand, pushed by significantly higher consumption in the United States, China, and India, is expected to rise by 50%. Iran, on the other hand, has considerable growth potential: it is now producing about 4 million barrels per day, but is thought to be capable of boosting its output by another 3 million barrels or so. Few, if any, other countries possess this potential, so Iran`s importance as a producer, already significant, is bound to grow in the years ahead.

And it is not just oil that Iran possesses in great abundance, but also natural gas. According to Oil and Gas Journal, Iran has an estimated 940 trillion cubic feet of gas, or approximately 16% of total world reserves. (Only Russia, with 1,680 trillion cubic feet, has a larger supply.) As it takes approximately 6,000 cubic feet of gas to equal the energy content of 1 barrel of oil, Iran`s gas reserves represent the equivalent of about 155 billion barrels of oil. This, in turn, means that its combined hydrocarbon reserves are the equivalent of some 280 billion barrels of oil, just slightly behind Saudi Arabia`s combined supply. At present, Iran is producing only a small share of its gas reserves, about 2.7 trillion cubic feet per year. This means that Iran is one of the few countries capable of supplying much larger amounts of natural gas in the future.

What all this means is that Iran will play a critical role in the world`s future energy equation. This is especially true because the global demand for natural gas is growing faster than that for any other source of energy, including oil. While the world currently consumes more oil than gas, the supply of petroleum is expected to contract in the not-too-distant future as global production approaches its peak sustainable level -- perhaps as soon as 2010 -- and then begins a gradual but irreversible decline. The production of natural gas, on the other hand, is not likely to peak until several decades from now, and so is expected to take up much of the slack when oil supplies become less abundant. Natural gas is also considered a more attractive fuel than oil in many applications, especially because when consumed it releases less carbon dioxide (a major contributor to the greenhouse effect).

No doubt the major U.S. energy companies would love to be working with Iran today in developing these vast oil and gas supplies. At present, however, they are prohibited from doing so by Executive Order (EO) 12959, signed by President Clinton in 1995 and renewed by President Bush in March 2004. The United States has also threatened to punish foreign firms that do business in Iran (under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996), but this has not deterred many large companies from seeking access to Iran`s reserves. China, which will need vast amounts of additional oil and gas to fuel its red-hot economy, is paying particular attention to Iran. According to the Department of Energy (DoE), Iran supplied 14% of China`s oil imports in 2003, and is expected to provide an even larger share in the future. China is also expected to rely on Iran for a large share of its liquid natural gas (LNG) imports. In October 2004, Iran signed a $100 billion, 25-year contract with Sinopec, a major Chinese energy firm, for joint development of one of its major gas fields and the subsequent delivery of LNG to China. If this deal is fully consummated, it will constitute one of China`s biggest overseas investments and represent a major strategic linkage between the two countries.

India is also keen to obtain oil and gas from Iran. In January, the Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL) signed a 30-year deal with the National Iranian Gas Export Corp. for the transfer of as much as 7.5 million tons of LNG to India per year. The deal, worth an estimated $50 billion, will also entail Indian involvement in the development of Iranian gas fields. Even more noteworthy, Indian and Pakistani officials are discussing the construction of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan ¬ an extraordinary step for two long-term adversaries. If completed, the pipeline would provide both countries with a substantial supply of gas and allow Pakistan to reap $200-$500 million per year in transit fees. "The gas pipeline is a win-win proposition for Iran, India, and Pakistan," Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz declared in January.

Despite the pipeline`s obvious attractiveness as an incentive for reconciliation between India and Pakistan -- nuclear powers that have fought three wars over Kashmir since 1947 and remain deadlocked over the future status of that troubled territory -- the project was condemned by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a recent trip to India. "We have communicated to the Indian government our concerns about the gas pipeline cooperation between Iran and India," she said on March 16 after meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh in New Delhi. The administration has, in fact, proved unwilling to back any project that offers an economic benefit to Iran. This has not, however, deterred India from proceeding with the pipeline.

Japan has also broken ranks with Washington on the issue of energy ties with Iran. In early 2003, a consortium of three Japanese companies acquired a 20% stake in the development of the Soroush-Nowruz offshore field in the Persian Gulf, a reservoir thought to hold 1 billion barrels of oil. One year later, the Iranian Offshore Oil Company awarded a $1.26 billion contract to Japan`s JGC Corporation for the recovery of natural gas and natural gas liquids from Soroush-Nowruz and other offshore fields.

When considering Iran`s role in the global energy equation, therefore, Bush administration officials have two key strategic aims: a desire to open up Iranian oil and gas fields to exploitation by American firms, and concern over Iran`s growing ties to America`s competitors in the global energy market. Under U.S. law, the first of these aims can only be achieved after the President lifts EO 12959, and this is not likely to occur as long as Iran is controlled by anti-American mullahs and refuses to abandon its uranium enrichment activities with potential bomb-making applications. Likewise, the ban on U.S. involvement in Iranian energy production and export gives Tehran no choice but to pursue ties with other consuming nations. From the Bush administration`s point of view, there is only one obvious and immediate way to alter this unappetizing landscape -- by inducing "regime change" in Iran and replacing the existing leadership with one far friendlier to U.S. strategic interests.

That the Bush administration seeks to foster regime change in Iran is not in any doubt. The very fact that Iran was included with Saddam`s Iraq and Kim Jong Il`s North Korea in the "Axis of Evil" in the President`s 2002 State of the Union Address was an unmistakable indicator of this. Bush let his feelings be known again in June 2003, at a time when there were anti-government protests by students in Tehran. "This is the beginning of people expressing themselves toward a free Iran, which I think is positive," he declared. In a more significant indication of White House attitudes on the subject, the Department of Defense has failed to fully disarm the People`s Mujaheddin of Iran (or Mujaheddin-e Khalq, MEK), an anti-government militia now based in Iraq that has conducted terrorist actions in Iran and is listed on the State Department`s roster of terrorist organizations. In 2003, the Washington Post reported that some senior administration figures would like to use the MEK as a proxy force in Iran, in the same manner that the Northern Alliance was employed against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Iranian leadership is well aware that it faces a serious threat from the Bush administration and is no doubt taking whatever steps it can to prevent such an attack. Here, too, oil is a major factor in both Tehran`s and Washington`s calculations. To deter a possible American assault, Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz and otherwise obstruct oil shipping in the Persian Gulf area. "An attack on Iran will be tantamount to endangering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and, in a word, the entire Middle East oil," Iranian Expediency Council secretary Mohsen Rezai said on March 1st.

Such threats are taken very seriously by the U.S. Department of Defense. "We judge Iran can briefly close the Strait of Hormuz, relying on a layered strategy using predominantly naval, air, and some ground forces," Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 16th.

Planning for such attacks is, beyond doubt, a major priority for top Pentagon officials. In January, veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine that the Department of Defense was conducting covert reconnaissance raids into Iran, supposedly to identify hidden Iranian nuclear and missile facilities that could be struck in future air and missile attacks. "I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran," Hersh said of his interviews with senior military personnel. Shortly thereafter, the Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon was flying surveillance drones over Iran to verify the location of weapons sites and to test Iranian air defenses. As noted by the Post, "Aerial espionage [of this sort] is standard in military preparations for an eventual air attack." There have also been reports of talks between U.S. and Israeli officials about a possible Israeli strike on Iranian weapons facilities, presumably with behind-the-scenes assistance from the United States.

In reality, much of Washington`s concern about Iran`s pursuit of WMD and ballistic missiles is sparked by fears for the safety of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, other Persian Gulf oil producers, and Israel rather than by fears of a direct Iranian assault on the United States. "Tehran has the only military in the region that can threaten its neighbors and Gulf security," Jacoby declared in his February testimony. "Its expanding ballistic missile inventory presents a potential threat to states in the region." It is this regional threat that American leaders are most determined to eliminate.

In this sense, more than any other, the current planning for an attack on Iran is fundamentally driven by concern over the safety of U.S. energy supplies, as was the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In the most telling expression of White House motives for going to war against Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney (in an August 2002 address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars) described the threat from Iraq as follows: "Should all [of Hussein`s WMD] ambitions be realized, the implications would be enormous for the Middle East and the United States.... Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror and a seat atop 10 percent of the world`s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world`s energy supplies, [and] directly threaten America`s friends throughout the region." This was, of course, unthinkable to Bush`s inner circle. And all one need do is substitute the words "Iranian mullahs" for Saddam Hussein, and you have a perfect expression of the Bush administration case for making war on Iran.

So, even while publicly focusing on Iran`s weapons of mass destruction, key administration figures are certainly thinking in geopolitical terms about Iran`s role in the global energy equation and its capacity to obstruct the global flow of petroleum. As was the case with Iraq, the White House is determined to eliminate this threat once and for all. And so, while oil may not be the administration`s sole reason for going to war with Iran, it is an essential factor in the overall strategic calculation that makes war likely.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America`s Growing Dependency on Imported Oil (Metropolitan Books).

Copyright 2005 Michael T. Klare

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Es ist schön, dass der Spiegel, nach einigen obskuren Artikeln gegen die Grünen und Broder Polemik, sich auch mal wieder mit der US-Politik auseinandersetzt ohne dabei meinungslose Agenturmeldungen zu verbraten.
Manchmal habe ich in den letzten Wochen den Eindruck der Spiegel versucht mit aller Macht Focus zu unterbieten.
Über die Bolton-Anhörung habe ich in den letzten Tagen Artikel eingestellt.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 12. April 2005, 09:17

Senats-Anhörung

Breitseiten gegen Uno-Hasser Bolton
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,350861,00.html

Von Hans Michael Kloth, Washington

John Bolton kämpft vor dem Auswärtigen Ausschuss des US-Senats um einen Posten, der dem erklärtem Unilateralisten eigentlich zuwider sein müsste: US-Botschafter bei der Uno. Die Demokraten proben den Aufstand - nur ein abtrünniger Republikaner würde reichen, um Bushs umstrittenen Kandidaten zu kippen. Eine Geheimdienst-Affäre könnte den letzten Kick geben.

Washington - Während seine ehrenwerten Kollegen nach einem anstrengenden Vormittag zum Lunch entschwanden, musste sich Senator Lincoln Chafee gestern Mittag erst einmal bohrenden Fragen einer Traube von Reportern stellen, die ihn an seinem Platz auf dem Podium in Saal SH-216 des US-Kongresses festhielten. Ob ihn Verteidigungs-Unterstaatssekretär John Bolton, der Kandidat von US-Präsident George W. Bush für das Amt des Uno-Botschafters, in der ersten Anhörung überzeugt habe, wollten die Journalisten wissen. Ob er schon wisse, wie er abstimmen werde?

Chafee, einer der wenigen moderaten Republikaner im US-Kongress, ist zur Schlüsselfigur der bisher hitzigsten Nominierungsschlacht in Bushs zweiter Amtszeit geworden. Anders als Paul Wolfowitz, die andere kontroverse Bush-Personalie, muss Burton zuerst vom Außenausschuss und dann von allen 100 US-Senatoren mehrheitlich bestätigt werden. Einige Republikaner haben Zweifel an der Eignung des feurigen Nationalisten Bolton als Uno-Botschafter geäußert, darunter auch der Ausschussvorsitzende, Senator Richard Lugar aus Indiana. Doch nur Chafee hat bisher durchblicken lassen, er werde es womöglich gegen die Ernennung Boltons stimmen.

Schlägt sich der Senator des Mini-Bundesstaates Rhode Island auf die Seite der Demokraten, die Bolton wohl geschlossen ablehnen werden, ist die Berufung des erzkonservativen Yale-Juristen auf den Prestigeposten Makulatur, bevor sie überhaupt das Plenum erreicht - und der Präsident hätte eine erste herbe Schlappe im Kongress erlitten.

Angriffsfläche für Multilateralisten jedweder Couleur bietet Bolton, der seine außenpolitische Laufbahn im US-Entwicklungshilfeministerium begann, reichlich. Er war es, der die amerikanische Absage an den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof orchestrierte; Bolton torpedierte auch eine Vereinbarung über den Produktionsstopp für spaltbares Materials und bekämpft vehement ein weltweites Atomtest-Verbot. Den Chef der Internationalen Atomenergiebehörde in Wien, Mohamed el-Baradei, mit dem die USA seit dem Irak-Krieg über Kreuz liegen, versuchte er kaltzustellen. Boltons mitunter reaktionäre Ansichten sorgten schon vor vier Jahren dafür, dass er für seinen Job im Pentagon nur mit einer ungewöhnlich knappen Mehrheit bestätigt wurde.

Irrelevante Uno?

Kein Wunder also, dass die Demokraten ihre gesamte rhetorische Feuerkraft gleich zum gestrigen Auftakt des erwarteten Anhörungs-Marathons auf Bolton richtete, den sie nicht nur als unverbesserlichen Unilateralisten und Repräsentant amerikanischer Großmannssucht verabscheut, sondern dem sie auch seine Schlüsselrolle als Vertreter des Bush-Lagers bei der Stimmennachzählung in Florida bei der umstrittenen Präsidentenwahl 2000 nachträgt.

Ausgiebig zitierten die demokratischen Senatoren bei der Anhörung am Montag aus Veröffentlichungen Boltons, in denen dieser aus seiner Verachtung für die Uno keinerlei Hehl gemacht hatte. Senatorin Barbara Boxer aus Kalifornien, die schon Außenministerin Condoleezza Rice bei deren Anhörung im Januar am heftigsten zugesetzt hatte, ließ ihren Kollegen ein dreiminütiges Bolton-Video vorführen.

In dem Konferenz-Mitschnitt von 1994 wiederholt ein teils erregt gestikulierender Bolton mehrmals, es gebe überhaupt keine Vereinten Nationen, sondern nur Regierungen von Mitgliedstaaten. Für die USA seien die Vereinten Nationen irrelevant, es werde allein nach nationalem Interesse gehandelt. Und wenn von den 38 Etagen des New Yorker Uno-Hauptquartieres "zehn heute verschwinden würden", so Bolton in der Aufnahme, "es würde nicht den geringsten Unterschied machen."

"Aufrührerische Rhetorik"

Angesichts der Faktenlage brachten Boltons Bemühungen, wenn schon nicht als Freund, so doch wenigstens als Verfechter einer funktionsfähigen Uno zu erscheinen, die Demokraten in Rage. Das "enorme Potential" der Uno könne sich aufgrund der Einstellung der Mitgliedsstaaten der Uno "oft nicht entfalten", säuselte Bolton. "Sie haben nichts als Verachtung für die Vereinten Nationen übrig", hielt Boxer ihm entgegen. "Sie können um den heißen Brei schleichen, sie können davor weglaufen, sie können Parfum drüber gießen" - all das ändere "unter dem Strich" nichts an dieser Einschätzung. "Wir brauchen jemanden, der an die Vereinten Nationen glaubt", ergänzte der im Präsidentschafts-Rennen unterlegene John Kerry.

Auf philosophische Argumente allein können sich die Bolton-Gegner im Senat jedoch nicht beschränken, wenn sie Chafee oder einen der anderen kritischen Republikaner zum Überlaufen bewegen wollen. So gaben sie sich redlich Mühe, Boltons Leistung als Unter-Staatssekretär für Abrüstung in Zweifel zu ziehen. In den vier Jahren seiner Amtszeit habe Nordkorea sein nukleares Arsenal "enorm ausbauen" können, bemängelte etwa Kerry: "Ich sehe nicht, warum Sie für dieses Versagen belohnt werden sollten."

Auf den weichen Unterleib der noch Unentschlossenen zielte auch das Argument, Boltons unbezweifelbare Intelligenz werde durch seine Ruppigkeit konterkariert. Ein Uno-Botschafter, dem es an Geschmeidigkeit mangele, sei nun mal nicht im nationalen Interesse der USA. "Ihre ziemlich aufrührerische Rhetorik würde anderen einen Anreiz geben, sich gegen uns zu stellen", beschied etwa Senator Bill Nelson aus Florida Bolton.

Streit um Kubas angebliche Biowaffen

Doch entscheiden wird über Wohl und Wehe des Kandidaten womöglich eine Affäre, die erst in den Grundzügen öffentlich bekannt ist. Vom ersten Moment im Mittelpunkt der Anhörung, dürfte sie bei den kommenden Terminen noch für Aufregung sorgen, wenn einige der Hauptbeteiligten als Zeugen vorgeladen sind.

Im Frühjahr 2002 hatte Bolton in einer Rede vor einem Washingtoner Thinktank ein angebliches geheimes Biowaffenprogramm des kubanischen Diktators Fidel Castro enthüllen wollen. Die entsprechende Textpassage war vom Chefanalysten für Biowaffen im US-Außenministerium wegen Zweifeln an der Zuverlässigkeit der zugrunde liegenden Informationen jedoch nicht freigegeben worden. "Wutentbrannt", so Zeugen, habe Bolton daraufhin die Entlassung des Analysten, Christian Westermann, betrieben.

Die Demokraten porträtieren Boltons Verhalten als ein weiteres, krasses Beispiel für den verantwortungslosen Umgang, ja systematischen Missbrauch von Geheimdiensterkenntnissen unter Bush, der die USA in den Irak-Krieg geführt hat. Falls es stimme, dass ein kritischer Mitarbeiter zum Schweigen gebracht werden sollte, drohte Senator Christopher Dodd aus Connecticut, habe Bolton "kein Recht", als Botschafter zu dienen. "Wer richtig liegt, sollte befördert werden, nicht gefeuert", ergänzte Dodds Kollege Kerry und überließ den Umkehrschluss dem Kandidaten

"Nein zu Bolton, Ja zur Uno"

Auf wiederholte Nachfrage musste Bolton eingestehen, auf die Entfernung Westermanns gedrängt zu haben - nach seiner Darstellung allerdings nicht wegen dessen Weigerung, der Rede sein Okay zu geben. Der skeptische Auswerter habe "hinter meinem Rücken" einen Vorgesetzten über den Vorfall informiert und damit "mein Vertrauen gebrochen", rechtfertigte sich Bolton. Mit den Worten "Wir haben es versiebt", habe sich Westermanns Chef für das "völlig unangemessene" Verhalten entschuldigt, so Bolton. Damit sei die Sache für ihn erledigt gewesen.

Unter Druck musste Bolton auch zugeben, den Fall damit keineswegs abgehakt zu haben, sondern Monate später gegenüber Westermanns neuem Vorgesetzten noch einmal auf dessen Ablösung gedrängt zu haben. Auch die Entschuldigungs-E-Mail des einstigen Westermann-Vorgesetzten erscheint nach dessen eigener Aussage in anderem Licht. "Ich wusste, dass ich mit jemandem redete, der sehr wütend war", gab der dem Senats-Ausschuss zu Protokoll. "Also habe ich mich flachgelegt."

Senator Chafee hielt sich gestern noch bedeckt, als er zu seinem Stimmverhalten befragt wurde.. Als er seine allgemein gehaltene Befragung des Kandidaten beendet hatte, sprangen dafür im Zuschauerbereich drei Demonstrantinnen auf und erzwangen eine kurze Sitzungsunterbrechung. Ihr Schlachtruf: "Nein zu Bolton - ja zur Uno!"

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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Für die NYT ist Bolton eine Headline.
Wen es interessiert das Transcript der Befragung:
[urlTranscript: Monday`s Senate Panel Hearing]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/politics/12bolton-full-text.html[/url]
April 12, 2005
Rhode Island Moderate Is the Man in the Middle
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/politics/12chafee.html

WASHINGTON, April 11 - The Democrats who grilled John R. Bolton on Monday about his qualifications to be ambassador to the United Nations were at times irate, at times acerbic, at times combative. But Mr. Bolton`s future may lie in his answers to the gentle questions from a soft-spoken Republican, Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Mr. Chafee is the lone Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to reserve judgment on Mr. Bolton; without his vote the nomination may not make it out of committee.

He has said he is inclined to support Mr. Bolton - a statement he reiterated Monday, adding that Democratic critics had not "made as strong a case as I might have expected." But he also said he was "still listening" and waiting for Tuesday`s testimony before making up his mind.

Until then the senator from Rhode Island is the man in the middle.

The White House is pressing Mr. Chafee, a moderate who is often at odds with his party, to vote in favor. His constituents in heavily Democratic Rhode Island, where he may face a tough re-election fight next year, are urging him to vote against - prodded in part by Senator John Kerry of nearby Massachusetts.

On Monday, Mr. Kerry sent an e-mail message urging his supporters to call Mr. Chafee. Mr. Chafee`s offices in Providence and Washington have been flooded with phone calls as a result.

"It`s an important vote," Mr. Chafee said Monday. "But I`ll be honest. Back in Rhode Island, I think the interest groups care strongly about it, but I think the average citizen doesn`t know who John Bolton is."

Mr. Bolton, an under secretary of state, has been scornful of the United Nations, and Mr. Chafee said he knew the nomination would put him in a difficult spot because of his own vigorous opposition to the war in Iraq. Critics, including one who will testify Tuesday, have accused Mr. Bolton of suppressing information that undercut the Bush administration`s contention that Saddam Hussein had unconventional weapons.

For Mr. Chafee that is a central issue. "I wish this wasn`t the nominee to the United Nations," he said Monday, almost wistfully. "When I heard it, I said to myself, `Here come some tough hearings and some tough votes.` "

The role of swing voter is a familiar one for Mr. Chafee, who is so out of step with his party that rather than vote for President Bush last November, he said he was going to write the name of Mr. Bush`s father on his ballot.

Even so, Republicans welcome him, knowing that without him they would surely lose Rhode Island to a Democrat. Asked Monday if they were pressing Mr. Chafee, fellow Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee responded gingerly.

"He`s an independent thinker," said Senator George Allen, the Virginia Republican. "No," said Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the committee. Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican, just shrugged.

Democrats, though, are trying to exploit Mr. Chafee`s situation. "Senator Chafee continues to flip-flop on this issue," Matt Brown, the Rhode Island secretary of state, who plans to run against him, said Monday in a statement. Senator Kerry, meanwhile, has placed advertisements on various Rhode Island Web sites.

"If there`s some overwhelmingly disqualifying evidence, then I`ll vote against," Mr. Chafee said. But so far, he said, he has not seen any, adding that his basic philosophy is that "the president won the election and he gets to choose his team."

Mr. Chafee`s questioning of Mr. Bolton on Monday followed his customary quiet style. After telling Mr. Bolton that he had said "all the right things in your opening statement," the senator went on to ask about a phone call the nominee said he had received from Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general.

"I`m curious," the senator said. "Did he endorse your candidacy?"

The crowd tittered, and Mr. Bolton replied that while he did not want to disclose confidences, Mr. Annan had said, "Get yourself confirmed quickly."

To which Mr. Chafee offered a possibly telling reply: "Well, I think that`s important."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 12, 2005
Clinton Says Gay Opponent of His Wife May Be `Self-Loathing`
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/nyregion/12clinton.html

Former President Bill Clinton unleashed an attack yesterday against a gay Republican strategist who has plans to work against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton`s re-election, suggesting that the man may be "self-loathing" to work on behalf of the Republican Party.

The former president was reacting to reports that the strategist, Arthur J. Finkelstein, was in the midst of setting up a political action committee to defeat Mrs. Clinton in 2006. Republican officials close to Mr. Finkelstein have said that he hopes to be able to finance an advertising campaign similar to the one orchestrated against John Kerry last year by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

"I was sort of sad when I read it," Mr. Clinton said, speaking at a news conference at his office in Harlem, where he announced that his foundation was donating $10 million to treat children with AIDS.

The former president noted that an earlier article over the weekend reported that Mr. Finkelstein had married his male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts, then he alluded to the Republican Party`s use of the same-sex marriage issue to mobilize conservative voters.

"Either this guy believes his party is not serious and he`s totally Machiavellian," Mr. Clinton said, or "he may be blinded by self-loathing." Mr. Finkelstein, a reclusive former adviser to Gov. George E. Pataki, did not respond to a message left at his office seeking a comment on Mr. Clinton`s remarks. But his allies quickly did.

"It`s really beneath a former president to comment on someone`s personal life like that," said Michael McKeon, a Republican strategist, former Pataki aide and friend of Mr. Finkelstein`s. "After everything he has been through in his own life, you`d think he`d know better."

The spectacle of the former president coming to the defense of his wife, a tough politician in her own right, generated considerable buzz in political circles, particularly since Mr. Clinton has tried to keep a low profile and stay out of Mrs. Clinton`s way since she took office.

While Mrs. Clinton`s popularity rating is high and Republicans are having trouble finding a strong candidate to run against her, the senator`s political advisers have seized on Mr. Finkelstein`s plans as a strong sign of the fierce campaign they expect from Republicans.

Mr. Finkelstein, who helped engineer Mr. Pataki`s 1994 victory over Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, has not publicly commented on his plans to establish an anti-Clinton committee.

But the Republicans familiar with those plans say he is attempting to line up donors to help the committee, called Stop Her Now, reach its goal of raising as much as $10 million to finance an independent campaign against her. In that context, Mr. Clinton offered high praise for his wife`s record in office, describing her as a hard-working senator. "I don`t think he`ll stop her," he said, referring to Mr. Finkelstein.

Mr. Finkelstein`s associates have said they were surprised to learn of his marriage to another man, in light of his history with the party and his own place as a prominent conservative. He has been allied over the years with Republicans who have adamantly opposed gay rights measures, including former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Mr. Finkelstein has been the subject of attacks by gay rights advocates who have accused him of hypocrisy.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting for this article.

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April 12, 2005
MUNICH JOURNAL
Your Mercedes Is Not Armor-Plated? How Declassé!
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/international/europe/12mun…

MUNICH, April 6 - Striding through the parking lot next to his factory, trailed by smoke from his Cuban cigar, Johann P. Ackermann gestures toward a black Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle. The roof, hood, and doors on the passenger side are punched in, as if by a giant fist. The internal screws that roll down the windows are embedded in the metal of the doors.

"A bomb exploded right next to it," Mr. Ackermann said. "Destroyed a building. But everybody in the car lived."

He delivers this sales pitch in a brusque, homicide-detective patter that somehow seems perfect for the product. Mr. Ackermann has got to be one of the world`s few car dealers who moves his merchandise by showing it riddled with bullets, or twisted and singed by bomb blasts.
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A BMW security car at a Munich test center. Armored cars can be bought, or normal sedans can be outfitted.
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Mr. Ackermann, 57, and his sons own a company here that makes armored cars. It is a growth industry, with booming markets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and any number of other dangerous places, where a simple journey from point A to point B can be a lethal experience.

Increasingly, the vehicle of choice for this adventure travel is a German luxury sedan clad like a panzer. One can buy such a fortress-on-wheels directly from the company, or from an outfit like Mr. Ackermann`s, which buys cars from dealers and puts on the armor plating itself.

Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi are status symbols for the security-minded, just as they are for ordinary drivers. Even people who are not in any real danger covet armored models, in the same way that a Russian oligarch or a Hong Kong tycoon might collect bodyguards.

"One-third of the people who buy these cars are under threat, one-third think they are under threat, and one-third want to be in the first two categories," said Mr. Ackermann, pointing out photos of former customers, among them Frank Sinatra and the magician David Copperfield.

Cars like the bomb-scarred Mercedes that sits in Mr. Ackermann`s lot, waiting to be fixed, used to be a rarity. He said it belonged to a Slovene industrialist, who was the target of an attack last fall. The man was away from the car at the time of the blast; his guards, who were inside, survived with minor injuries.

Just as terrorism in the Balkans added to the business, the Iraq war has turbocharged it. Car bombings, ambushes, even attacks by rocket-propelled grenades occur regularly in Iraq, and they demand a heavier level of protection than the lightly armored limousines normally used by fearful celebrities or Latin American industrialists.

"Iraq is a very important market for BMW right now, but it has nothing to do with the regular market, because we view it as a temporary phenomenon," said Michael Gallmann, a former German Army officer who heads the division at BMW that produces armored vehicles.

With governments, private contractors and news organizations all clamoring for cars to protect their employees, the wait for an armored car can be long. Most used vehicles have already been snapped up, and the Germans turn out only 10 or 20 new sedans a month. Even the sticker price of $425,000 for a limousine - $142,000 for an S.U.V. - has not curbed the demand.

The supply is also affected by changing security needs. The Toyota Land Cruiser, an S.U.V., was popular in Afghanistan. But many customers stay away from American or Japanese S.U.V.`s in Iraq because they have come to be associated with the foreigners who arrived alongside allied troops and are less common on the streets than German sedans, which have been around for some time. For BMW, Mercedes, and Audi, armored cars are a referral business. They do not advertise these vehicles, which are produced on high-security assembly lines and stored under lock and key.

The carmakers say they have to be discreet because of their rarified and risk-prone clientele. But they are proud of the engineering and the exotic gadgetry that goes into the cars. At times, their secrecy seems calculated to lend a James Bond-like mystique to the business.

The best publicity they can get is on the evening news. Last month, Anatoly B. Chubais, the architect of Russia`s privatization in the 1990`s, was ambushed on his way to work in an armored BMW. After detonating a bomb, gunmen raked the car with bullets, damaging the hood, windshield and right front tire, but not disabling it. Mr. Chubais was unscathed.

Even bad publicity does not seem to hurt. Mercedes remained the undisputed leader in armored cars even after a terrorist attack in 1989 in which the chairman of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, was killed near his home when a bomb hidden a child`s knapsack blew apart his armored Mercedes.

Mercedes has been building "special protection" cars since 1928. One of its earliest models, a 1935 behemoth, the Grand Mercedes, was better known as Emperor Hirohito`s limousine. (Hitler had something like it.)

BMW, with 30 years of experience, is a relative newcomer. But it has ambitions, as the ceremonial flag holders on its cars attest. "We want heads of states to be driven in BMW`s," Mr. Gallmann said.

In a locked garage, he showed off an armored limousine once used to chauffeur the prime minister of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber. It weighs 7,800 pounds but goes from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in 7.5 seconds. With windows more than two inches thick, it can withstand rounds from an M-16 or an AK-47.

While these cars have handy storage for machine pistols and an optional smoke machine to obscure the car during gun battles, BMW says they are meant to be defensive vehicles, not weapons.

It also says the protection in its cars is more sophisticated than that of outside companies like Mr. Ackermann`s. His company, Alpha Armoring, basically puts an armor cage around the seating area. That can be cumbersome for people climbing in and out of the car.

So what? asked Mr. Ackermann, as he rapped his knuckles on an armor plate being lifted into a Mercedes. "My philosophy is, it`s better to have a bump on your head than a bullet in your head."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Parts of Colorado received nearly two feet of snow on Sunday, forcing cancellation of hundreds of flights at Denver
and the 27-hour closing of 200 miles of Interstate 70 from Aurora to Kansas. Workers at the Dinosaur Resource
Center in Woodland Park cleared paths yesterday around fake palms.
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Noch mals Bolton, nun von der Post. Da hat er scheinbar Kreide gefressen. "We can take important steps to restore confidence in the United Nations."

washingtonpost.com
Bolton Assures Senators Of Commitment to U.N.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43504-2005Apr…

By Charles Babington and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 12, 2005; Page A01

President Bush`s nominee to be U.N. ambassador told senators yesterday that his caustic criticism of the United Nations in a speech a decade ago was designed to get his audience`s attention and that "the United States is committed to the success" of the international body.

In a day-long hearing, John R. Bolton repeatedly played down his previous jabs at the world body and pledged "to forge a stronger relationship between the United States and the United Nations, which depends critically on American leadership." Alluding to scandals and political stands that he and others have attacked, Bolton said, "We can take important steps to restore confidence in the United Nations."

Bolton spent much of the day defending his own controversial statements; he parried sharp questions from Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, several of whom said he is the wrong person for the job. Although Democrats complained that his answers were often evasive, Bolton appeared to survive the hearing with minor damage.

Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), the panel`s only Republican who was seen as a possible vote against Bolton, said he is inclined to support the nomination and send it to the full Senate, where the GOP holds a 55 to 45 edge.

Although Chafee told reporters that he would have preferred another nominee, he said, "I don`t think the Democrats have made as strong a case [against Bolton] as I might have expected."

It wasn`t for lack of trying. Democrats repeatedly pressed Bolton, 56, to explain his criticisms of the United Nations, including those from a fiery speech about 10 years ago to the World Federalists. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) played a three-minute video clip in which Bolton said that "there`s no such thing as the United Nations," and that if 10 floors of the 38-story U.N. headquarters building were eliminated, "it wouldn`t make a bit of difference."

Bolton told Boxer: "What I was trying to do at that audience of World Federalists was get their attention. And the comment about the 10 stories was a way of saying there`s not a bureaucracy in the world that can`t be made leaner and more efficient."

"Well, that isn`t what you said," Boxer replied. She told the committee, "I`m bewildered by this nomination."

Democrats also pressed Bolton to explain a 2002 incident involving a speech about Cuba. Bolton, who at the time held his current job of undersecretary of state for arms control, planned to announce that Cuba had a secret bioweapons program, although several intelligence officials considered the evidence ambiguous. Christian Westermann, the State Department`s chief bioweapons analyst, refused to approve the language and recommended changes. Bolton berated him and tried to have him removed from his post.

Democrats said yesterday that Bolton wrongly tried to fire Westermann for refusing to back a questionable claim that Bolton wanted to make. Bolton said he merely wanted the official to work elsewhere because Westermann had inappropriately shared his concerns about the speech with others, and therefore "I`d lost trust and confidence in him."

Democrats said the episode carries echoes of failed U.S. intelligence reports regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Overstating unverified security concerns "is one of the things that got us in trouble in Iraq," Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) told Bolton.

Bolton said Westermann`s superior -- Thomas Fingar, now head of the State Department`s Bureau of Intelligence and Research -- sent Bolton an e-mail at the time saying that Westermann`s behavior had been "entirely inappropriate" and that "we screwed up."

But Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) said that committee staffers recently interviewed Fingar about the incident and that Fingar said Westermann had not acted improperly or been disciplined. Dodd quoted Fingar as saying of Bolton: "I knew I was dealing with somebody who was very upset. I was trying to get the incident closed."

Fingar and others involved in the episode are scheduled to testify before the committee today.

Democrats also alleged, based on interviews with CIA officers and Bolton`s chief of staff, that Bolton had sought removal of another official, the national intelligence officer responsible for Latin America, also as a result of his Cuba speech. The official had refused to clear congressional testimony Bolton was preparing in case he was called to appear at a hearing.

Bolton acknowledged that he raised the issue with Stuart A. Cohen, former acting director of the National Intelligence Council, during a visit to CIA headquarters in July 2002. Bolton said he tried to get the intelligence officer and Westermann reassigned, not fired. "I thought in both cases, if I may say so, their conduct was unprofessional and broke my confidence and trust," he said.

He said the disputes were over the analysts` behavior, not over their assessments. Neither official was reassigned, Democratic senators said.

Committee Republicans defended Bolton against many of the Democrats` accusations. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) noted that Bolton has won widespread praise for his leadership of the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led arrangement under which participating countries agree to search ships suspected of carrying illicit weapons. "That`s part of your record of performance which I find very salutary," Allen said.

Bolton, under questioning from Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), acknowledged there were problems with congressional testimony he had planned to give in 2003 on Syria. "There were a lot of disagreements about the speech," Bolton said. "It was clear to me that more work needed to be done on it." Intelligence officials blocked the planned testimony, saying it painted an exaggerated and misleading portrait of Syria`s threat.

In response to questions from Obama about Iran, Bolton`s comments appeared to go beyond statements made by other administration officials. Bolton said that the "Iranian effort to achieve nuclear weapons constitutes a threat to international peace and security."

Official use of that language was rejected by State Department officials more than a year ago when it was first circulated in the agency, according to two U.S. officials, because it suggests that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, whereas the intelligence community is not certain. It also echoes language in the U.N. charter that authorizes the use of force in cases that are considered "threats to international peace and security."

For that reason, the State Department has authorized public references to Iran as a "growing threat" to peace and security.

Bolton, known for pushing hard-line approaches to North Korea`s nuclear capabilities, blamed some policy disputes within the State Department on others. Regarding criticism of him by Charles L. Pritchard, Bush`s former envoy on North Korea, Bolton said: "I respect Mr. Pritchard, but I don`t think he agreed with the president`s policy."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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www.terry-jones.net

Let them eat bombs

The doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling
Terry Jones
Tuesday April 12, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1457436,00.ht…

Guardian
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.

This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.

It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.

These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them.

A year later, Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United Nations, tried to put a brave face on it. When a TV interviewer remarked that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it."

But clearly George Bush didn`t. So he hit on the idea of bombing them instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks - but none of it seems to do any good. Iraqi children simply refuse to be better nourished, healthier and less inclined to die. It is truly baffling.

And this is why we at the department are appealing to you - the general public - for ideas. If you can think of any other military techniques that we have so far failed to apply to the children of Iraq, please let us know as a matter of urgency. We assure you that, under our present leadership, there is no limit to the amount of money we are prepared to invest in a military solution to the problems of Iraqi children.

In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.

·Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python. He is the author of Terry Jones`s War on the War on Terror

www.terry-jones.net
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, April 12, 2005

Competent Intelligence Urged by Rumsfeld

Ironies of Iraq today:

[urlSecretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is afraid]http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-04-12T071942Z_01_HOL221360_RTRUKOC_0_IRAQ-RUMSFELD.xml[/url] that the new Shiite religious government in Iraq will purge ex-Baathists placed in the army and intelligence services by US ally Iyad Allawi, a long-term CIA asset. Rumsfeld said that competent persons should be retained. This is the same Rumsfeld whose own deputy, Douglas Feith, set up a grossly incompetent cell in the Pentagon to cherry-pick intelligence and produce a false image of Iraq as bristling with weapons of mass destruction and in league with al-Qaeda.

[urlHalliburton, Dick Cheney`s old firm,]http://www.indystar.com/articles/8/236222-3268-010.html[/url] has been accused of doing shoddy work on the oil facilities in southern Iraq. After yesterday`s admission by Bechtel that its work on energy and water facilities was now falling apart, this report raises the question of whether US reconstruction billions tossed to the private sector have bought anything useful at all for Iraq.
[urlThere were a string of violent incidents in Iraq]http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2005/April/focusoniraq_April44.xml§ion=focusoniraq[/url] on Monday, including three suicide bombings at a US base near Qaim, which wounded at least 3 US troops. [urlAnother suicide bombing at Samarra]http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-04/12/content_2816461.htm[/url] killed 3 Iraqis and wounded 20.

Some 400 university students in Baquba from the Sadr Movement demonstrated against the US on Monday, chanting "No, no to Jews!" Religious demography doesn`t appear to be their strong suit, or they`d have complained about Baptists and Catholics.

An Iraqi newspaper, according to BBC world monitoring, is reporting that the unemployment rate in Maysan province is 48 percent.

posted by Juan @ [url4/12/2005 06:36:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/competent-intelligence-urged-by.html[/url]

Sharon Defies Bush

The AP headline gets it right: Sharon dismisses Bush Warning on Settlement Expansion.

I would have called it "large-scale land theft" rather than "settlement expansion," but it comes to the same thing.

Wait a second. Isn`t that Ariel Sharon, whose government gets billions of dollars a year from the United States (who even gets some from your household if you are an American, whether you like it or not)? Doesn`t he owe us anything?

He doesn`t think so.

On September 11, the United States was struck a grievous and unexpected blow by a handful of fanatics. Their stated purpose was to punish the U.S. for its support of Israel`s crackdown on the Palestinians. Khalid Shaik Muhammad, among the masterminds of the operation, had wanted it moved up to April of 2001 to make the point that Israel`s actions of that spring were being punished.

What was the reaction of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to this horrific attack on the US? Was it at least caution, given the price Americans had paid for supporting his colonization and theft of land in the Occupied Territories? Was it a cooling-off period while we dug the bodies out of the rubble and assessed the likelihood of a further attack? Was it any show of respect at all for the needs of the United States at that parlous moment?

No.

It was a "stepping up" of Israeli attacks on Palestinians!


The Advertiser, September 14, 2001

"Three die as tank raids stepped up"

ISRAELI tanks and bulldozers rolled into Jenin and Jericho in the West Bank early yesterday, shelling buildings and triggering gunfights that killed three Palestinians and wounded 18 . . . Amid the tensions, US Secretary of State Colin Powell called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat late on Wednesday. Mr Arafat agreed to Mr Powell`s request that he meet Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, but no date was set for a meeting.



Well, then, you might think, at least Sharon would agree to talk and show some flexibility if he insisted on killing more Palestinians just days after the US was attacked?

No.


September 15, 2001, The Washington Post:

HEADLINE: Sharon Defies Bush`s Request for Peace Talks;
Foreign Minister Is Ordered Not to Meet With Arafat as Planned on Sunday

Defying a request from the Bush administration, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today forbade his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet Sunday with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. President Bush had telephoned Sharon earlier today urging him to renew talks with the Palestinians to end the year-long Middle East violence. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also had called with a similar message. But Sharon, under pressure from hard-liners in his government, ruled out the meeting that Peres has been trying for weeks to arrange to discuss a cease-fire with Arafat.



But what would happen if Bush continued to press Sharon to cool it? What if Bush swung around and declared for a Palestinian state, in an attempt to outflank al-Qaeda in the Muslim world? Surely Sharon would see the light and accommodate an old ally, which had transferred tens of billions of dollars and lots of high-tech weaponry to Israel over the years?

No.


The Scotsman, October 5, 2001

SHARON IN OUTBURST OVER US `APPEASING` OF ARABS

THE Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, last night fired an angry broadside at the United States, likening its efforts to enlist moderate Arab countries in Washington`s war on terrorism to appeasement of Nazi Germany in 1938.

In caustic language seldom heard between the two allies, Mr Sharon charged that Washington, which has pressed his government to adhere to a ceasefire with the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, was being soft on Palestinian terrorism, which he defines as including attacks in the occupied territories, even as it pursues Osama bin Laden.

"We can only rely on ourselves and from now on we will only rely on ourselves," Mr Sharon said, adding security forces would "take all necessary steps" to defend Israeli citizens and implying that US pressure for army restraint would be of no consequence.

"I turn to the United States and say don`t go back on the same mistakes as the democracies made in 1938. That is when Czechoslovakia was sacrificed for a convenient, temporary solution.

"Do not appease the Arabs on our account. Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. We will defend ourselves."



So Sharon branded Bush a Chamberlain and the United States an appeaser because it pressured him to make peace with the Palestinians. You see, he didn`t think that his grabbiness had caused enough trouble in the world yet. He wanted to go on grabbing other people`s land and he wasn`t going to let the mere fact that he had helped drag the United States into a hot war with terrorists give him pause.

I remind you that Sharon bad-mouthed the United States just after September 11. It wasn`t any old time. The country was reeling. We were trying to understand what had happened. We were reaching out to Muslims who would be allies, like Pakistan and Egypt and Jordan. They were all telling us that the Muslim rank and file was angry about the Israeli predations in Palestine. Sharon in essence accused the 9/11 families who argued for the need to seek Middle East peace of being Chamberlains and appeasers.

Ariel Sharon must be among the most odious elected prime ministers now serving in the world. Guilty of numerous war crimes, from the 1982 invasion of Lebanon (which killed nearly 20,000), to ultimate responsibility for the massacre of unarmed Palestinian civilians by his Phalangist allies at Sabra and Shatila, to his recent policy of simply murdering persons he suspected of crimes, such as Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, the wheelchair-riding old clerical leader of Hamas. (Yasin may have deserved the death penalty, but there is no reason he could not have been arrested and tried. Just murdering people sets a bad example, aside from being illegal and a capital crime.)

Asking him nicely to abide by the US-backed road map for peace is not enough, obviously. Congress should cut him off without a dime until he stops stabbing the United States of America in the back with his aggressive expansionism.

And he should stop making enemies for the US among one billion Muslims who care about the fate of the Palestinians, just as 19th-century Americans cared about the fate of the Texans at the Alamo.

posted by Juan @ [url4/12/2005 06:34:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/sharon-defies-bush-ap-headline-gets-it.html[/url]

What the Muslims think is Really Happening in Jerusalem

The far-right Israeli extremists who demonstrated in Jerusalem were not just protesting the plan to remove Israeli colonists from Gaza, as was reported in the Western press.

Rather, they were threatening to invade the al-Aqsa Mosque. The Muslim world understood this threat as an intention to destroy the third-holiest shrine in the Islamic world.

For historical background on the Temple Mount or al-Haram al-Sharif, see this excellent piece by Oleg Grabar.

(Grabar notes the traditional association of the Haram complex with the "city of David," but it is worth noting that the Assyrian and other ancient scribes, who wrote down everything that happened in the Middle East in the 900s BC, even mentioning obscure little rulers, never heard of David or his kingdom, and for all we know he was actually a bedouin chieftain later mythologized into a king with a city).

What we do know is that Jerusalem was under Muslim rule for nearly 14 centuries, longer than it was under the rule of anyone else, and Muslims consider the mosque on the Haram Sharif to be the third holiest site in the world.

It was to protect the shrine that Palestinians rallied on Sunday.

They were not alone. The entire Muslim world was alarmed by word of the threats, including:

King Abdullah II of Jordan, whom Israel formally recognized as guardian of the shrine in 1994. He warned of a destabilization that would completely destroy the peace process, if the shrine were harmed.

Yemen warned of a destruction of the peace process if the shrine came under attack. Especially vocal was the fundamentalist Muslim Islah or Reform Party.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt exploited the Israeli extremists` actions to rally their supporters against President Mubarak.

The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (whose families had been expelled from their homeland and displaced to squalid camps in someone else`s country by the Israelis in 1948-49).

Saudi Arabia.

Iran issued the same warning.

So an issue that stirred Muslim fundamentalists to fury and might be a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda was surely intensively covered by the Western press, right?

Wrong.

The Washington Post said that the Palestinians were protesting plans by the Jewish fundamentalists to "rally at the site." That wasn`t what they were afraid of at all. They were afraid that the extremists were bringing dynamite to blow up the mosque (a widespread rumor).

The New York Times likewise did not report that the Muslims understood the extremist group, Revava, to have sinister designs on the shrine. The NYT even put scare quotes around the word "defend" when it reported that young Muslim men were going to the Aqsa Mosque over the weekend, saying they wanted to defend it. I don`t understand the scare quotes. Why not just report that they said they wanted to defend the shrine?

The Los Angeles Times reported that some Palestinians pledged violence against the Revava members if they came into the Aqsa Mosque. But the paper never explained why the Palestinians might have been that exercised. They thought Revava was coming in with sticks of dynamite.

Now, maybe Revava never threatened to destroy the mosque. I don`t know. They don`t appear to be humane, level-headed people, so maybe they did make the threat. But it is a gross dereliction of duty for the US press to neglect to even report that this threat is what had alarmed the Muslims around the world.

How can we possibly fight al-Qaeda and understand the Muslim world if our press does not even report what Muslims think is at issue in incidents like this? And note that no Western press article appears even to have rounded up the reaction in the Muslim world. They are invisible to our public, even when they are outraged.

posted by Juan @ [url4/12/2005 06:20:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/what-muslims-think-is-really-happening.html[/url]

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latimes.com

The Pope Pleaded. We Didn`t Listen.
It`s conveniently ignored that John Paul strongly opposed Bush over Iraq.
Robert Scheer
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer1…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer1…


April 12, 2005

OK, I get it, the pope was a really important guy. So why, during weeks of fawning coverage of his humanity and the elaborate Vatican funeral rituals, did American journalists and politicians ignore the pontiff`s passionate opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq?

Pope John Paul II`s critique of the Bush doctrine of unilateral preemptive war couldn`t have been clearer, more heartfelt or more vigorously argued.

He once showed anger on the topic in a private audience with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and firmly rejected the direct appeals of Catholic neoconservatives to support the invasion. He used not just his bully pulpit but the full political machinery of the Vatican to try to stop what he saw as an act that did not meet the Christian definition of "just war" — and was rather "a defeat for humanity."

"War cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations," John Paul proclaimed on Jan. 13, 2003, even as he was sending his emissaries to Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations to lobby for peaceful negotiations. "War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations."

It hardly honors the man to ignore his impassioned statements on what he considered to be a great moral crisis. And whether through divine inspiration or his own formidable instincts honed through a long life in a troubled and violent century, the pope got it right on Iraq when he said, "No to war!"

President Bush has sloughed off the issue of the pope`s anti-war stance as what you`d expect from a religious leader: "Of course he was a man of peace and he didn`t like war," he said after the pope`s death.

But John Paul`s assertion that the peaceful alternatives to a U.S.-British invasion of Iraq had not been exhausted went far beyond bland denunciations of violence. Like the millions of anti-war protesters around the world, he knew what the U.S. media and Congress refused to see: that Bush was rushing to war based on convenient distortions about weapons of mass destruction and the war on terrorism.

The Bush administration was concerned enough with the pope`s stance that a crack team of Catholic neoconservative ideologues was sent to lobby his holiness. In February 2003, hawkish columnist Michael Novak and self-appointed morals czar William J. Bennett were dispatched to a Rome meeting with Vatican officials arranged by the State Department to explain why the invasion of Iraq would be a "just war" of self-defense. Novak warned Vatican officials that there was no time for peaceful initiatives because Saddam Hussein had empowered Iraqi scientists "to breed huge destruction in the United States and Europe."

The pope pointedly rejected such alarmist arguments and instead, on the eve of the invasion, endorsed the European proposal to rely on U.N. inspectors in Iraq and to provide a greater role for U.N. peacekeepers as an alternative to U.S. occupation of a crucial Muslim nation. "At this hour of international worry, we all feel the need to look to God and beg him to grant us the great gift of peace," he said, rejecting a rush to war.

After he was ignored, the pope continued to strongly oppose what he saw as a dangerous escalation in tension between the Islamic and Christian worlds. "War must never be allowed to divide the religions of the world," he said.

John Paul was particularly scathing after the revelations of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison, telling Bush on a visit to the Vatican that those "deplorable events" had "troubled the civic and religious conscience of all." And remember: This was not a man raised in the confines of the Holy See, but rather a tough old bird who had witnessed the Holocaust and struggled against Soviet tyranny and communist oppression for decades. He did not come to his anti-war views lightly.

Various bipartisan investigations have shown us the truth behind the Iraq war: Its rationales were fabricated by a Western intelligence community under enormous pressure to provide the Bush and Blair administrations with support for a decision they already had made. That makes it all but impossible to question the wisdom of John Paul`s positions on the war and on American arrogance. Instead, the Bush administration and an acquiescent media have found it best to simply ignore them.



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Das Problem der Päderastie in der US-Kirche ist nicht neu. Das erste Mal als es hochkam, war es Kardinal Spellman von New York, der schon 67 starb.
Seitdem gab es immer wieder Fälle von Homosexualität und Päderastie unter der Priesterschaft in den USA. Es war eins der öffentlichsten Geheimnisse in den USA, dass sich der Missbrauch von Jungen durch katholische Priester wie eine Säuche in den USA verbreitet hat.
Es gab in den letzten 2 Jahren einige interessante Artikel über diese Problematik in US-Zeitungen.
Vorher wurde über Jahrzente nichts dagegen unternommen, so dass ein pädophiler Priester sich in der US-Kirche sicher fühlen konnte.
Erst vor einiger Zeit gab ernste Bemühungen dieses Problem anzugehen, da sich die Mißbrauchsvorwürfe von Jungen gegen Geistliche häuften.
Mit sehr viel Unwillen gingen Bischöfe und Kardinäle gegen ihre Mitbrüder vor.
Gerade im letzten Jahr gab es einige Verurteilungen und dadurch geriet die katholische Kirche in den USA stark unter Druck. So stark, dass diese Affären den Wahlkampf beeinflußen konnten.
Menschen wie Kerry, der sich zwar nie für die Schwulenehe ausgesprochen hatte, aber sie auch nicht verbieten wollte, wurden von der katholischen Kirche angegriffen.
Es gab sogar eine Diskussion, ob Kerry als Katholik zu den Sakramenten zugelassen werden sollte. Kerry hat zwar auch jüdische Vorfahren aus Östereich, ist aber Katholik.
Es haben sich mindestens ein Kardinal und über 30 katholische Bischöfe für die Wahl Bush ausgesprochen.
Damals hat der Papst sich nicht dazu geäußert, obwohl er sich vorher in vielen Fällen gegen Bushs Politik geäußert hat.
Gerade durch die Diskussion im Wahlkampf um die Schwulenehe und dann durch die starke Präsenz der Fälle von Päderastie von Priestern in den Medien, wäre eine Position der katholischen Kirche gegen Bush mit diesen Themen vermengt worden und hätte die Kirche noch mehr in Schwierigkeiten gebracht.
Meines Wissens nach gab es von der katholischen Kirche der USA keine Empfehlung für Kerry.
Die Folge war, dass, in manchen Staaten mit hohem katholischem Latino-Anteil, diese sehr viel mehr Bush gewählt haben, als bei früheren Wahlen. Dadurch ist mindestens New Mexico an Bush gegangen.
Das war halt von BushCo das Nutzen der Gunst der Stunde und für die katholische Kirche hatte das einen Vorteil, das Problem ist aus den Schlagzeilen, obwohl nicht gelöst.
Kardinal Law hat am Meisten die Aufarbeitung verhindert bis er nach Rom abberufen wurde.


Cardinal Law Is Snubbed
Six U.S. Catholic leaders skip a Vatican Mass led by the disgraced former Boston archbishop.
By Larry B. Stammer and Richard Boudreaux
Times Staff Writers
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-law12ap…

April 12, 2005

VATICAN CITY — The scandal over sex abuse by American priests intruded on the mourning for Pope John Paul II here Monday as all but one U.S.-based cardinal avoided a Mass led by Boston`s disgraced former archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law.

Three of the seven cardinals — Edward M. Egan of New York, Francis George of Chicago and Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles — snubbed the Mass in St. Peter`s Basilica out of concern over Law`s notoriety, three American church sources said.

"There was a general feeling it was best not to be there," said a source familiar with one cardinal`s thinking. He said there had been an understanding among at least some of the cardinals to stay away.

Another source said the absence of most U.S. cardinals sent a message of protest. "You`d have to be blind not to see that," he said. "The fact is, they voted with their feet." A third source said the no-shows were part of a "pattern."

All three sources spoke on condition of anonymity two days after the Vatican announced a gag order on the 115 cardinals who are to meet Monday to elect John Paul`s successor. None of the American cardinals would comment.

Law`s role in the requiem Mass infuriated sexual abuse victims and their advocates in the United States and prompted two of them to stage a brief protest Monday in St. Peter`s Square.

Justin Rigali of Philadelphia was the only U.S. resident cardinal present at the Mass with Law. The other American-based cardinals — William Keeler of Baltimore, Adam Maida of Detroit and Theodore McCarrick of Washington — had scheduling conflicts or decided not to attend after being informed that their presence was not mandatory, their aides said.

Most cardinals from other countries also skipped the Mass on a rainy afternoon, but their motives were unknown.

The silent rebuke by some American cardinals was a new setback in the Vatican`s effort to rehabilitate Law, once the most powerful U.S. cardinal and a favorite of John Paul for his steadfast defense of conservative church teachings.

Law was forced to resign as archbishop of Boston in 2002 after disclosures that pedophile priests had been transferred from parish to parish in his jurisdiction, only to abuse more children. Soon the crisis engulfed much of the U.S. church, including the Diocese of Orange and Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Last year, Law was transferred to the Vatican, and the pope gave him the honorary job as archpriest of one of Rome`s four main basilicas, St. Mary Major. Citing rules published in 2000, Vatican officials said Law`s designation to say Monday`s Mass was an automatic consequence of his position.

With the cardinals sworn to silence over their deliberations on a future pope, the sex abuse issue moved into the spotlight.

Outside the basilica, Barbara Blaine and Barbara Dorris of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests turned up before the Mass to hand out leaflets protesting Law`s role in the service. The group had pleaded with U.S. cardinals to try to reverse the decision, which Blaine said had "rubbed salt in the wounds" of abuse victims.

Some passersby offered support to Blaine, of Chicago, and Dorris, of St. Louis.

"If she wants to be here and voice her opinion and protect kids, I think it`s a good thing to do," said Don Schmidt of Neenah, Wis. "I kind of thought the pope should have been a little harder on some of the cardinals for what happened in the U.S. I think he was a little easy on them."

But the protest was short-lived. As television crews and reporters descended on her, Blaine appeared startled. Moments later, police directed the two women and the gaggle of reporters out of the barricaded square.

Later, Blaine attended part of the Mass.

"It`s such a beautiful setting and such a solemn moment where we were trying to show our respect to the Holy Father," she said afterward. "It was just sad to look up and see Cardinal Law as the leader of it."

The Mass was the fourth held by the cardinals in St. Peter`s during the novendiali, nine days of official mourning for John Paul, who died April 2 and was buried Friday under a marble slab in a crypt beneath St. Peter`s.

The crypt will be open to visitors starting Wednesday.

Law is the only American cardinal to say a novendiali Mass. The series of eulogies offers nine selected cardinals a platform to influence the election of a new pontiff by extolling qualities in the late pope that they would like to see in the next one.

By delivering one of the eulogies, Law was able to do what most other cardinals are not allowed to: air his views in public.

Speaking slowly in slightly accented Italian, Law recalled the pope in his homily as a profoundly holy man, a missionary who "traveled to the ends of the Earth, preaching Jesus Christ."

"In these incredible days, the Holy Father continues to teach us what it means to be a disciple, a faithful follower of Christ," he said. "He showed us [this] in the full vigor of his younger years, when his love for every human being lighted the fire of the spirit in so many people, [and] in his last year of increasing fragility, when in his weakness he found new strength in the Lord."

Law did not allude to the sex abuse scandal. His homily was structured around the saints for which the four Roman basilicas are named — Peter, Paul, Mary and John — and the meaning their lives held for the late pope.

Drawing applause in the packed church, Law ended the homily with a gesture of condolence to Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Polish archbishop who served as John Paul`s closest aide and celebrated the Mass with Law.

Monday was the day of St. Stanislaw, a Catholic martyr buried in the cathedral in Krakow, Poland, where John Paul was archbishop before becoming pope.

Italians made up a large part of the crowd. Those interviewed said they were vaguely aware of the sex abuse scandal in the United States but had no idea of Law`s role in it.

Others at the service, such as Mary Wyatt, a retired high school English teacher from Kingston, Canada, said she was unaware that the white-haired cleric at the altar was Law. After being told his identity, she offered a quick judgment: "It is not at all appropriate for him to be here."

She said the scandal had changed little: "The church is still blind to the sexual realities of a celibate priesthood. That is frightening in this day and age."

Jane and Jack Cooney, a couple from Rye, N.Y., said they had no idea that they were listening to Cardinal Law.

"Maybe it should be taken as a sign of forgiveness, that he`s still one of the valued members of the College of Cardinals," said Jack Cooney, a lawyer. "Is that appropriate? Frankly, I don`t know enough about his particular case."

The couple said they had just enrolled their two children, ages 8 and 11, in a course on Catholic doctrine and learned that this year, for the first time, the instruction would deal with the issue of sexual molestation.

"The church is clearly doing some things that are quite dramatic to appease the victims of abuse," Jane Cooney said. "But it`s a two-pronged thing. You`ve got to deal with the issue, and what they`re doing with my children is just that. On the other hand, forgiveness is a fundamental underpinning of the church, and maybe that`s why Cardinal Law is here."


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Poland to Pull Troops from Iraq at End of Year
Tue Apr 12, 2005 06:20 AM ET

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland`s government decided on Tuesday to withdraw its troops from Iraq at the end of 2005, making official an earlier proposal, Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said.

"At the time of the expiry of the Security Council`s mandate -- meaning at the end of 2005 -- the operations of the Polish stabilization mission should be finished," Szmajdzinski told a news conference after a cabinet meeting.

Poland, a close ally of Washington in Europe and one of the few supporters of its war to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, has about 1,700 soldiers in south-central Iraq, where it runs a multi-national stabilization force.

Szmajdzinski said Prime Minister Marek Belka`s government, which opinion polls show losing power in elections due by October, would not commit Polish troops to any other missions.

"Belka`s government will surely not make any new military commitments. We are carrying out an exit strategy from Iraq."

Despite popular opposition at home to Poland`s military engagement in Iraq, where 17 Polish soldiers have been killed, all mainstream parties have remained committed to finishing the stabilization mission in the Gulf state.

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[urlU.S. Trade Deficit Surged to Record $61 Billion in February, Driven by Oil]http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a.e4q995a.0E&refer=top_world_news[/url]

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Conservatives ponder judicial impeachment
- Dana Milbank, Washington Post
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2005%…

Washington -- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is a fairly accomplished jurist, but he might want to get himself a good lawyer -- and perhaps a few more bodyguards.

Conservative leaders meeting in Washington on Friday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy`s opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: `no man, no problem,` " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote is: "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem. " Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary.

A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were slain in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, mused about how a perception that judges are making political decisions could lead people to "engage in violence."

The conference was organized during the height of the Schiavo controversy by a new group, the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration.

Former Rep. William Dannemeyer, an Orange County Republican who spoke after Schlafly, said the country`s "principal problem" is not Iraq or the federal budget but whether "we as a people acknowledge that God exists."

Michael Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, then told the crowd that he would block judicial power by abolishing the concept of binding judicial precedents, by allowing Congress to vacate court decisions and by impeaching judges such as Kennedy, who seems to have replaced Justice David Souter as the target of conservative ire. "If about 40 of them get impeached, suddenly a lot of these guys would be retiring," he said.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/12/M…
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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Tuesday, April 12, 2005
War News for Tuesday, April 12, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring ‘em on: American contractor kidnapped in the Baghdad area. Three people killed and more than 20, including four US soldiers, wounded in truck bombing targeting a US convoy in Samarra. Three US Marines and three civilians wounded in attacks by three suicide bombers in Qaim. Their camp took fire from insurgents and a US helicopter destroyed a car carrying a gunman in the same incident.

Bring ‘em on: Turkish truck driver killed in roadside bombing outside of Beiji. Iraqi Kurdish engineer working with the US military kidnapped in Balad. Bodies of three Iraqis found in al-Dujail with a note claiming they had been executed for collaboration.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi deputy interior minister escaped unhurt from a Baghdad ambush by gunmen that killed one bodyguard and injured three other people, including the minister’s son. Two members of a police patrol wounded by gunmen in Kirkuk. Two civilians wounded in Kirkuk when a bomb planted in a doctor’s car exploded. The doctor was uninjured.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi Lieutenant working with the US military assassinated on his way to work in Mosul. Four Iraqi civilians wounded in car bomb attack aimed at a US convoy near Baghdad’s Amiriya district.

Bring ‘em on: Twenty Iraqis killed and 22 injured in US helicopter and artillery attack on al-Rummana village near Qaim.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis killed, three wounded in car bomb attack targeting a US convoy in Mosul. A second car bomb targeted another US convoy near Mosul hours later, no word on casualties.

Bring ‘em on: To date over 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq. The article lists 16 still being held captive, including one Pakistani, three Rumanians, four Americans, two Egyptians, one Jordanian, one Frenchwoman, one Brazilian, one Turk, one Lebanese, and one Filipino. In addition, two Americans, including one soldier, are listed as missing since their convoy was attacked in April of 2004.


Pakistani kidnapping: The kidnappers of a Pakistani embassy staffer in Iraq are demanding half a million dollars ransom for his release, his son said on Tuesday.

Javed, 45, disappeared last Saturday when he went to a mosque for evening
prayers in Baghdad and did not return.

He had been working at the embassy in Baghdad for the last seven years while his wife, four daughters and two sons, live in Islamabad.


Anti-guerilla raid: Hundreds of American and Iraqi forces swept through central and southern Baghdad early this morning, capturing at least 65 people suspected of being insurgents in one of the largest raids yet seen in the capital, military officials said.

The operation, which began at 3 a.m. and lasted more than six hours, disrupted three insurgent networks and netted men suspected of assassinations, beheadings, kidnappings and attacks on both Iraqi and American forces, American military officials said.

(Other articles indicate that one Iraqi soldier and one suspected insurgent were injured in this operation. Let`s hope that this operation is netting a higher proportion of actual guilty people than similar efforts have managed in the past)


More anti-American protests: In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans in a third day of protests demanding that U.S. forces go home. Tens of thousands gathered Saturday in Baghdad, and a demonstration was held Sunday in Duluiyah, 45 miles north of the capital.


Different next time: Wedged among the chanting, banner-waving crowds that streamed through downtown Baghdad on Saturday, the second anniversary of Baghdad`s fall, Yasser Ali Abbas held a poster of militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr over his head.

“We want (coalition forces) to leave, so we can work,” said Abbas, 19. “We want our next government to rebuild our city like they promised. We are all ready to sacrifice to his holiness Muqtada al-Sadr.”

The tens of thousands who heeded al-Sadr`s call to march on Baghdad`s al-Firdos Square demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and a speedy start to former leader Saddam Hussein`s trial.

Despite his efforts to join the political process, al-Sadr`s supporters remain hostile to the U.S. presence here.

“This time, it was a peaceful demonstration by our hungry and poor followers,” al-Sheikh says. “Next time, these impoverished young guys will act differently if their demands aren`t met.”


Iraqi Politics

Armed to the teeth: It took more than nine weeks, fiery haggling and backroom deals for Iraq`s politicians to compose a new government.

The president is Kurdish warlord Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who enjoys close ties with both Washington and Tehran. The two vice presidents are: Adel Abdel Mahdi of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), a senior Shi`ite leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq and the interim finance minister, and a former Maoist turned free-marketer who last December promised in Washington to privatize the Iraqi oil industry; and the previous president, Ghazi al-Yawer, a former exile and influential Sunni sheikh of the Sammar tribe. Talabani is finally set to appoint Da`wa Party senior leader Ibrahim Jaafari of the UIA as prime minister.

It`s emerging that the real meaty matters in Iraq - federalism, who gets oil-rich Kirkuk, and, crucially, what happens to the oil industry overall - will be settled by the constituent assembly. But two developments are ominous. The attribution of ministries for the "new" government once again will be sectarian. And every faction will remain armed to their teeth. The Kurds keep their independent peshmerga militia, and financed by Baghdad. The SCIRI keeps its Badr Brigades. The Da`wa Party also keeps its own militia. None of these will answer to Baghdad - which mobilizes its own, US-trained Iraqi security forces. Cynically, one might add that outside the political process, the Sunni resistance will also keep its thousands of fighters.


By the end of the week: On the political front, Iraq`s parliament met again amid tight security to discuss internal procedures and to put some order to the often chaotic sessions.

Iraqi Vice President Ghazi al-Yawar said a government headed by prominent Shiite leader Jaafari could be in place soon.

"I predict a government by the end of the week," the Sunni Arab tribal chief told reporters after a meeting with Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the shrine city of Najaf.


Proposed amnesty: Iraq`s new president called Sunday for extending amnesty to Iraqi insurgents who had killed combatants, possibly including U.S. and Iraqi troops, as part of a drive that he said could help end attacks within months.

Jalal Talabani, speaking on his first day of work in the white and gilt presidential offices after his inauguration Thursday, excluded clemency for al Qaeda and other foreign armed groups operating here.

As for killings by Iraqi insurgents, Talabani said: "There are two kinds of killing: In battle or in action, this could be covered by the amnesty. Those who are involved in killing innocent people, detonation of car bombs, killing people in mosques and in churches, these would not be covered by the amnesty."


US objections: The United States opposed an idea floated by Iraq`s new president that could end up extending a proposed amnesty to insurgents who killed US troops.

Some 1,540 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the March 2003 military drive to topple Saddam. About 1,170 have been killed in combat during the invasion and the unexpectedly tenacious insurgency launched in its aftermath.

A senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, could not say whether amnesty would become an issue between Baghdad and Washington. "We`ll try to talk this one through with the government," he said.

The Post quoted Talabani as saying those involved in killing innocent civilians would not be covered by the amnesty.

(So the guerillas won’t qualify for the amnesty if they kill civilians and they won’t qualify if they kill Americans…hmm. If I was in the Iraqi security forces, I’d be looking for a new line of work…)


Face saving device: Saddam Hussein could avoid the gallows under a secret proposal by insurgent leaders that Iraq`s new administration is "seriously considering", a senior government source said yesterday.

A reprieve is understood to be among the central demands of Sunni nationalists and former members of Saddam`s Ba`ath party who have reportedly begun negotiations with the government amid the backdrop of a bloody insurgency which claimed 30 lives during the weekend.

"We are trying to reach out to the insurgents," the source said. "We don`t expect them to stop fighting unconditionally. Sending Saddam to prison for the rest of his life is not a huge price for us to pay, but it will save them a lot of face."
Weiter:
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

# posted by matt : 9:42 AM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 09, 2005

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Published on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Corporate College
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0412-25.htm

Believe or not, there exists a group of homeschooling parents who teach their kids at home because they believe that the public schools have been destroyed by corporations.

The food is corporate junk.

The street clothes and sportswear are covered with corporate logos.

The curriculum is often sponsored by corporate predators. (The winner of a spelling bee sponsored by the local high school`s principal last week won a choice of prizes from Wendy`s, McDonald`s or Dairy Queen. Can you spell diabesity?)

Even the music increasingly is corporate-inspired crapola, driven largely by payola.

And the morality of the schools is the morality of the marketplace.
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But even the most ardent anti-corporate homeschooling parents often give up the fight when it comes to college.

At 18, little Johnny has had enough of being at home.

And it`s time to send him off to --

College.

We can only guess at the extent of the corruption of academia by the corporate predators.

But if we are to believe what we read in journalist Jennifer Washburn`s new book, then academia is in it deep.

The title of Washburn`s book tells it all -- University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (Basic Books, 2005). (Disclosure: an old research piece of ours is mentioned in the book.)

If you listen to right-wing radio, or watch Fox News -- as we do -- then you might be under the impression that universities are dominated by left-wing professors, liberals and cranks.

If you don`t, you might believe that universities are independent non-profits dedicated to education and research.

Not true, Washburn says.

Traditionally, universities were not governed by market forces and were largely independent of commercial interests.

But over the past 25 years, universities are acting less like universities and more like corporations.

Biology professors consult for or hold equity in firms that manufacture the drugs they are studying, while often accepting fees to join corporate advisory boards.

Sometimes the professors hold the patents on drugs or other products being tested.

Editors of peer-reviewed journals often complain that they can`t find professors who don`t have commercial ties to write independent reviews of drugs.

In 2003, Stanford University signed a $225 million, 10-year contract to study global climate change, which allows Exxon and other corporate sponsors to select which research projects will receive funding, Washburn reports.

Funding bias in science, economic and policy research is becoming a grave problem.

Numerous studies now show that when research is industry funded it is more likely to reach conclusions that favor the sponsor`s commercial interests.

Sometimes, the corporation tries to muscle the more independent of researchers.

Take these examples from Washburn`s book:

Syngenta, the company that manufacturers atrazine, one of the most widely used weed killers in the United States, attempted to silence Tyrone B. Hayes, a biologist at UC Berkeley after he conducted research showing that exposure to this chemical, in very small doses, caused frogs to develop both female and male sex organs. The company hired scientists at another university to discredit his research, and tried to convince the Environmental Protection Agency to disregard his findings.

In another case, the Immune Research Corporation hit an AIDS researcher at UC San Francisco with a $7 million lawsuit after his research concluded that the company`s drug was no more effective than a sugar pill.

Another UC biology professor, Ignacio Chapela, was denied tenure allegedly because he was a vocal critic of a November 1998 deal between UC and Novartis.

Here`s the story, according to Washburn: Novartis gave UC Berkeley $25 million over five years for basic research in the Department of Plant and Microbiology.

In exchange, Berkeley gave Novartis first rights to negotiate licenses on roughly one third of the department`s discoveries. It also gave the company two of five seats on the department`s research committee -- which determined how the money was to be spent.

In the fall of 2001, Chapela, perhaps naive, published an article in Nature reporting that foreign DNA material from genetically modified plants was showing up in native varieties of corn in Mexico.

Chapela`s paper was immediately attacked by the Berkeley/Novartis` plant department.

When Chapela came up for tenure, the College of Natural Sciences voted 32-to-1 in his favor, but that vote was overturned by the university`s budget committee. Chapela is now in litigation against the university.

Washburn says there is little doubt that Chapela was denied tenure because his paper displeased his corporate masters at Berkeley.

Washburn gives many such examples in her book.

And as she tours the country to promote her book, professors are calling her to report other similar stories.

But the damage has been done.

Universities have lost sight of their public mission.

And the extent of the corruption will not be known until the federal government demands complete and total disclosure of all ties between public professors -- those at public universities and those living off of federal research grants -- and private corporations.

A couple of years ago, we visited a friend in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Our friend, who is a recent graduate of the University of Nebraska, toured us the university campus.

We stopped in front of the Cornhuskers football stadium and looked up.

Our friend pointed to the big red "N" atop the stadium, and asked two homeschooled children we were traveling with -- do you know what the "N" stands for?

"What?" the homeschoolers asked.

"Knowledge," our friend replied. (He`s a comedian.)

The corporate university takes us for a bunch of idiots.

They want us to believe that it`s all about the bottom line -- that it always has been about the bottom line.

But Washburn asks -- what ever happened to knowledge for knowledge`s sake?

Read her book and find out.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press). This article is posted at http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2005/000203.…

© 2005 Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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Why make an enemy of Russia?
William Pfaff International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/12/news/edpfaff.html

PARIS U.S. and European Union policies toward Russia are more dangerous than they may seem. What has been happening on Russia`s borders could reasonably be interpreted by the government of President Vladimir Putin as a Western campaign to detach and alienate the neighboring states that Moscow describes as its "Near Abroad."

In an important respect, Putin`s government has invited this interference on its frontier. It has combined complacence with complaisance in corrupt leadership in Belarus, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

When the Soviet Union was dissolved by Boris Yeltsin in 1991, time should have been up for the whole system. Yeltsin told the leaders of the former Soviet states to take as much freedom as they could manage. In fact, most took as much power, and as much of their states` wealth and resources, as they could.

They did roughly what was being done in Russia itself, to Western approval. "Democracy" was being installed there, but it was the form of democracy described by the oligarch Boris Berezovsky when he said "democracy everywhere is the rule of big money."

A system of swindling, robbery, asset-stripping and appropriation of public resources was created then that Putin is now trying to reverse. Thus his arrest of the politically ambitious oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which continues to be described in the West as an attack on market freedom.

It no doubt was that, but is also intended by Putin to make the state prevail over the oligarchs` version of capitalism, and to resist the international criminal forces that have infiltrated the existing system and are capable, if unchecked, of destroying civil power in modern Russia.

Putin is saying: Do you want Russia run by patriots who will defend political authority and restore Russia`s international standing, or are you content with decline and corruption? There is a popular reaction against oligarchy and in favor of what Putin presents as patriotic reform.

There almost certainly is going to be another popular reaction against foreign interventions in Russia`s Near Abroad.

Recent events in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, and pressures on Belarus - whose despotic president, Alexander Lukashenko, is loyal to Putin, but which is described by President George W. Bush as "an outpost of tyranny" - are creating anxiety and anger in Russia. Moscow sees a big campaign under way to turn Russia`s neighbors into allies of the United States and the West.

The congressionally financed democracyadvocacy groups of the two major U.S. parties, plus Freedom House in New York, the German Marshall Fund, the admirable Open Society network financed by George Soros, and other nongovernmental organizations have all been active in training volunteers from these states to overturn the corrupt governments in power (as was done in Serbia in the 1990s).

Some talk darkly about CIA plans, but there is little that has been hidden in this. Official U.S. support was there when needed: the opposition press in Kyrgyzstan was printed in an American-financed printing plant (and when electricity failed, the U.S. Embassy supplied generators).

The changes of government produced by these actions are described in the United States as triumphs of democracy. You can ask whether this really is so, or merely a shuffling of old elites and clans, but that`s not the question that bothers Moscow.

I should be the last person to criticize since, in the 1950s, I worked for the Free Europe organization, which pioneered broadcasts and other forms of political warfare directed against the Communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe. Our efforts certainly contributed to their eventual collapse.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between what is going on now and our activities and broadcasts during the cold war.

The Soviet Union was a powerful and hostile foreign despotism, dominating Eastern and Central Europe against the will of their populations. Russia today, however, is a "strategic partner" of the West. Putin may control national television, but press and public discussion in Russia are free. The public unquestionably supports him, yet there is vigorous political debate and controversy. Elections take place.

Moscow cooperates with the West at virtually every level of international relations. It supplies the West with oil, cooperates in Bush`s war on terror, and has made no trouble over U.S. bases in Central Asia.

So why do we want to make an enemy of Putin?

The Russians are being subjected to a very high level of provocation. Russia is now encircled by American power. There are U.S. forces in Central Asia and the Caucasus. With the Baltic states now members of NATO, alliance aircraft are deployed on Russia`s frontier. The Poles and others are anxious for Ukraine to join NATO and the EU.

The Russian government has been amazingly calm about all this, but it might one of these days lose that calm. Russia today is not the Soviet Union, but it could still find ways to be very unpleasant to those who chose to make an enemy of it.



See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the International Herald Tribune.


IHT Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

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US audit probes possible Halliburton $212m overcharge
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/68cba704-aae0-11d9-98d7-00000e2511c…

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

04/12/05 "Financial Times" - - Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services company, may have overcharged the US government by $212m (£113m, €165m) for work in Iraq, according to portions of Pentagon audits released on Monday.

KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton formerly run by Vice-President Dick Cheney, came under fire last year following allegations that it had overcharged the government $62m in “unreasonable costs” for importing fuel from Kuwait to Iraq.

On Monday Henry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House committee for government reform, released parts of additional Pentagon audits showing that the alleged overcharging for Iraq-related business was more than $200m.

“In these reports, DCAA [Defense Contract Audit Agency] auditors identify overcharges and question costs of $212.3, doubling the amount of known overcharges under Halliburton`s oil contract,” Mr Waxman said.

In one case, Mr Waxman wrote in a letter to Christopher Shays, the Republican chairman of the house subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations, that Halliburton appeared to overcharge the government by 47 per cent of the value of one portion of its contract.

Halliburton, which in the past has accused Mr Waxman of targeting the company for political reasons, denied any charges of wrongdoing. A company spokeswoman also pointed to a recent decision by the Defense Contract Management Agency to approve the company`s estimating and purchasing systems as evidence that it was following the rules.

“Halliburton has been a good steward of the taxpayer`s dollars,” the spokeswoman said. “KBR has responded on numerous occasions to the allegations contained in the recent letter released by Representative Waxman. This is simply recycled language.”

Halliburton also came under scrutiny late last year following allegations that the former US ambassador to Kuwait pressed the company to direct lucrative fuel contracts to Altanmia, a Kuwaiti company. An e-mail released by Mr Waxman revealed that Richard Jones, the former US ambassador, pressed KBR to give a fuel contract to Altanmia.

Mr Waxman, who has aggressively investigated Halliburton over its Iraq contracts, called for congressional investigations into the Development Fund for Iraq, from which Halliburton was the biggest beneficiary.

Separately, the Pentagon said on Monday it was investigating two more contracts negotiated by Darleen Druyun, the former senior air force procurement official who was sentenced last year to nine months in prison for holding illegal job talks with Boeing.

In addition to eight other contracts already under investigation, the Pentagon inspector-general is now looking at the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System awarded to Raytheon and the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar system led by Northrup Grumman, the Pentagon said on Monday.

All rights reserved Financial Times

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Apr 13, 2005

COMMENTARY
Old Iraqi nemeses, deadly demands
By Ehsan Ahrari
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD13Ak02.html

If the United States was looking for kudos from the Iraqis for liberating them from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein, on the second anniversary of his fall (April 9) there was no manifestation of gratitude. Instead, thousands of Iraqis poured out into the streets of Baghdad chanting, "No, no to the Americans, yes, yes to Islam." To be sure, the demonstrators were mostly followers of the young Shi`ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

However, almost immediately after the creation of the new interim government, this and other demonstrations in different parts of Iraq were foreboding and ominous. A noteworthy occasion was when the crowd in Firdos Square mimicked the famous images of the American soldiers toppling the statue of Saddam on the day of the fall of Baghdad. Only this time, the protesters toppled the effigies of President George W Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Saddam, all dressed in red jumpsuits similar to those worn by Iraqi prisoners.

The new government faces some old nemeses, yet its foremost challenge is to take immediate measures to create a public image that - unlike the previous interim government - is independent of the Americans. The Iraqi people view this new government differently, since they elected its officials. In this sense, the new government is making an auspicious start. But the Iraqis are also highly suspicious that even the new government will become a stooge of the Americans. So the elected officials in Iraq know they are likely to lose that legitimacy quickly if they do not perform according to the expectations of their constituents. In the meantime, their enemies will do everything to make their job nearly impossible.

The questions related to America`s motives about invading Iraq are too cumbersome and grim for the majority of Iraqis to demonstrate any enthusiasm about the continued presence of foreign troops in their country. US forces, indeed, were envisaged as liberators, but that window was very narrow, and disappeared soon after the fall of Saddam. Too much has happened since then for most Iraqis to maintain a positive attitude toward the US. (It should be noted that the Kurds are the exception to these observations.) A majority of Iraqis remain convinced that the real purpose of the US invasion of their country was to acquire control of its vast oil reserves. They quickly recall the connections of the Bush presidents (both father and son) with big oil. In addition, they refuse to forget that Halliburton, the former employer of Vice President Dick Cheney, has earned hundreds of millions of dollars since the toppling of the Saddam regime.

Now, the Iraqi thinking is that the US is really interested in making their country its colony, as it has already done to Afghanistan. The United States` Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has left a terrible legacy of governing Iraq, especially when it so cavalierly abolished the Ba`athist Party and the Iraqi army, thereby making many thousands of Iraqis unemployed almost instantly. The Iraqi insurgent movement rose from the ashes of those ruinous decisions.

There were hopes that the previous interim administration would have a better start when it was created, but Iyad Allawi - an Iraqi expatriate who spent most of his life wheeling and dealing with US and British intelligence - headed it. Still, there were hopes that he would carve out a niche and a style that would convince the Iraqis that he was independent of US control. However, that did not happen. Allawi and his administration never succeeded in establishing an image among their countrymen that they were nationalistic in orientation. To be fair, the Iraqi insurgency did not allow much room to maneuver.

Terrorist attacks were relentless. They left no breathing room for anyone who "collaborated" with the Western occupying forces. Consequently, the government could never crawl out of the security cocoon long enough to establish its legitimacy. A sad irony in Iraq is that rulers of that country, no matter what form of government they claim to practice, have to remain fearful of the governed. That was true about Saddam, and is also true regarding the current government.

In the period when Iraq was ruled under the stewardships of the CPA and Allawi, two Shi`ite clerics - the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Muqtada - were able to carve out their respective niches. One was to play a crucial role in the establishment of the post-Saddam order, while the other was to emerge as the enemy of that order.

Unlike Iran`s revolutionary leader, the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Sistani belonged to the Shi`ite school that advocated separation of religion and politics. However, that separation never had the same meaning as it is understood in the Western world with the concept "secularism". He was to be the mentor-in-chief of the new government, without holding any official title.

Sistani was the grand chess player. He had the entire game figured out - from the first to the last move. The bottom line for him was that, by the time he finished his grand game, Iraq would be a moderate Islamic democracy governed by the Shi`ite majority. To be sure, other sectarian and ethnic groups will have ample room to participate, but only as minority partners. Sistani made sure that the Shi`ites did not spill any US blood. They went along with the US plans to move Iraq toward self-rule, while the Sunni groups became the chief antagonists. Indeed, a substantial portion of the insurgency came from the Sunni community of Iraq.

Muqtada, on the other hand, always acted as if he were not sure what he wanted, while making it abundantly clear what he did not want. He did not want the Americans to stay in Iraq or make important decisions about its future. But he showed ample clarity about assigning Islam primacy in Iraq, and even closely affiliating it with Iran. The battle lines were being drawn. Sadr clashed with the Americans, and, in the process, lost many young fighters of his Mehdi militia. In Muqtada`s version of the power game, everyone was expendable, including himself. The Shi`ite notion of self-sacrifice in the tradition of Imam Hussain, grandson of the Prophet of Islam, very much seems to be driving Muqtada. However, unlike Sistani, Muqtada did not have a clear vision about where Iraq would head under his guardianship.

These two clerical visions (in the case of Muqtada the lack of a clear vision) spoke volumes about the future of Iraq. It was an important country when Saddam was at the helm. Yet Iraq`s sense of purpose in the region was a source of concern, even consternation, for its neighbors, because of the unpredictable nature of Saddam. After all, he fought a major regional war with Iran between 1981 and 1989. Then, within two years of that conflict, he invaded Kuwait. Now, Iraq as a country seems to be driven by a sense that it remain a major actor in the region; however, it does not yet appear to have a definite sense of purpose, because it is an occupied country. Under the Sistani vision, it was to emerge as a moderate democracy. But then what? Would it emerge as one of the leading nations of the Arab world? No one knows. No one can even begin to think along those lines, since the affairs of Iraq are so confusing and in such a state of flux at present.

There is a new interim government under US occupation, but new demands and old enemies not only promise to sap the energy from the new government, they are also likely to challenge or even threaten its very existence.

The constitution written during the US occupation has resulted in the emergence in the new government of two of the representatives of the most suppressed groups - the Shi`ites and the Kurds. Jalal Talabani has become the president. Even though that post is largely symbolic, the ascension of a Kurd in that job is a major development. Ibrahim Jaafari, the new premier, is a Shi`ite. Even though the Sunnis form only 20% of the Iraqi population, they largely boycotted the elections. Thus their representation in the new parliament remains slim. Still, the party that has emerged as the slightly dominant one, the United Iraqi Alliance, has gone out of its way to include the Sunnis in the government. The most crucial test of the new government is whether it will be envisaged as a legitimate entity by a majority of the Iraqis. To enhance its legitimacy, it must quickly prove that it, indeed, is independent of the Americans.

However, the new government, like its predecessor, faces a major challenge from the Iraqi insurgency. Consequently, its reliance on US forces also will continue out of necessity. Still, it must find a balance between containing the insurgents and keeping the Americans on a tight leash regarding security operations. Given the fact that the Iraqi security forces have become somewhat credible players in the domestic arena, the new government might be able to use them instead of heavily relying on US troops.

The representation of various groups in a new Iraqi government remains a fancy notion, and it is being watched with interest in the rest of the Middle East. Interestingly enough, Lebanon has a similar arrangement, but even that arrangement was established because of French influence. It will be interesting to see whether it will work and for how long. The Iraqi insurgents, the strongest enemies of such an arrangement, are doing their best to destroy it. An important question is whether Muqtada, another old nemesis of the US-established order, will want it to work.

Despite the fact that the new government has enabled the Shi`ites to emerge as the dominant group, Muqtada might be motivated by the notion of personal gain. As long as he stays out of the government, he has little to lose by remaining as an outside critic. Right now, he has a major issue to put periodic and intense pressure on the new government: the demand for the withdrawal of US troops. The fact that the Bush administration has no intention of withdrawing from Iraq any time soon guarantees that Muqtada does not have to worry about losing a highly emotional issue that could enable him to whip up massive fervor against the new government.

The new government, for its part, also has two trump cards. First, it has the support and prestige of Sistani on its side. As long as he is around, Muqtada will feel like the second banana, and will stay within his limits. Second, the new government also has the option of focusing on new economic policies that will enable Iraq to reemerge as a major Arab state. What about the Iraqi insurgency? It, too, will dissipate if the new government were to become increasingly successful in governing Iraq.

Even as the new government takes charge, the Iraqi political milieu remains punishing to those who don`t succeed, or don`t succeed within the shortest timespan. One of the basic principles of democratic government is that failure on the part of the elected officials does not carry a harsh sentence like death. However, death remains a routinely recurring event for everyone who is part of the new order in Iraq. The price of failure is death, but so is the price of success. Just ask the young Iraqi recruits who are hoping to build a new Iraq, while they are attempting to secure a stable and promising future for themselves. Graveyards of that country are increasingly being filled with those youngsters.

Ehsan Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst based in Alexandria, Virginia, US. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. He is also a regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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April 13, 2005
Ex-Official Says Nominee Bullied Analyst on Arms
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/international/13bolton.htm…

WASHINGTON, April 12 - A former assistant secretary of state heatedly charged Tuesday that John R. Bolton had so bullied an intelligence analyst over Cuba`s suspected weapons programs that it shook the intelligence bureau and prompted the secretary of state to intervene.

In caustic and unusually personal testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Carl W. Ford Jr., who was assistant secretary for intelligence and research, said Mr. Bolton was a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" who "abuses his authority with little people," and an ill-suited nominee to become ambassador to the United Nations.

Mr. Bolton, he said, had been dissatisfied with what he considered the analyst`s overly cautious assessment of Cuba`s weapons program.

The testimony offered an extraordinary public glimpse into the long-running and raw intelligence wars in the Bush administration, pitting hawks like Mr. Bolton, a protégé of Vice President Dick Cheney, against more circumspect intelligence operatives at the State Department who, among other differences, cast doubt on some prewar claims about Iraq.

Mr. Ford described himself as a conservative Republican and enthusiastic supporter of President Bush, Mr. Cheney and the policies of Mr. Bolton, who has been under secretary of state for arms control and international security since 2001 and an outspoken conservative critic of the United Nations. All the Republican senators at the hearing took pains to praise Mr. Ford for his service and his candor.

Democrats portrayed Mr. Ford`s testimony about the clash between Mr. Bolton and the analyst, Christian P. Westermann, as having grave and far-reaching implications for American credibility, especially telling in light of the failure to find illicit weapons in Iraq that the intelligence agencies had said would be there. Republicans, though, characterized it as an isolated incident that would not derail the nomination.

Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, had to go to the intelligence bureau after Mr. Bolton`s criticism of Mr. Westermann, and assure employees that they should continue to "speak truth to power," Mr. Ford recounted.

The reputation of the State Department`s intelligence bureau has since emerged relatively unscathed by the highly publicized reviews of intelligence failures in the last few years, its analysts known for resisting what has come to be called group think.

Mr. Ford`s gruff, direct and sometimes off-color manner took some senators aback, as when he described Mr. Bolton`s dressing-down of Mr. Westermann by saying that "he reamed him a new one."

It was hardly the kind of language usually heard from diplomats appearing before the Foreign Relations Committee, and it raised eyebrows, but also chuckles, among the senators, their aides and the rows of spectators.

"There are a lot of screamers that work in government," Mr. Ford said. "But you don`t pull somebody so low down the bureaucracy that they are completely defenseless. It`s an 800-pound gorilla devouring a banana."

Despite the drama, however, Mr. Bolton remained likely to be confirmed for the United Nations post, a nomination that startled both Congress and Embassy Row when the president announced it last month. Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican who Democrats were hoping would oppose the nomination, said he remained inclined to support the nominee, viewing the episode about which Mr. Ford testified as an isolated incident.

Mr. Chafee and other Republicans noted that although Mr. Ford called Mr. Bolton a "serial abuser" of people under him, he could provide first-hand knowledge of only this one instance and that, in the end, no one was removed from office. In addition, they noted, Mr. Bolton ultimately backed away and used Mr. Westermann`s words instead of his own.

"I see the bar as very high," Mr. Chafee told reporters after the morning hearing. "Management style - is that a disqualifier? In the extreme, yes. But probably not in this case, from what we`ve seen so far."

A vote to confirm by Mr. Chafee would effectively assure Mr. Bolton of committee approval and eventual approval by the Senate.

After Mr. Ford`s testimony, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the committee chairman, said that the hearings had concluded and that a vote on the Bolton nomination could come this week.

Mr. Lugar and the Democrats also said interviews with eight individuals in the last several days had yielded descriptions of another episode of Mr. Bolton`s reportedly trying to intimidate an intelligence analyst, but there was no inclination to bring in more witnesses for public hearings on it.

"I suspect that this is the tip of the iceberg with respect to Mr. Bolton only wanting to hear what he wants to hear on the intelligence front," said Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who helped lead the Democratic charge, adding that confirming him "sends a signal that it is open season on intelligence analysts."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the panel`s ranking Democrat, said Mr. Bolton`s record would undercut any American attempt to warn the United Nations of Iran`s or North Korea`s suspected weapons programs.

"This is a big deal, guys and ladies," Mr. Biden said. "I believe that this appointment is damaging to our national interests."

Mr. Ford, a gruff former Army intelligence officer, said Mr. Bolton had "shunned" him after the episode over Mr. Westermann in the spring of 2002. Just before he retired last year, Mr. Ford said, Mr. Bolton told him, "I`m glad you`re leaving," and hung up on him.

At issue in the episode he described, Mr. Ford said, was a speech Mr. Bolton wanted to give about the threat of dangerous weapons from a range of countries, including Cuba. Mr. Bolton, he said, wanted clearance from the intelligence agencies to assert that Cuba had a developing biological weapons program.

On Monday, Mr. Bolton said that the dispute was over procedure, and that Mr. Westermann had circulated his own views, which were far more tentative than Mr. Bolton`s, without telling Mr. Bolton. He said that he considered such behavior as "back-stabbing" and that the acting director of the bureau agreed that it was inappropriate and apologized.

But Mr. Ford said that on the contrary, Mr. Westermann had acted properly and used normal procedures. He said Mr. Bolton had summoned Mr. Westermann and dressed him down, waving his finger and turning red in the face. In 35 years, Mr. Ford said, he had never seen such abusive behavior toward a subordinate.

Mr. Lugar praised Mr. Ford but said that like other Republicans, he believed that one proven episode was not enough to derail the nomination. He noted that as ambassador, Mr. Bolton had promised to reflect the views of the president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and not his own views.

Mr. Lugar, a supporter of the United Nations and of negotiations as a means to address nuclear proliferation, has been described by both administration officials and Republican aides in the Senate as no fan of Mr. Bolton`s. The senator, those officials said, had told Ms. Rice not to nominate him as deputy secretary of state because he could not be confirmed.

In the end, however, Mr. Lugar said it was more important that the president be allowed to appoint someone in whom he had confidence and who would help promote vitally needed reforms at the United Nations.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 12, 2005
Q&A: Change in Tactics for Iraqi Insurgency?

From theCouncil on Foreign Relations, April 12, 2005

Has the Iraqi insurgency shifted tactics?

It`s unclear. But in the wake of an April 2 multi-pronged assault on the Abu Ghraib prison, reportedly carried out by Abu Musab Zarqawi`s al Qaeda in Iraq, and other organized attacks, some experts detect the beginnings of a trend toward larger-scale, more sophisticated attacks by the insurgency. "They have really evolved from the suicide bomb," says Ahmed Hashim, who teaches at the Naval War College. "We will probably see better organized attacks but fewer of them."

What set the Abu Ghraib attack apart from other insurgent operations?

Large numbers of insurgents and precision planning. "This is a level of sophistication greater than we`ve seen," says Bruce Hoffman, an insurgency specialist with the RAND Corporation. "The insurgents are demonstrating that they`re not on the ropes." According to a post-attack Internet posting by Zarqawi, the attackers relied on "inside intelligence information." Lieutenant Colonel Steven A. Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman, told the Washington Post the Abu Ghraib clash was "one of the more concerted attacks we`ve seen," but added it was "too early to say whether this is a new trend or a new strategy."

What evidence supports the theory that the insurgents may be adopting new tactics?

In addition to the Abu Ghraib fight, there has been a recent string of larger-scale insurgent attacks. On April 11, about 40 insurgents attacked a U.S. Marine base near the Syrian border. U.S. forces on March 22 fought and killed 80 insurgents stationed at an encampment near Lake Tharthar. A few days earlier, an American convoy was ambushed by a group of 40 to 50 insurgents just outside Baghdad.

Some experts say these engagements are part of a pattern that has emerged over the past few years. "Insurgents are developing a strategy to see how far they can ratchet up the size of their forces before [U.S.] air power vanquishes them," says Walter P. Lang, former head of Middle East Affairs at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Insurgent leaders also have publicly confirmed a preference for large-scale operations over smaller attacks, such as the use of improvised explosive devices--car bombs or explosives buried in the road. As a Defense Department official who asked not to be named put it, "It`s hard to get a whole lot of attention with roadside car bombs." The assault on the prison "showed the insurgents had the hubris and were brave enough to launch simultaneous attacks on a well-protected and heavily armed target," Hoffman says. "It also shows Zarqawi has the ability not just to stage classic terrorist acts like car and truck bombs, but also to stage force-on-force attacks, which until then had been rare in Iraq."

What happened during the Abu Ghraib attack?

At dusk on April 2, an insurgent force of 40-60, backed up by two car bombs (though only one was detonated), advanced on two flanks, firing mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades at the prison. The rebels got as far as the prison walls before the U.S. military, with the help of three Apache helicopters, responded. Within a few hours, U.S. forces secured the prison, killing one insurgent and wounding dozens. U.S. troops incurred no casualties, but 44 were wounded.

Why did the insurgents target Abu Ghraib?

"Because, like Everest, it`s there," Lang says. The prison has enormous symbolic value for Iraqis. Used as a torture chamber under Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib made headlines during last year`s prisoner-abuse scandal. Still, the insurgents` specific motives for attacking the prison remain unclear. Many terror websites linked to Zarqawi have discussed attacking it for years. There was also a letter reportedly circulating in Sunni mosques written by a woman who claimed she had been raped by U.S. soldiers during her detainment. Other news reports suggested that Zarqawi launched the offensive to free insurgent detainees. According to Kenneth Katzman, senior Middle East analyst for the Congressional Research Service, insurgent forces saw themselves "as riding to the rescue of insurgent prisoners and thought they could enhance their political standing."

What do larger-scale insurgent attacks mean for U.S. forces?

They prefer them to smaller skirmishes. Experts agree that U.S. forces historically are more comfortable fighting an insurgency that engages the enemy head on with large-scale force. "When they stand and fight us from a fairly conventional standpoint, they present us with a fairly conventional target to engage and fight," says a Department of Defense official. James S. Robbins of the American Foreign Policy Council concurs: "Terrorists and guerillas have a hard time with stand-up fights," he wrote in the National Review.

What other developments have occurred in the counter-insurgency campaign?

In recent weeks, the U.S. military has had increasing success pushing insurgents, particularly foreign fighters, out of larger cities. This forces them to congregate in rural areas that have fewer places to hide. U.S. troops have also ramped up their intelligence-gathering efforts among Iraqi citizens, who have grown increasingly disenchanted with insurgency violence, to discover where rebels are grouping. "[The Iraqis] are starting to turn in the bad guys to a degree we haven`t seen yet," says the Defense Department official.

What are the insurgency`s main goals?

Their primary goal remains, as General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, put it in 2003, "to break the will of the United States of America." But the insurgency--a loose configuration of Iraqi nationalists, former Baathists, and foreign Islamists--is reportedly showing signs of strain. The large majority of the insurgency is composed of Iraqi Sunnis, many of whom are fed up with the indiscriminate violence against civilians favored by the Zarqawi faction, some experts say. These Iraqi nationalists refuse to recognize the transitional government but haven`t ruled out a political settlement. Some experts say there`s been muted talk of establishing a political arm for this group redolent of the Irish Republican Army`s Sinn Fein. Iraq`s Presidency Council has hinted it might offer clemency to Iraqi insurgents who have not targeted civilians.

The aims of the more radical foreign-born insurgents under the sway of Zarqawi are less clear. "Unless the insurgents seek merely to sow death and destruction, success will likely hinge on their ability to set the conditions for the entry of Sunni Arab oppositionists into politics, to either continue the struggle via legitimate means or subvert the Iraqi government," Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute wrote in a recent policy brief.

How has the insurgency evolved?

Generally, insurgents are focusing on Iraqi security forces and not targeting U.S. forces as much as they did before the January 30 elections. Attacks on Iraqi civilians and the Iraqi army are up in recent months, according to the U.S. military. Attacks against U.S. forces have dropped 22 percent since the elections. In March, 40 American soldiers were killed, the lowest casualty rate in more than a year. Buoyed by these encouraging signs, the Pentagon is considering pulling as many as one-third of its 142,000 troops from Iraq within the next year, according to the New York Times.

But not all experts are convinced. "I think we had a relatively good month, which the U.S. military is clearly calling a trend," Katzman says. "But I think the evidence of a real hard trend is very preliminary." Jeffrey White of the Washington Institute, says the casualty numbers can be misleading because they fluctuate and are often cyclical. "Official statements suggesting that current levels of activity represent some sort of `tipping point` or `tipping period` should be viewed with caution," he wrote in a recent Washington Institute policy brief, adding that insurgent activity dipped last year in February and March as well.

Does this evolution follow the pattern of past insurgencies?

Partly, though as White points out, "It`s not proceeding along the classical lines of what people consider a Maoist insurgency." Still, the Iraqi insurgents, many of whom are former officers in Saddam Hussein`s army, are well versed and aware of which strategies worked for past insurgencies, from the Nicaraguan Sandinistas to the Vietcong, experts say. Insurgencies generally undergo three phases: the first is the organizational and recruiting phase, which is largely nonviolent; the second phase entails guerilla-style hit-and-run attacks as well as attempts by insurgents to grab and hold territory; and phase three, which may be starting in Iraq, involves larger conventional force-on-force attacks against the government in charge.

-- by Lionel Beehner, staff writer, cfr.org

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Und solche Typen sind die Helden unserer Neo/TheoCon-Kriegsfraktion. Diese Witzfiguren sind doch nur peinlich.

April 13, 2005
EDITORIAL
Questioning Mr. Bolton
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/opinion/13wed1.html

The longer John Bolton`s Senate hearing for the post of United Nations representative went on, the more outrageous it seemed that President Bush could have nominated a man who had made withering disdain for that world body the signature of his career in international affairs. Some fear that the aim is to scuttle the United Nations. It`s more likely, but just as disturbing, that this is another example of Mr. Bush`s rewarding loyalty rather than holding officials accountable for mistakes, especially those who helped build the case for war with Iraq.

Whatever the explanation, the hearing held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee only added reasons for denying the job to Mr. Bolton. It turned up a third incident (we already knew of two) in which Mr. Bolton tried to have an intelligence analyst punished for stopping him from making false claims about a weapons program in another nation, notably Cuba. Trying to tailor intelligence is enough to disqualify Mr. Bolton from this job. But the hearings also provided a detailed indictment of his views on the U.N., multilateral diplomacy and treaties.

Mr. Bolton tried, but failed, to explain away his long public record of attacking the United Nations. Senator Barbara Boxer dealt rather neatly with Mr. Bolton`s lamentation that he was being misquoted by playing a videotape of a 1994 speech in which he said: "There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world - that`s the United States - when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along."

Mr. Bolton tried to convince the senators that he was just being provocative with those remarks and that as U.N. ambassador, he would confine his utterances to official policy vetted by appropriate agencies, like the State Department. But much of the hearing focused on Mr. Bolton`s contempt for that process, especially on his attempts to have a State Department intelligence analyst punished for stopping him from misrepresenting intelligence on Cuba.

Mr. Bolton wanted to give a speech saying that "the United States believes that Cuba has a developmental offensive biological warfare program and is providing assistance to other rogue state programs." That sounds scary, but it was not true. Cuba was not doing those things, and U.S. intelligence agencies did not think it was. But according to numerous accounts, Mr. Bolton became enraged when an analyst from the State Department`s Bureau of Intelligence and Research pointed out the error and tried to have the analyst removed from his post.

Mr. Bolton`s attempts to dodge accountability were almost comical. At one point, explaining a trip to the C.I.A. in which he tried to have an analyst for Latin America on the National Intelligence Council removed for a similar act, Mr. Bolton said he had gone there only to learn what the council does. The explanation was not remotely believable from someone with Mr. Bolton`s background in national security. But for future reference, he might check [urlwww.cia.gov/nic]http://www.cia.gov/nic[/url], which has nifty theme music and an explanation of the council`s job: preparing intelligence reports.

Carl Ford Jr., who led the State Department`s intelligence office at the time and is now retired, flatly contradicted Mr. Bolton`s claim that he hadn`t tried to have the State Department analyst fired. His appearance was a personal risk, given the way the administration vilified another intelligence officer, Richard Clarke, who challenged its line on the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Ford called Mr. Bolton a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" and said the intimidation had had a lasting effect on his department.

Some of Mr. Bolton`s Republican allies tried the "no harm, no foul" ploy, saying his misbehavior shouldn`t count because he had ended up giving an accurate speech. Others said the issue was just a question of management style. But they are wrong. With America`s credibility as low as it is, the last thing the nation needs is a United Nations envoy who tries to force intelligence into an ideological construct.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
The New Economic Warriors
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48139-2005Apr…

By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, April 13, 2005; Page A17

They`ve gone from heroes to bums. Hardly a day passes when the press or prosecutors don`t thrash some corporate CEO for alleged managerial blunders or accounting illegalities. The insurance mogul Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, lately of American International Group Inc., is only the most recent target. Then there are those familiar symbols of scandal: the former bigwigs of Enron and WorldCom. A few years ago American chief executives were celebrated as architects of the New Economy. Now they inspire scorn or rage. What we have is a corporate Watergate, says management consultant John Challenger. It`s that -- and more.

Like the preceding glorification, the present vilification obscures a larger reality. The true transformation of CEOs is not the recent plunge from public grace. It`s a slow-motion evolution that, despite many excesses, mistakes and some crimes, has served the nation rather well. To oversimplify, CEOs have changed from bureaucrats to warriors. You can glimpse the effects in a couple of statistics. The first: In the fourth quarter of 2004, after-tax business profits were 9.2 percent of national income, the highest since at least 1950, says Mark Zandi of Economy.com. The second: From 2001 to 2004, annual growth in productivity (output per hour worked) averaged 4.3 percent, the best since -- again -- 1950.

In our mind`s eye, we see CEOs as a ruthless and selfish bunch, closing factories, squeezing health insurance coverage and slashing wage increases -- even while arranging lavish pay packages for themselves. To some extent, the stereotype unfairly dehumanizes CEOs. But like many stereotypes, it contains much truth. In 2004 the CEOs of 179 major companies were paid an average of $9.84 million, up 12 percent from 2003, reports a survey done by Pearl Meyer & Partners for the New York Times. By contrast, average labor compensation rose only 4.5 percent.

But the obsessive drive to improve profits, though cold-blooded, also creates often-overlooked social benefits. It`s not simply that growing profits bolster the stock market or finance new investment. The broader point is that advancing productivity -- a fancy term for efficiency and a byproduct of the quest for profits -- is the wellspring of higher living standards. Without it, we`d quarrel ferociously over pieces of a fixed economic pie (heck, even with it, we quarrel).

What moves productivity is a mystery, subject to many influences: new technologies, workers` education, the level of inflation and corporate management, among others. From 1973 to 1995, productivity growth averaged a lackluster 1.5 percent a year. Mediocre management was partly to blame. Small wonder. In the 1960s and 1970s, the prevailing idea was that CEOs should mediate among a company`s various "stakeholders" -- workers, customers, shareholders, communities and governments. CEOs were usually "company men," promoted from within. Their main mission was to protect the organization and polish the public reputation of corporations. They were compensated like tenured bureaucrats without much incentive pay. Growing profitability and productivity were taken for granted, because American management was assumed to be so superior.

It wasn`t. Competition -- foreign and domestic -- intensified. Hostile takeovers threatened lagging companies. Worried CEOs focused more on the bottom line. Directors increasingly picked outsiders as CEOs, "searching for a corporate savior," writes Rakesh Khurana of the Harvard Business School in his book by that title. The talents, temperaments and values of CEOs shifted. The new breed is more individualistic, more "charismatic" (Khurana`s label), more profit-driven. They`re not "company men"; they`re corporate "change agents." They`re devoted to improving the firm`s economic performance; other goals come second or third.

This broad transformation -- even if it doesn`t apply to everyone -- illuminates today`s CEO paradox. At worst it leads to abuse and fraud. The abuse consists of all those inflated pay packages, reached in uncompetitive negotiations with directors. CEOs are often overpaid in the sense that they would work just as hard for less. From 1993 to 2003, the average compensation of CEOs of the Standard & Poor`s 500 companies rose 146 percent after inflation, report Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School and Yaniv Grinstein of Cornell University. Unlike bureaucrat CEOs, today`s warriors feel little self-restraint; having been charged to maximize corporate profits, they feel entitled to maximize their own. The fraud occurs when this mind-set causes executives to resort to accounting deceits to prop up profits and stock prices.

But headline outrages are not the only story. A vibrant economy requires someone to screen out inefficiencies and promote change. In the 1980s U.S. companies were compared unfavorably with Japanese and German rivals that supposedly focused more on the "long term." In reality the "long term" was often an excuse to stand pat. The American economy has done better -- achieved higher living standards, adapted more smoothly to change -- in part because most CEOs faced problems when they arose and didn`t wait for the long term.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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US mercenaries spill blood over Afghan opium
By Nick Meo in Kandahar province
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=628…

13 April 2005

It was the first day of Afghanistan`s new opium eradication programme and the quiet town of Maiwand in Kandahar province had been chosen for action.

Hundreds of Afghan eradicators under the command of American private security contractors were going to head into the fields around the town and destroy the beautiful red and white blooms days before they could be harvested for their narcotic sap.

But instead of the peaceful, model operation that was promised as an example to demonstrate the Kabul government`s serious intentions, Maiwand and its surrounding villages exploded into violence in what could be a foretaste of resistance to Western-backed efforts to bring Afghanistan`s opium industry under control.

By the end of yesterday four government soldiers had been wounded by gunfire from farmers, American security contractors were said to be sheltering behind razor wire in a protected camp, and Afghan police and counter-narcotics forces had fought fierce battles which local people said left five dead. Plans to eradicate poppies were temporarily shelved in the area as political bigwigs shuttled to and fro trying to ease tensions and broker some kind of deal with the angry opium farmers.

Dense clouds of black smoke hung over the town from burning barricades, hundreds of shots rang out from gun battles, and American helicopter gunships flew low overhead.

One policeman said he had seen five bodies, but it was difficult to tell from the ambulances speeding out of the town towards hospitals one hour away in Kandahar how many had been injured in the disastrous operation.

The poppy eradication force had driven out of Kandahar two days earlier on their way towards Maiwand in a motley collection of Jeeps and trucks, bristling with firepower and wearing a remarkable array of uniforms and ethnic dress.

Friendly looking Americans chewing cigars - most of them are retired policemen hired by the security company - had waved lazily as the convoy thundered past.

Maiwan was being targeted first for eradication because it was regarded as a relatively peaceful area with effective government control. The hard cases have yet to be tackled.

Driving across the desert from Kandahar, the first sign of trouble was the pall of black smoke from burning tyres pulled across the road, blocking it to traffic. Tall men in turbans could be seen standing next to them chanting. As we wondered whether to chance the blockade, a driver speeding out of town leant out of the car window and shouted at us in English: "Don`t go in there or you`ll never come out again." As he vanished at high speed into the distance dozens of shots rang out.

Local people told us to go no further, and a passing police commander ordered three of his men to guard us. They assumed macho poses with their AK-47s and gave us bubble-gum.

One of them said the fighting had been so fierce it must have been the Taliban helping farmers to fight back.

A local man heard there were journalists near by and rode out of the town on his moped past the burning tyres to voice the passions being violently expressed within it.

"The farmers are angry with the Americans and the Kabul government," said Ahmed Weil. "It is only the fields of the poor that are being destroyed, not the fields of the rich." Afghans complain that wealthy warlords keep their stockpiles of opium while poor farmers are stopped from growing the crop or have their fields cut down.

There are also persistent claims that farmers are spared eradication if they can afford to bribe teams, or if they share the clan background of eradicators.


13 April 2005 11:47


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Rumsfeld warns Iraqi regime not to purge US allies
By Patrick Cockburn in Kirkuk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?st…

13 April 2005

The US has warned against a purge of its allies in the defence and interior ministries - crucial to real power in Iraq - by incoming Shia ministers.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, issued a coded warning against the removal of officials from the security ministries which lead the fight against insurgency.

"It`s important that the new government be attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries, and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence," he said on his ninth visit to Iraq since the invasion.

The US is increasingly isolated in Iraq, with the announcement yesterday that 1,700 Polish troops in Iraq would leave at the beginning of next year. Poland has been among America`s staunchest allies.

The Shia parties, who won a majority in the parliamentary election on 30 January, are pressing for control of the interior ministry in the new government. They also want to take charge of the the intelligence agency. The defence ministry will probably go to a Sunni Arab.

"The Americans have remained largely in control of intelligence, interior and defence despite the handover of power to Iraqis in June last year," an official said.

Under the interim government of Iyad Allawi, former Baathist intelligence officers, often Sunnis, were recruited to the security ministries. The Shia United Iraqi Alliance, with more than 140 out of 275 seats in the new assembly, would like to purge them. Mr Rumsfeld suggested that a purge might lead to more corruption in the Iraqi government, although Mr Allawi`s administration was notorious for taking bribes and for allegedly taking a percentage on all contracts.

More understandably Mr Rumsfeld warned against delays in the political process - it is two months since theelection results were announced - and said parliament should seek to draw a constitution by 15 August.

After meeting Mr Rumsfeld, the Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari played down the problems ahead. "I am sure we are going to form very good ministries. All of [the ministers] are good technocrats. They are very effective and from good backgrounds." If Mr Jaafari fails to form a government, Ahmed Chalabi, a leading member of the Shia bloc, is likely to step in and be asked to try again. Though distrusted by many, no one doubts Mr Chalabi`s political agility. As an ally of the American neoconservatives, he played a central role in fomenting the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He later fell out with the neoconservatives and was denounced for allegedly passing information to the Iranians, with whom he has good relations. He is also close to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric.

The failure to form a government stems in part from differences between the Kurds and the Shia, the two main groups in parliament. The Shia list is also very divided, containing some 15 groups all hungry for jobs. Even in an administration with 31 ministers there may not be enough to go round. The Kurds also want to see Mr Allawi and his supporters in the new government.

Ironically, Mr Rumsfeld`s concern over a purge of Sunni officers is in contrast with the speed with which the Pentagon disbanded the Iraqi army and security forces in May 2003. This was the single most important development fuelling the insurgency which exploded in Sunni areas in the following months. Just how dangerous Iraq is for foreigners was underlined yesterday when an US contractor was kidnapped.

Differences over jobs continue to fuel ethnic and religious animosities at all levels of society. In the oil city of Kirkuk, the Kurds, once persecuted and now in control, are eager to reverse that discrimination.

Nagat Hassan, a Kurdistan Democratic Party leader in Kirkuk, said: "There are only 300 Kurds out of 11,000 oil workers here. The majority come from the centre of Iraq." He said there were Kurds qualified to do many of the jobs.

The purge of low-level members of the Baath party in the mainly Sunni Hawaija region of western Kirkuk led to schools closing because so many Baathist teachers were fired. In one case students threatened to burn down their school unless their Baathist headmaster was reinstated.


13 April 2005 11:54


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Nach dem Besuch von Rumsfeld hat sich gezeigt, was die Wahlen und die neue Regierung im Irak wert sind, nämlich garnichts. Mr. Rumsfeld kommt und weist die Iraker an, was sie zu tun haben. Schöne neue Demokratie! Solche Ergebnisse von Wahlen werden sich in die arabischen Hirne einbrennen. Auf diese Weise werden sie sehr schnell darauf kommen, dass alles nur Show war. Und dass, wenn Wahlen etwas bewirken würden, sie schon längst abgeschafft wären. Den Schaden, den die USA dem Demokratiegedanken in der arabischen Welt zugefügt haben, werden hundert leere Versprechen in den nächsten Jahrzehnten nicht beseitigen können. Es mag fast zynisch klingen, die einzige Regierung in der Gegend, in der Wahlen überhaupt irgendeinen Sinn machen, ist der Iran, denn allein dort bestünde die Möglichkeit durch Wahlen etwas zu verändern. Es ist zwar ein äußerst eingeschränkter Rahmen und die Grundlagen sind sehr restriktiv, aber in den letzten Tagen las ich, es solle im Iran ein Gesetz in Kraft treten, das in bestimmten Fällen die Abtreibung erlaubt. Ich glaube, es besteht eine Möglichkeit demokratische Strukturen in der islamischen Welt einzuführen. Nur muß die Demokratie für eine Gesellschaft brauchbar sein, in der nicht das Individuum im Vordergrund steht, sondern die Gruppe als Familie, Sippe oder Stamm. Wie sich eine solche Struktur mit dem Demokratiegedanken in Einklang gebracht wrden kann, das ist eine Herausforderung und von schlichten Neocongemütern wohl nicht zu lösen. Anderseits beginnt hier im Westen die Suche nach einer Gemeinschaft, da sich viele mit der Vereinsamkeit ihrer Person nicht abfinden wollen und auf Sinnsuche gegangen sind. Grundsätzlich wäre es wohl möglich, dass wir aus unserer Käfighaltung mit eingesetzten `feeding tubes` zurückkehren in eine Gemeinschaft, die dann wieder zu anderen Zwängen führt. Auf der anderen Seite werden sich auch die mehr im Gemeinschaftsgefühl geprägten Gesellschaften mehr individualisieren. Aus diesen Entwicklungen könnten brauchbare Ansätze entstehen. Joerver

Don`t be fooled by the spin on Iraq

The US is failing - and hatred of the occupation greater than ever
Jonathan Steele
Wednesday April 13, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1458237,00.ht…

Guardian
Saddam Hussein`s effigy was pulled down again in Baghdad`s Firdos Square at the weekend. But unlike the made-for-TV event when US troops first entered the Iraqi capital, the toppling of Saddam on the occupation`s second anniversary was different.

Instead of being done by US marines with a few dozen Iraqi bystanders, 300,000 Iraqis were on hand. They threw down effigies of Bush and Blair as well as the old dictator, at a rally that did not celebrate liberation but called for the immediate departure of foreign troops.

For most Iraqis, with the exception of the Kurds, Washington`s "liberation" never was. Wounded national pride was greater than relief at Saddam`s departure. Iraqis were soon angered by the failure to get power and water supplies repaired, the brutality of US army tactics, and the disappearance of their country`s precious oil revenues into inadequately supervised accounts, or handed to foreigners under contracts that produced no benefits for Iraqis.

From last autumn`s disastrous attack on Falluja to the huge increase in detention without trial, the casualties go on rising. After an amnesty last summer, the numbers of "security detainees" have gone up again and reached a record 17,000.

The weekend`s vast protest shows that opposition is still growing, in spite of US and British government claims to have Iraqis` best interests at heart. It was the biggest demonstration since foreign troops invaded.

Equally significantly, the marchers were mainly Shias, who poured in from the impoverished eastern suburb known as Sadr City. The Bush-Blair spin likes to suggest that protest is confined to Sunnis, with the nod and wink that these people are disgruntled former Saddam supporters or fundamentalists linked to al-Qaida, who therefore need not be treated as legitimate. The fact that the march was largely Shia and against Saddam as much as Bush and Blair gives the lie to that.

Some Sunnis attended the march, urged to go there by the Association of Muslim Scholars, which has contacts with the armed resistance. This too was an important sign. Occupation officials consistently talk up the danger of civil war, usually as an argument for keeping troops in Iraq. It is a risk that radicals in both communities take seriously.

Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric who organised the latest march, recently joined forces with the National Foundation Congress, a group of Sunni and Shia nationalists, to affirm "the legitimate right of the Iraqi resistance to defend their country and its destiny" while "rejecting terrorism aimed at innocent Iraqis, institutions, public buildings and places of worship".

The key issue, now as it has been since 2003, is for the occupation to end quickly. Only this will reduce the resistance and give Iraqis a chance to live normally. In a new line of spin - which some commentators have taken to mean that the US is preparing for a pullout - US commanders claim the rate of insurgent attacks is down.

The figures are not independently monitored. Even if true, they may be temporary. Thirdly, they fly in the face of evidence that suggests the US is failing. Most of western Iraq is out of US control. The city of Mosul could explode at any moment. Ramadi is practically a no-go area.

In any case, the US is only talking of a possible reduction of a third of its troops next year. This will still leave 100,000. The US argues that a complete withdrawal has to be "conditions-related, not calendar-related" or, as Blair puts it, there can be no "artificial timetable". By that, they mean Iraq`s security forces have to be strong enough to replace the Americans and British, a totally elastic marker.

That is surely the message that Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, is giving this week on his ninth trip to Baghdad since April 2003. Whenever there is an alleged transfer of power to Iraqis, this time to a "government" elected in a flawed poll, Rumsfeld comes with instructions.

His public warning is for Iraq`s leaders not to make any changes in the army and interior ministries, or postpone the writing of a constitution. Behind the scenes, he is probably telling them not to ask for a withdrawal timetable, and sounding them out on the opposite. The US has indicated that it wants permanent bases in Iraq, just as it does in Afghanistan - which is why the joint Sadr-National Foundation Congress statement says the government "will have no right to ratify any agreement or treaty that might affect Iraq`s sovereignty, the unity of its territory and the preservation of its resources".

Poland has just announced it is pulling out of Iraq at the end of the year, just as Spain did last year. Italy is wavering on the verge of a similar decision. If Blair wants to regain the trust he lost before the Iraq war, his best approach would be to announce the same by May 5. He would help Iraqis as well as himself.

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We must not move on

Given his record in Honduras, John Negroponte should have no difficulty spotting terrorists
Paul Laverty
Wednesday April 13, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1458142,00.ht…

Guardian
The trouble about writing fiction is that I spend too much time in a room by myself. On occasions I wonder if I`m going nuts, or whether, just maybe, my quiet fury is a normal reaction from an average human being. On Sunday, much to my delight, Universal brought out a new DVD of Carla`s Song, written by me and directed by Ken Loach, set against the backdrop of the US-financed war during the 1980s in Nicaragua, where I once worked for a human-rights organisation. The team at Universal were genuinely enthusiastic and worked their pants off to pull it all together. Along with the new director`s cut is a glossy booklet with photographs and excerpts from the introduction to my screenplay, written in 1996. I was on a film set when I got word that the text was going to print and I only had 10 minutes to glance over their summary. I faxed a one-paragraph postscript and that is when the trouble started.

Despite the best efforts of the young man at Universal to get my postscript in, he was informed by lawyers that they could not risk it. My agent received a phone call from a lawyer saying what I had written was deemed to be "contentious and inflammatory". I asked for a copy of the opinion but was told that it was "verbal". I asked who counsel was, and on what basis they reached their opinion. Not a squeak. Deadline passed. Postscript gone.

Here is the offending paragraph: "The man who was at the centre of the US experiment to tear Nicaragua apart in the 80s was Mr John Negroponte, once US ambassador to Honduras. He claims to be unaware of any US human rights abuse in Nicaragua or El Salvador during this time. In January of 2005 he was appointed head of national intelligence by George Bush Jnr. Each morning he should have no difficulty spotting a terrorist."

Although many continue to question how much Negroponte knew during his time in Honduras, his political rehabilitation has been marked. Last year, he was given the testing position of US ambassador to Iraq, making him head of the biggest diplomatic staff in the world.

David Corn, a US journalist, wrote in detail about Negroponte: "While he was in Honduras and for years afterwards, Negroponte refused to acknowledge the human rights abuses. In a letter to the Economist he said it was `simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras`." Corn asks him to account therefore for a CIA report that states: "The Honduran military committed hundreds of human rights abuses since 1980, many of which were politically motivated and officially sanctioned" and linked to "death squad activities". He also quotes from a Baltimore Sun series from 1995: "Time and time again... Negroponte was confronted by evidence that a Honduran army intelligence unit, trained by the CIA, was stalking, kidnapping, torturing and killing suspected subversives."

Honduras was bribed and bullied by the US to host the Contras, who were fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Negroponte, as ambassador, was the local cheerleader taking his instructions from Washington. Every serious human rights organisation conducted detailed investigations within Nicaragua at this time, and while the Sandinistas came in for some heavy criticism too, all revealed widespread and systematic abuse by the Contras, much of it directed at civilians.

Two memories still haunt me. We got a report one night of a Contra attack on a cooperative. In the chaos, a young woman was shot and couldn`t run. Her parents somehow got away to the safety of a trench, only to hear the Contras in the near distance torturing their daughter. They found her dead in the ditch the next day with her breasts cut off. Incidents like this peppered the entire war.

I also interviewed a young Contra who had been captured by the Sandinistas. He told me he had been involved in many ambushes. While staring out of the window he drifted off into a terrifying reverie and with an imaginary knife in hand, he swished it back and forth, describing how he finished off those lying wounded from an ambushed vehicle.

Almost 20 years on, his face keeps coming back to mind. So too does the image of Negroponte in his new office at national intelligence, in charge of 15 agencies with a multi-billion-dollar budget to seek out terrorists around the world. I`m sure they never met, and suspect the former`s butchery would be roundly condemned in diplo-speak by the latter. Can I ask the outrageous question: "What is the difference between those two men?" One has no name and is long forgotten, one of many thousands of illiterate campesino teenagers who did the dirty work on flesh with knives, and wreaked havoc on themselves and their neighbours. The other is a highly trained Yale graduate, a polyglot promoted by Kissinger after he learned Vietnamese, who went on to be US ambassador to the UN, Iraq, and now head of national intelligence, whose only weapon is a pen and a microphone. Kofi Annan, in the UN headquarters, called him "a great diplomat and a wonderful ambassador". So who am I in my tiny room to call Negroponte a human rights denier, and a champion of teenage mutilators?

I am reminded of that wonderful perception by the American philosopher John Dewey who once said: "If you want to establish some conception of a society, go find out who is in gaol." Perhaps, in these times, it should be updated by adding "...and who obtains high office."

In my fantasy, I imagine the ghost of Peter Benenson, the founder of Amnesty, turning in his grave at the CIA kidnapping their terror suspects in Europe and dumping them in client states for vicarious torture; new US attorney general Alberto Gonzales advising Bush that some elements of the Geneva conventions are "obsolete"; US general Ricardo Sanchez`s memo authorising new interrogation techniques that violate the Geneva conventions; subcontracting of interrogation by private US contractors in Iraq; and UK ambassador Craig Murray, fired from his post in Uzbekistan for "operational reasons", who coincidentally took up the case of a mother whose son was boiled alive in detention, and who further claimed MI6 had used information gained by torture passed on by the CIA. Torturers are on the march; some have muscle and plastic gloves, others have expensive educations to chip away at legal convention, and most insidious of all, the wordsmiths, who "soften up" public opinion with "sleep manipulation".

In my continuing dream, Peter Benenson comes back from the grave carrying a little symbol of the scales of justice wrapped up in barbed wire, with a Milan Kundera quote underneath: "The struggle against power is the struggle against forgetting." He calls on us to set up a sister organisation to Amnesty, perhaps Memory International, one that uses the power of public opinion and ordinary decency, not just to follow the fate of the prisoner, but to monitor and challenge the other side of the equation: not the abused, but the "abuser", whether that be the head of the detention centre, the manufacturer who sells the electric batons or, most important of all, their political champions in high office who make their dirty work possible, but never mess their own suit.

Negroponte told his critics last year that allegations against him were "old hat". He said: "I want to say to those people: haven`t you moved on?" Not an inch, Mr National Intelligence Director. I remember.

· Paul Laverty is a screenwriter; his films include Ae Fond Kiss and Sweet Sixteen

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Earth To Humankind: Back Off
Say good-bye to your car, computer, everything. We are burning up the planet too fast to hang on
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

The Earth is going down. Way, way down. To the mat, hard and painful and with a sad moaning broken-boned crunch.

We are chewing her up, spitting her out, stomping and gobbling and burning and gouging and drilling and sucking her dry and we are carelessly replicating ourselves so goddamn fast we can`t even stop much less even try to slow the hell down, and all we want is more and faster and with less consequence and pretty soon the Earth is gonna go, well, there you are, I`m finished, sorry, and boom zing groan, done.

Don`t take my world for it. Just read the headlines, the latest major, soul-stabbing report.

It`s one of those stories that sort of punches you in the karmic gut, about how they just completed this unprecedented, four-year, $24 million, U.N.-backed study involving 1,360 scientists from 95 nations who all pored over thousands of satellite images and countless scientific reports and reams of stats, and they all distilled their findings down to one deadly, heartbreaking summary.

And here it is: We, humankind, people, sentient carbon-based biped creatures, only us and no one else but us because it sure as hell ain`t the goddamn lions or caribou or meerkats or rhododendrons, we humans have, in our shockingly short time one this wobbly sphere, used up a staggering 60 percent of the world`s grasslands, forests, farmland, rivers and lakes.

That`s right, 60 percent. Gone. Burned up. Used up. Much of it irreversibly. These are the basic ecosystem services that, simply put, sustain life on Earth. The glass ain`t even half full, people. It`s about three-fifths empty and draining fast and we are doing our damnedest to expedite the process because, well, this is just who we are.

We reproduce. We consume. We use it up and dry it all up and move on to find more and it reminds me of that line from Agent Smith in the first "Matrix" movie where he stares menacingly at a blank-faced Keanu and speaks about how every mammal on Earth instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, "but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague," and then Neo gets all huffy and righteous and goes on to prove how we are also full of beauty and fire and life and he makes it all better by saving humankind so we can go buy the mediocre soundtrack.

But it doesn`t stop there. The study also reveals that our fair and gluttonous species has altered the planet more violently and rapidly in the past 50 years than in any comparable time in human history. Yay accelerated technology. Yay multinational conglomerates. Yay lack of corporate ethics and rabid unchecked capitalist consumer gluttony. Whee.

And you read this horrific story about how we are mauling the planet at an unprecedented rate and you ask yourself the obvious question: Our government is doing what about this again? Oh right: nothing. Not one thing. They are, in fact, making it all far, far worse. Worse environmental president in American history, you remind yourself. Whee.

And this heartbreaking study, it comes hot on the heels of one of the most distressing and sobering pieces of journalism I`ve read in ages, an excerpt from a book by James Howard Kunstler called "The Long Emergency," all about the imminent and staggering oil/natural gas crisis now looming large over the U.S. and the world, a crisis of such dire proportions that it will very soon reshape American life like nothing since the Industrial Revolution. Except in reverse.

It`s about peak oil. It`s coming within a year or two. It means we`ve essentially siphoned off all the easily attainable oil on the planet (about 50 percent of the grand total) and getting to the remaining 50 percent -- the lower-quality stuff that`s buried deep in rock or in impossibly difficult locations or that lies underneath countries where the people absolutely hate us -- will be so fraught and expensive and hypercompetitive that it will mean not only, in the immediate future, much more war and strife and pain but also, in the next decade or two, a radical -- and I do mean radical -- reshaping of life as we know it.

Petroleum and gas will become incredibly scarce and everything we know about consumer culture, travel, products, Wal-Mart, easy access to all daily goods and services, will essentially vanish, and we will return to a intensely local, viciously competitive agricultural model of raw survival. Read this article now, and be amazed.

This is the incredible thing about humans. We are capable of such amazing extremes, such breathtaking beauty and such violent ugliness, astounding awareness to utter blindness, transcendental light to staggering dark. Some periods in our history, it feels like we`re actually progressing, calming down, evolving, reaching new heights and new levels of psychospiritual awareness, as opposed to merely rearranging the puzzle pieces in a drunken haze of frustrating anxiety.

And a other times, like now, like the new and violent and fractured Dark Age so savagely exemplified by BushCo, it feels as though we are working toward the other extreme, working our last raw nerve, seeing how far we can go before we implode, how much of the planet we can abuse and pollute and rape before something pops so violently and unexpectedly we can only sit back and go, oh holy hell.

Maybe the nutball evangelical born-agains have it right: Maybe it`s best to just burn up this whole godforsaken lump of Earth as fast as possible and then watch in giddy flesh-rended glee as Armageddon rains down and only those who`ve given tens of thousands of dollars to secretly gay televangelists will rise up and be saved and the rest of us will merely drive our Priuses off a collective cliff into the fiery pits of gay-marriage-friendly hell.

Ah, but we have bad news there, too, because, according to the cute Rapture Index, that adorable little Web site o` righteousness that charts the various global "signs" leading up to the impending Second Coming, the Rapture should be happening, like, right now. Or maybe last week.

In fact, the index now stands at 152, well above the "Oh sweet Jesus take me now" threshold. Which means, of course, that the Second Coming might have already come and gone, and Jesus may have swooped down and taken one look at what we`ve done to the place and said, you`ve got to be freakin` kidding me, and said, sorry but no one here deserves much of anything illuminative or enlightened right now. Can`t you just hear all those gay-hatin` born-again Christians saying, what the hell?

Of course, no one said this was gonna be easy. Not Christ, not Buddha, not Allah and not Lao Tse and not Rumi and not Krishna and not the light beings right now swirling around your head and trying to get the message across that this earthly plane is one of the harshest and more difficult and bloody messy ugly lessons in the universe, which is also why it`s so valuable and mandatory and why so many souls want to come here, to learn. Trial by fire, is what it is. This is what they say.

But if these scientific studies and stories are to be believed -- and there`s little reason to think otherwise -- that fire is about to get one hell of a lot hotter. Stock up on duct tape. And water. And hope.


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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The Long Emergency

What`s going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?rnd=1113…
By JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER

A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth.

Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you`re about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as the necessities of modern life -- not to mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense -- you name it.

The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That argument states that we don`t have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world`s all-time total endowment, meaning half the world`s oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there`s a big catch: It`s the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.

The United States passed its own oil peak -- about 11 million barrels a day -- in 1970, and since then production has dropped steadily. In 2004 it ran just above 5 million barrels a day (we get a tad more from natural-gas condensates). Yet we consume roughly 20 million barrels a day now. That means we have to import about two-thirds of our oil, and the ratio will continue to worsen.

The U.S. peak in 1970 brought on a portentous change in geoeconomic power. Within a few years, foreign producers, chiefly OPEC, were setting the price of oil, and this in turn led to the oil crises of the 1970s. In response, frantic development of non-OPEC oil, especially the North Sea fields of England and Norway, essentially saved the West`s ass for about two decades. Since 1999, these fields have entered depletion. Meanwhile, worldwide discovery of new oil has steadily declined to insignificant levels in 2003 and 2004.

Some "cornucopians" claim that the Earth has something like a creamy nougat center of "abiotic" oil that will naturally replenish the great oil fields of the world. The facts speak differently. There has been no replacement whatsoever of oil already extracted from the fields of America or any other place.

Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.

It will change everything about how we live.

To aggravate matters, American natural-gas production is also declining, at five percent a year, despite frenetic new drilling, and with the potential of much steeper declines ahead. Because of the oil crises of the 1970s, the nuclear-plant disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and the acid-rain problem, the U.S. chose to make gas its first choice for electric-power generation. The result was that just about every power plant built after 1980 has to run on gas. Half the homes in America are heated with gas. To further complicate matters, gas isn`t easy to import. Here in North America, it is distributed through a vast pipeline network. Gas imported from overseas would have to be compressed at minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit in pressurized tanker ships and unloaded (re-gasified) at special terminals, of which few exist in America. Moreover, the first attempts to site new terminals have met furious opposition because they are such ripe targets for terrorism.

Some other things about the global energy predicament are poorly understood by the public and even our leaders. This is going to be a permanent energy crisis, and these energy problems will synergize with the disruptions of climate change, epidemic disease and population overshoot to produce higher orders of trouble.

We will have to accommodate ourselves to fundamentally changed conditions.

No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it. The wonders of steady technological progress achieved through the reign of cheap oil have lulled us into a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome, leading many Americans to believe that anything we wish for hard enough will come true. These days, even people who ought to know better are wishing ardently for a seamless transition from fossil fuels to their putative replacements.

The widely touted "hydrogen economy" is a particularly cruel hoax. We are not going to replace the U.S. automobile and truck fleet with vehicles run on fuel cells. For one thing, the current generation of fuel cells is largely designed to run on hydrogen obtained from natural gas. The other way to get hydrogen in the quantities wished for would be electrolysis of water using power from hundreds of nuclear plants. Apart from the dim prospect of our building that many nuclear plants soon enough, there are also numerous severe problems with hydrogen`s nature as an element that present forbidding obstacles to its use as a replacement for oil and gas, especially in storage and transport.

Wishful notions about rescuing our way of life with "renewables" are also unrealistic. Solar-electric systems and wind turbines face not only the enormous problem of scale but the fact that the components require substantial amounts of energy to manufacture and the probability that they can`t be manufactured at all without the underlying support platform of a fossil-fuel economy. We will surely use solar and wind technology to generate some electricity for a period ahead but probably at a very local and small scale.

Virtually all "biomass" schemes for using plants to create liquid fuels cannot be scaled up to even a fraction of the level at which things are currently run. What`s more, these schemes are predicated on using oil and gas "inputs" (fertilizers, weed-killers) to grow the biomass crops that would be converted into ethanol or bio-diesel fuels. This is a net energy loser -- you might as well just burn the inputs and not bother with the biomass products. Proposals to distill trash and waste into oil by means of thermal depolymerization depend on the huge waste stream produced by a cheap oil and gas economy in the first place.

Coal is far less versatile than oil and gas, extant in less abundant supplies than many people assume and fraught with huge ecological drawbacks -- as a contributor to greenhouse "global warming" gases and many health and toxicity issues ranging from widespread mercury poisoning to acid rain. You can make synthetic oil from coal, but the only time this was tried on a large scale was by the Nazis under wartime conditions, using impressive amounts of slave labor.

If we wish to keep the lights on in America after 2020, we may indeed have to resort to nuclear power, with all its practical problems and eco-conundrums. Under optimal conditions, it could take ten years to get a new generation of nuclear power plants into operation, and the price may be beyond our means. Uranium is also a resource in finite supply. We are no closer to the more difficult project of atomic fusion, by the way, than we were in the 1970s.

The upshot of all this is that we are entering a historical period of potentially great instability, turbulence and hardship. Obviously, geopolitical maneuvering around the world`s richest energy regions has already led to war and promises more international military conflict. Since the Middle East contains two-thirds of the world`s remaining oil supplies, the U.S. has attempted desperately to stabilize the region by, in effect, opening a big police station in Iraq. The intent was not just to secure Iraq`s oil but to modify and influence the behavior of neighboring states around the Persian Gulf, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia. The results have been far from entirely positive, and our future prospects in that part of the world are not something we can feel altogether confident about.

And then there is the issue of China, which, in 2004, became the world`s second-greatest consumer of oil, surpassing Japan. China`s surging industrial growth has made it increasingly dependent on the imports we are counting on. If China wanted to, it could easily walk into some of these places -- the Middle East, former Soviet republics in central Asia -- and extend its hegemony by force. Is America prepared to contest for this oil in an Asian land war with the Chinese army? I doubt it. Nor can the U.S. military occupy regions of the Eastern Hemisphere indefinitely, or hope to secure either the terrain or the oil infrastructure of one distant, unfriendly country after another. A likely scenario is that the U.S. could exhaust and bankrupt itself trying to do this, and be forced to withdraw back into our own hemisphere, having lost access to most of the world`s remaining oil in the process.

We know that our national leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament. President George W. Bush has been briefed on the dangers of the oil-peak situation as long ago as before the 2000 election and repeatedly since then. In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary."

Most of all, the Long Emergency will require us to make other arrangements for the way we live in the United States. America is in a special predicament due to a set of unfortunate choices we made as a society in the twentieth century. Perhaps the worst was to let our towns and cities rot away and to replace them with suburbia, which had the additional side effect of trashing a lot of the best farmland in America. Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. It has a tragic destiny. The psychology of previous investment suggests that we will defend our drive-in utopia long after it has become a terrible liability.

Before long, the suburbs will fail us in practical terms. We made the ongoing development of housing subdivisions, highway strips, fried-food shacks and shopping malls the basis of our economy, and when we have to stop making more of those things, the bottom will fall out.

The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class.

Food production is going to be an enormous problem in the Long Emergency. As industrial agriculture fails due to a scarcity of oil- and gas-based inputs, we will certainly have to grow more of our food closer to where we live, and do it on a smaller scale. The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not "services" like real estate sales or hawking cheeseburgers to tourists. Farming. This is no doubt a startling, radical idea, and it raises extremely difficult questions about the reallocation of land and the nature of work. The relentless subdividing of land in the late twentieth century has destroyed the contiguity and integrity of the rural landscape in most places. The process of readjustment is apt to be disorderly and improvisational. Food production will necessarily be much more labor-intensive than it has been for decades. We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land.

The way that commerce is currently organized in America will not survive far into the Long Emergency. Wal-Mart`s "warehouse on wheels" won`t be such a bargain in a non-cheap-oil economy. The national chain stores` 12,000-mile manufacturing supply lines could easily be interrupted by military contests over oil and by internal conflict in the nations that have been supplying us with ultra-cheap manufactured goods, because they, too, will be struggling with similar issues of energy famine and all the disorders that go with it.

As these things occur, America will have to make other arrangements for the manufacture, distribution and sale of ordinary goods. They will probably be made on a "cottage industry" basis rather than the factory system we once had, since the scale of available energy will be much lower -- and we are not going to replay the twentieth century. Tens of thousands of the common products we enjoy today, from paints to pharmaceuticals, are made out of oil. They will become increasingly scarce or unavailable. The selling of things will have to be reorganized at the local scale. It will have to be based on moving merchandise shorter distances. It is almost certain to result in higher costs for the things we buy and far fewer choices.

The automobile will be a diminished presence in our lives, to say the least. With gasoline in short supply, not to mention tax revenue, our roads will surely suffer. The interstate highway system is more delicate than the public realizes. If the "level of service" (as traffic engineers call it) is not maintained to the highest degree, problems multiply and escalate quickly. The system does not tolerate partial failure. The interstates are either in excellent condition, or they quickly fall apart.

America today has a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of. Neither of the two major presidential candidates in 2004 mentioned railroads, but if we don`t refurbish our rail system, then there may be no long-range travel or transport of goods at all a few decades from now. The commercial aviation industry, already on its knees financially, is likely to vanish. The sheer cost of maintaining gigantic airports may not justify the operation of a much-reduced air-travel fleet. Railroads are far more energy efficient than cars, trucks or airplanes, and they can be run on anything from wood to electricity. The rail-bed infrastructure is also far more economical to maintain than our highway network.

The successful regions in the twenty-first century will be the ones surrounded by viable farming hinterlands that can reconstitute locally sustainable economies on an armature of civic cohesion. Small towns and smaller cities have better prospects than the big cities, which will probably have to contract substantially. The process will be painful and tumultuous. In many American cities, such as Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis, that process is already well advanced. Others have further to fall. New York and Chicago face extraordinary difficulties, being oversupplied with gigantic buildings out of scale with the reality of declining energy supplies. Their former agricultural hinterlands have long been paved over. They will be encysted in a surrounding fabric of necrotic suburbia that will only amplify and reinforce the cities` problems. Still, our cities occupy important sites. Some kind of urban entities will exist where they are in the future, but probably not the colossi of twentieth-century industrialism.

Some regions of the country will do better than others in the Long Emergency. The Southwest will suffer in proportion to the degree that it prospered during the cheap-oil blowout of the late twentieth century. I predict that Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada will become significantly depopulated, since the region will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. Imagine Phoenix without cheap air conditioning.

I`m not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.

The Mountain States and Great Plains will face an array of problems, from poor farming potential to water shortages to population loss. The Pacific Northwest, New England and the Upper Midwest have somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into lawlessness, anarchy or despotism and more likely to salvage the bits and pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level.

These are daunting and even dreadful prospects. The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope -- that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on. If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom. Years from now, when we hear singing at all, we will hear ourselves, and we will sing with our whole hearts.

Adapted from The Long Emergency, 2005, by James Howard Kunstler, and reprinted with permission of the publisher, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
(Posted Mar 24, 2005)


©Copyright 2005 Rolling Stone

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The 100 greatest artists of all time

[urlThe Immortals: The First Fifty ]http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/5939214[/url]
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[urlThe Immortals]http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7235505[/url]
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Mehr hier:
[url]http://www.rollingstone.com/home?pageid=rs.Story&pageregion=nav[/url]

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Stephane Peray, The Nation, Bangkok, Thailand

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Latest Fatality: Apr 09, 2005

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Karl Rove -- The Architect
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LOOK FOR THE MEDIA LABELS
An Examination of the Propaganda of Nomenclature
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20050412

NEW YORK--If you read newspapers, listen to the radio or watch television, you know that the media has assigned Muqtada al-Sadr a peculiar job title: radical cleric. "Gunmen fired on supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Friday," reports the Associated Press wire service. National Public Radio routinely refers to "radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr." "The protesters were largely supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr," says CNN. Even Agence France-Press refers to him the same way: "Followers of a radical Shiite cleric marched in Baghdad."

I wonder: Does he answer his phone with a chipper "Muqtada al-Sadr, radical cleric!"? Does it say "radical cleric" on his business card?

It`s a safe bet that neither al-Sadr nor his Iraqi supporters considers him particularly "radical." And, if you stop to think about it, there`s nothing inherently extreme about wanting foreign troops to leave your country. Radical is a highly subjective word that gets thrown around without much reflection. What`s more radical, invading another nation without a good excuse or trying to stop someone from doing so? But that`s the problem: the media has become so accustomed to absorbing and regurgitating official government propaganda that they never stop to think.

A Google News search of the terms "Muqtada al-Sadr" and "radical cleric" brought up 616 news and opinion stories, the latter derived from the former. Despite the prime minister`s obvious status as an American-appointed puppet, "Iyad Allawi" and "collaborationist" yielded zero results. The message is clear: al-Sadr, and by extension Iraqis who oppose the U.S. occupation, are marginal wackos. Those who support it are referred to by questionable legitimatizing honorifics--prime minister, in Allawi`s case--because the U.S. government called a press conference to announce him as such.

Repetition is key to successful advertising. The American media uses repeated arbitrary labeling in its supposedly impartial coverage in a deliberate campaign to alter public perception. Americans were meant to feel less sympathy for an kidnapped Italian woman shot by U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint in Iraq after the talking heads repeatedly referred to her as a "communist journalist." A Fox News reporter in the same story would never have been dubbed a "neofascist journalist." John McCain (R-AZ) might become president someday but "maverick senator John McCain" probably won`t. Ralph Nader`s name rarely appears in print without the unappealing word "gadfly" or a form of "crusading." Why not describe figures in the news using terms that aim for neutrality, like "Italian reporter" or "former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader"?

Labeling bias works to marginalize political outsiders while powerful elites receive their full honorifics. Howard Dean was antiwar firebrand Howard Dean but George W. Bush was never referred to as pro-war crusader George W. Bush. The press calls the founder of the Moral Majority "the Reverend Jerry Falwell," not "radical cleric Jerry Falwell." Even the word "cleric" implies foreignness to a xenophobic public; American religious leaders are the more familiar "ministers" rather than clerics. Instead of telling readers and viewers what to think with cheesy labels, why not let public figures` quotes and actions speak for themselves? Besides, well-known players like al-Sadr and Falwell don`t require an introduction.

Loaded labels are commonly used to influence the public`s feelings about groups of people as well as individuals. Under Ronald Reagan the Afghan mujahedeen, who received CIA funding and weapons that they used to fight Soviet occupation forces, were called "freedom fighters." Iraqis who take up arms against U.S. occupation troops, on the other hand, are called "insurgents," a word that implies rebellion for its own sake. This was the same term used by the New York Times and other mainstream media to refer to anti-U.S. fighters in Vietnam during the 1960s. Only later, when the Vietnam War became unpopular, did American newspapers begin calling the former "insurgents" members of an infinitely more patriotic-sounding "resistance."

Editors and producers who value balance ought to establish a consistent policy--either negative smears or positive accolades for both sides. Anti-occupation forces should always be called insurgents, guerillas, etc., while pro-occupation troops are dubbed collaborators. Either that, or call them freedom fighters and government loyalists, respectively.

Perhaps the most absurd labeling sin is the media`s inconsistent treatment of nations that decide to change their names. When the Khmer Rouge, who went on to kill an estimated four and half million people, renamed their country Kampuchea in 1975, the international media had so little trouble adapting to the new name for Cambodia that they continued using it well into the 1980s, even after Pol Pot had fled into the jungle. Notorious tyrant Mubutu Sese Seko easily convinced the press to start referring to the Congo as Zaire in 1971; his equally despotic successor got them to switch right back. When the SLORC military junta changed the former British colony of Burma to Myanmar in 1989, however, journalists followed the U.S. State Department`s refusal to accept the new name. Even "liberal" outlets like NPR still call it Burma or "Myanmar, formerly Burma." We need a consistent rule here, too. Either countries get to call themselves whatever they want or they should be stuck with their current names for eternity.

What hits home hits hardest. I too have been victimized by the idiotic practice of repeat labeling. "Controversial cartoonist Ted Rall" garners no fewer than 58 hits on Google. Care to guess the results for "patriotic cartoonist Ted Rall"?

COPYRIGHT 2005 TED RALL

RALL 4/12/05

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The Battle For Al-Qaim : The U.S. Version
The Battle For Al-Qaim : The Iraq Version
Erst die Version von der Post, dann von irakischen Quelle:

Insurgents Attack U.S. Base In Iraq

Large-Scale Assault Is Second Within 2 Weeks; Contractor Abducted
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service

04/12/05 "Washington Post" - - BAGHDAD, April 11 -- Insurgents claiming links to al Qaeda tried to overrun a U.S. Marine base near the Syrian border Monday using gunmen, suicide car bombs and a firetruck loaded with explosives, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The assault was the second time in less than two weeks that foreign insurgents have massed an organized, military-style offensive, U.S. officials said. Insurgents typically have staged smaller-scale bombings and attacks.

In another development, an American contractor believed to be working on an aid project was reported kidnapped in the Baghdad area, the U.S. Embassy said. Authorities released no other information, but soldiers stepped up searches of vehicles entering Baghdad`s heavily fortified Green Zone.

[On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, en route to a surprise visit to Iraq, told reporters that the country`s new interim leaders should avoid political purges and cronyism that could spark "lack of confidence or corruption in government," the Reuters news agency reported. He arrived in Baghdad before sunrise.]

The raid Monday was on Camp Gannon, a U.S. base at Husaybah, a few yards from the Syrian border near the Euphrates River. U.S. Cobra attack helicopters fired on the insurgents to repel simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers and armed fighters, officials said. A second car bomb exploded 15 minutes after the first assault, "at the same entrance, while the soldiers were busy rescuing the wounded," Capt. Saad Abdul Fattah of the Iraqi army said.

The U.S. military said three Marines were wounded and at least three bombers were killed. Witnesses and a hospital spokesman reported 10 to 15 dead, including foreign and Iraqi insurgents.

A statement posted on an Islamic Web site, purportedly from the group al Qaeda in Iraq, asserted responsibility for the attack.

Camp Gannon is an abandoned railway station that houses hundreds of Marines along a border long used by smugglers and other outlaws. Insurgents have operated openly in some towns in the area.

The suicide bombers, driving a firetruck, a pickup truck and one other vehicle, "attempted to breach the perimeter of Camp Gannon," the U.S. military said in a statement.

The bombs exploded prematurely, slightly damaging the camp defenses of concertina wire and barricades. A mosque and other surrounding buildings also sustained minor damage, the statement said.

Marines came under small-arms fire at the same time, the military said. A 25-year-old student who witnessed the attack said at least 40 Arab and Iraqi fighters took part in the assault.

Cobra attack helicopters fired on a vehicle carrying an unknown number of gunmen, destroying it, the military said.

The attack came nine days after the group, led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, asserted responsibility for an unsuccessful attempt to breach the walls of the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in a concerted attack involving mortars, rockets, car bombs and ground fighters. U.S. officials said the two attacks were well-planned and mark an operational shift for foreign groups that have been known for individual suicide bombings and kidnappings.

Zarqawi`s group appears to be trying for a spectacular coup against U.S. forces in a bid to regain flagging popular support and momentum, a U.S. official in Baghdad said.

An Iraqi insurgent commander with Zarqawi`s group who claimed he helped lead the Abu Ghraib assault said in a recent interview that the movement had been scouting Anbar province, the area of Monday`s assault, in search of a U.S. base to attack with suicide bombers and heavy weapons.

The commander, who goes by the name Abu Salim, did not cite other possible targets for insurgent strikes. Another commander, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Jalal, a member of the Sunni Muslim-led insurgent group Mohammed`s Army, said in a separate interview that Zarqawi`s group intended more assaults on U.S. installations in an effort to strike fear among the 138,000 U.S. troops here.

Daily attacks by insurgents have dropped from triple digits to double digits since national elections in late January, according to officials. Iraqi insurgent groups such as Mohammed`s Army draw heavily on former military men from the Sunni minority, which fell from dominance when President Saddam Hussein was ousted by U.S.-led forces in April 2003.

Leaders of the new government increasingly have been trying to draw Iraqi insurgents into the political process, splitting them from foreign fighters such as Zarqawi.

Meanwhile, in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Monday near a U.S. convoy in a street market crowded with customers, killing at least two Iraqis, news agencies reported.

And in a sweep of the Rashid neighborhood of Baghdad, hundreds of U.S. soldiers accompanied by Iraqi troops and police detained 65 suspected militants, the U.S. military said.

Also, a group claiming to have kidnapped a Pakistani Embassy official, Malik Mohammed Javed, over the weekend demanded money for his release, the Associated Press reported.

And an Iraqi Defense Ministry official said Monday that Iraqi security forces had arrested a person who claimed to have kidnapped two French journalists last year, the Associated Press reported. Iraqi soldiers detained Amer Hussein Sheikhan in the Mahmudiyah area of Baghdad on April 4, the official said on condition of anonymity.

The French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, were released in December after four months in captivity.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Die 2.Version
The Battle For Al-Qaim : The Iraq Version

Resistance fighters take over Al-Qaim

By Mufakirat Al-Islam

04/12/05 "ICH" - - Thursday and Friday April 7, 8 2005: Resistance fighters took over Al-Qaim and forced Iraqi army units and police to leave the city.

- Sunday April 10: Rocket attack on American military base near Al-Qaim. With an Egyptian accent, an American announcer challenged the fighters: "If you are brave men, then come out and fight us. If you want paradise, come out from your hiding and fight us face to face and man to man and don`t be like women by striking us and withdrawing like cowards". The challenge was not heeded.

- Monday April 11: Fierce fighting erupted since 7am. More than 70 `Iraqi policemen` deserted their positions. An influx of 150-200 Resistance fighters from the neighboring cities of Hit, Haditha and Fallujah join the battle, including 16 women Resistance fighters.

- Monday April 11: Americans destroy water treatment plants, cold-storage food warehouses, cut off electricity from Al-Qaim and besieged it preventing food from reaching the city. They also threatened to bomb its hospital if wounded Resistance fighters are admitted to it.

- Monday April 11: An attack, by a Tariq rocket, on the A22 American military base near Al-Qaim resulted in the death of 5 American soldiers, according to Lietenant Loai Khalid from the `Iraqi Army`. This led to an American counter attack by rockets and bombs on the city centre.

- Monday April 11: 100 military vehicles advanced on Al-Qaim from Ain-Assad American military base in Hit. American leaflets warned women and children from aiding or hiding Resistance fighters. "Our bullets do not discriminate between women and children in the war which will crush the insutgents. Therefore, stay in your homes and do not give them aid".

- Tuesday April 12: All involved Resistance groups (Jaish Ansar Al-Sinna, Mohammed`s First Army, Qaida Jihad in Raqfidain, Legions of the twenties Revolution, Legions of Al-Nasir Salah Al-Din, Abu Bakir Salafi Legions, Rahman Salafi Legions, and the Islamic Anger Legions) issued a joint statement giving the Americans 12 hours to withdraw from the perimeter of Al-Qaim to allow food and water to flow in to the civilians. Otherwise, a spike in attacks throughout Iraq will follow. In a seperate statement, an unknown group, calling itself Legions for Unifying Iraq has threatend to attack many targets, including churches, in response for prominently manifesting the Cross on American Army tanks.

-Tuesday April 12: Nofa Garkan, a 40-years old woman Resistance fighter from Ramadi is martyred. Nofa is the 137th Iraqi woman Resistance fighter to die in battle.

- Tuesday April 12: "Twenty Iraqis have been killed and 22 injured after US helicopters and heavy artillery bombed houses in al-Rummana village, north of al-Qaim city, Aljazeera reported. Seven children, six women and three old men were among the dead, witnesses said, while the injured included 13 children, seven women and two old men.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/09413EAB-D8E4-4C03-A5…

The witnesses added that the shelling started after US forces, who landed near al-Qaim on Monday night, came under repeated attack. Early reports indicated one house was completely destroyed and three others partially damaged in the bombing, according to Aljazeera.

On Monday, five car bombs hit US military targets in the western Iraqi city of al-Qaim near the border with Syria, wounding at least two US soldiers.

Iraqi journalist Ahmad Khalid told Aljazeera two of Monday`s attacks in al-Qaim were simultaneous. Three bombs hit a building used as US military headquarters while a fourth targeted a US troop convoy.

Clashes erupted later between fighters and US soldiers in the city, damaging a number of houses, the journalist said. However, no civilians were injured in those clashes as they had fled.

A spokesperson for the US Marines said on Monday three of their soldiers were wounded in the attack, which occurred outside Camp Gannon, a base in al-Qaim, about 300km west of Baghdad in Anbar province."

< http://www.islammemo.cc/ >

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Apr 14, 2005

PART 7: History lesson for
the `war on terror`
By Henry C K Liu
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GD14Aa01.html
[urlClick here for previous parts)]http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/world-order.html[/url]

The world order of sovereign states began with the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 which ended the Thirty Years` War (1618-48) during which the German Protestant princes struggled, with the self-serving help of foreign powers, against the unifying central authority of the Holy Roman Empire, which was under the Hapsburgs in alliance with the German Catholic princes. The Peace of Westphalia established a new world order based on the principle of sovereign states through the recognition of the independent sovereignty of the more than 300 German principalities in the 17th century. These princely states, recognized internationally as sovereign states by the peace, were not nation-states, as they were all of German nationality.

The Peace of Westphalia represented a foreign-policy triumph for France and its Swedish and Dutch allies, since it immobilized political unification of the German nation and delayed it for two centuries. There are clear indications that the "war on terrorism" today aims for a foreign-policy triumph for US imperium that will immobilize the political unification of Arab states as envisaged by Pan-Arabism.

The Peace of Westphalia advanced the modern Staatensystem or the system of sovereign states in international relations and law. From the 17th century to the unification of Germany by Otto von Bismarck in the aftermath of the failed democratic revolutions of 1848, French foreign policy was to keep Europe divided by the sovereign state principles of the Peace of Westphalia, preventing a unified Germany from emerging to threaten France and the other established big powers. To achieve this aim, France, although a Catholic nation, opposed the centralization aims of the Holy Roman Emperor.

German unification was not achieved until after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 when Bismarck (1815-98) united Germany by having a group of German princes gathering in the French Palace of Versailles proclaim the victorious William I of Prussia emperor of the German Empire. But Bismarck also divided Germany by leaving one-sixth of the Germans outside of the new German Empire, a condition that led a century later to another world war. Bismarck opposed liberalism and advocated the unification of Germany under the aegis of Prussia. Bismarck suppressed socialism with repressive laws that prohibited the circulation of socialist ideas, legalized police power to put down socialist movements and put the trial of socialists under the jurisdiction of police courts. Yet the persecution of social democrats only increased their strength in parliament. To weaken socialist influence and to implement his policy of economic nationalism, Bismarck introduced sweeping social reform. Between 1883 and 1887, despite strong opposition, laws were passed for health, accident and retirement social insurance, prohibiting female and child labor exploitation, and limiting working hours. These laws allowed Germany to circumvent the evils of the Industrial Revolution that beset Britain.

Universalist ideologies, wars of religion
The ideology behind the "war on terrorism" is universal democracy, and in that respect it is analogous to the Holy Roman Empire ideology of universal Catholicism. Yet with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, US foreign policy has challenged the four-century-old Westphalia principle of state sovereignty. This principle has kept the Middle East divided to prevent a unified Arab state from emerging to threaten the superpower status of the United States and the national interests of its neo-imperialist allies. The US invasion of Iraq, while satisfying the myopic mania of the neo-cons who temporarily captured US policy, unwittingly gives legitimacy to pan-Arabism to unleash a frenzy of regime changes unrestrained by the Westphalia principle of sovereign states. The rise of pan-Arabism brought about by the demise of the Westphalia principle of sovereign states in the Middle East will be resisted by the neo-imperialist powers and will inevitably lead to a new global war that will make the Thirty Years` Year look like child`s play.

The Thirty Years` War was fought on German soil, carried out by soldiers of fortune who aspired to create principalities of their own with their own political agendas. The "war on terror" today is fought on Islamic soil, carried out by mercenary units and opportunistic local factions hoping to carve out religious or ethnic fiefdoms. The Thirty Years` War dragged on because the warring parties feared each other`s success and regularly changed alliances and war aims to keep the conflict going. Peace was not an objective because the purpose of war was to prevent any one party from winning, and as soon as peace was at hand, the potential winner would be neutralized by a new balance of power. Peace is also not an objective in today`s "war on terrorism" because the purpose of the war was to prevent indigenous political cultures from overwhelming the injudicious push for universal democracy and collateral US hegemony, which is enhanced by continuing local conflicts with the US as a half-hearted peacemaker and arbitrageur with a not-so-hidden self-serving agenda.

The "war on terrorism" today shares many parallel attributes with the Thirty Years` War of four centuries ago. Both are global religious conflicts conducted with geopolitical maneuverings. Both serve as unwitting cradles for new world orders. While the Thirty Years` War was fought to enforce universal Catholicism, today`s "war on terror" is being fought to spread universal democracy based on Judeo-Christian values. Like the Thirty Years` War, the "war on terror" today is also complex and multidimensional. US President George W Bush has repeatedly served notice that it will be a protracted and difficult war. Like the Thirty Years` War, the "war on terrorism" today also has no clear single objective, not even the elimination of terrorism. So far, the war has used the threat of terrorism as a pretext to invade sovereign states not to the superpower`s liking. The administration of president George H W Bush launched the first Gulf War to protect the tangible principle of sovereign states by driving Iraq from its reincorporation of Kuwait, thus putting the principle of state sovereignty above the intangible principle pan-Arab nationalism. Yet in the second Gulf War to invade and occupy Iraq, the abstract principle of universal democracy was used to overrule the tangible principle of state sovereignty.

Terrorism is as old as civilization itself and many political movements have been forced to resort to it in varying degrees, especially in their early stages of struggle. Powerful, established political powers regularly resort to state terrorism, known euphemistically as war conducted by overwhelming force applied with shock and awe - in other words, terror. Thus the "war on terror" is in fact fought with state terror. Even the most heinous war is always rationalized with high moral justification.

In its most current manifestation, the "war on terrorism" today is a religious war between a faith-based Christian nation and Islamic extremists, both groups controlled by fundamentalists, not unlike the struggle between the Roman Catholic Church and emerging Protestant movements during the Thirty Years` War. It is an unevenly matched conflict between a powerful state military machine and clandestine cells engaged in asymmetrical warfare reminiscent of the early phases of the Thirty Years` War. It is an unbalanced game between an organized system with visible and open targets everywhere and a vast network of disjointed cells that are impossible to find until after they surface with an attack. The same was true with the Holy Roman Empire in its effort to rein in the Protestant German princes and their religious zealot advisers during the Thirty Years` War.

The "war on terrorism" today is a violent neo-imperialist strategy that unwittingly enhances the unifying aim of pan-Arabism, by threatening the sovereignty of the numerous small Arabic failed states created by the imperialist powers of the last century to frustrate pan-Arab nationalism. Just as the prevention of the unification of Germany played a key role in the strategy of foreign powers during the Thirty Years` War, the eventual emergence and prevention of pan-Arabism will play a key role in the "war on terrorism" today. It is too early to discern how the geopolitical implication of the development will shape up.

The "war on terrorism" is a unilateral war waged primarily by the sole superpower that is putting strains on residual Cold War alliances, forcing Europe to seek independence from post-Cold War US unilateralism. It pushes Cold War US nemeses such as Russia, China and India to converge if not unite in support of a multipolar world order. The Holy Roman Emperor was in a similar situation in its relations with the major powers of Europe at the time of the Thirty Years` War.

Bourbons, Bonaparte and Bush
The Peace of Westphalia that began in 1648 after 30 years of destruction and slaughter marked the triumph of the doctrine of the balance of power. The doctrine was directed against Hapsburg supremacy, which was successfully blocked by a France on its path toward superpower status. Later, when King Louis XIV of France advanced the doctrine of "universal monarchy", or still later when Napoleon Bonaparte expanded the same idea to a multinational, multi-ethnic Empire of the French (not a French empire) based on universal citizenship in the imperial Roman sense, the balance-of-power doctrine was directed specifically against France. Today, there is clear evidence of the balance-of-power doctrine being directed against a hegemonic United States that attempts to construct, by violent regime changes in distant sovereign states, a world order of compulsive neo-liberalism. Unlike the Roman Empire or the Empire of the French, US neo-imperialism has yet to adopt an inclusive citizenship policy. US-led neo-liberal globalization promotes only the cross-border free movement of goods and capital, but not of people.

One and half centuries after the Peace of Westphalia, Napoleon co-opted the democratic ideals of the French Revolution and applied them to the concept of a universal empire ruled by a Bonaparte dynasty consisting of members of his family. The people of Spain proved to be less docile than their aristocratic leaders to the Pax Napoleon. Even before Joseph, Napoleon`s brother, was proclaimed king of Spain with alacrity by a Spanish Council of Regency, spontaneous anti-French insurrection had broken out in every province of Spain, without central leadership, systemic organization or preparation. Spain was by that time a mere shadow of its former greatness and, in every sense of the term, a failed state. The popular insurrection was not explainable by any aversion to a foreigner on the Spanish throne. The Spanish Bourbons were a foreign dynasty. Joseph Bonaparte came to Spain with an impressive record of liberal reforms as king of Naples and he had the support of a substantial segment of the Spanish elite, nobles, prelates, financiers, officials and intellectuals who looked to France, even Napoleonic France, as a bearer of the liberal principles of the French Revolution. Had Joseph been allowed to rule in peace, such aspirations might not have been wrong.

The Spanish Church had little to fear from Catholic France, but the monastic orders that controlled the conscience of the masses had vested interest in keeping fanaticism alive, forcing Napoleon to limit the number of priests while appeasing the church elites. The large landowners in Spain could afford to toy with liberal reform, for they also had commercial interests and their income from rent was not threatened by reform. The lesser nobles, on the other hand, were ruined by the abolition of entails and suppression of feudal dues. To them, the Napoleonic Code, a progressive instrument of the rule of law, was a direct threat. They wanted no part of Napoleon`s liberation. President Bush`s call to liberate the world from tyranny will meet with resistance not from tyrants but from a natural aversion to imported liberty. Like Napoleon`s, Bush`s bogus liberty is a smokescreen for installing puppet proxies all over the world to support a new American empire that thrives on structural disparity of income and wealth. Like Napoleon`s efforts in Spain, Bush`s drive for global democracy will be foiled by popular resistance unless and until neo-liberalism is purged from the institution of democracy.

Although guerrilla tactics have been used since time immemorial, the term "guerrilla" gained currency only during the Napoleonic wars, particularly in Spain, where it had been highly effective in the six years between 1808 and 1814. France had 320,000 troops in Spain at the height of its presence in 1810 and a low of 200,000 troops in 1813. During the six-year campaign, French forces lost 240,000 men: 45,000 were killed in action against conventional forces, 50,000 died of illness and accident, and 145,000 were killed in action against guerrilla forces. French losses in Iberia approached 1% of the entire French population. Indeed, Napoleon lost more French troops in Spain than in Russia. These were large numbers that France could not afford, numbers that had they not been lost might have turned the strategic tide at Leipzig or at Waterloo to prevent French defeat. A similar fate is falling on US forces in Iraq and whatever other regime-change plans the neo-cons in the US government are planning.

Military analysts have calculated membership in Spanish guerrilla bands to have been about 50,000. Even if these are added to the Duke of Wellington`s regular force in Spain of 40,000 and 25,000 attached Portuguese forces, the French still enjoyed a favorable force ratio of almost 3:1. In spite of their numerical force advantage, however, the French were defeated badly. Some historians see the fall of Napoleon as having begun in Spain, where 320,000 French troops were tied down and demoralized by guerilla warfare. But the real damage suffered by Napoleon in his disaster in Spain was the challenge to his image of invincibility.

Similarly, Iraq will tie down more than 150,000 US troops and Afghanistan 50,000 for the foreseeable future. It the US were foolhardy enough to invade Iran, a country four times the size of Iraq and much less secular, it had better be prepared to send a million troops to deliver its gift of exported liberty. But the real damage is to US prestige of invincibility, following a pattern that began in Korea, then Vietnam, and now Iraq.

Napoleon told the Spaniards: "I have abolished those privileges which the grandees usurped, during the times of civil war, when kings but too frequently are necessitated to surrender their rights, to purchase their tranquility, and that of their people. I have abolished the feudal rights, and henceforth everyone may set up inns, ovens, mills, employ himself in fishing and rabbit hunting, and give free scope to his industry, provided he respects the laws and regulations of the police. The selfishness, wealth, and prosperity of a small number of individuals, were more injurious to your agriculture than the heat of the dog-days. As there is but one God, so should there be in a state but one judicial power. All peculiar jurisdictions were usurpations, and at variance with the rights of the nation; I have abolished them. I have also made known to everyone what he may have to fear, and what he may have to hope."

Yet the Spanish people, long oppressed under the foreign Spanish Bourbons, decisively turned down Napoleon`s offer of liberation. It should be an object lesson to the United States` offer of liberty to Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere around the globe. President Bush`s second Inaugural Address defined the unity of US national interest with the spread of liberty around the world as a "calling of our time". While no one can argue against liberty, one can question whether liberty can be spread by force, or imposed by occupation and economic domination. It is a well-known fact that liberty can only be taken by the oppressed themselves, never delivered by a liberator from outside.

Incongruent issues, overlapping battlefields
The Thirty Years` War was a protracted, complex, multidimensional conflict in a splintered Germany, with much similarity to today`s Middle East. It was a German civil war fought over Protestant-Catholic religious issues. It was also a violent civil conflict over constitutional issues regarding the central authority of the Holy Roman Emperor and centrifugal forces of state sovereignty. The two separate issues were not congruent, yielding overlapping battlefields and shifting alliances and adversaries. The religious wars among Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists were fought by secular monarchs who saw religious schisms as political opportunities. Ferdinand II and his primary ally Maximilian I represented the re-Catholicizing zeal of the Jesuit Counter-reformation, while Frederick V of the Palatinate represented the equally militant forces of Calvinism. Unspoken is the socio-economic struggle behind the religious dispute, with the Counter-reformation trying to preserve agricultural feudalism while Calvinism agitated for the emergence of capitalism.

The "war on terrorism" today will also be a protracted, complex, multidimensional conflict in a splintered Islamic Middle East and Central Asia. It will be a struggle between Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism, and a struggle between unipolar US imperium and a multipolar world order of sovereign states. It will also be a struggle between neo-liberal market fundamentalism and humanist socialism. The fall of Soviet socialist imperialism should not be mistaken as the death of socialism or the end of history. The triumph of anti-imperialist socialist and populist forces through democratic processes in Central and South America will spread to other regions. The day will come when the US will regret its disingenuous push for democracy all over the world. True democracy will emerge as an effective vaccine against neo-liberal market fundamentalism.

One of Germany`s main problems in the 16th century was that the northern states were still divided over religion, though, ironically, it was division among the Protestant states. After the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555), Protestant states had split along two different lines. There were those states that wanted a flexible approach to Protestantism. These states, known as the Phillipists, saw value in some of the ideas of John Calvin and Huldreich Zwingli and saw no harm in adopting a combination of Protestant beliefs. Opposed to these states were the hardline Lutheran states. In 1577, these states produced the "Formula of Accord", which clearly stated their position, and the Phillipist states responded to this by switching openly to Calvinism. Therefore, there was a visible split among the Protestant world in Germany and there was a failure to create a common front against the Roman Catholic Church. Similar splits in Islam, perhaps even more complex, also cause a failure to create a common front in modern times against the Judeo-Christian evangelicals. In modern politics, the split in the socialism camp between communists and social democrats has similarity to the split among the Protestants.

This Protestant split allowed the Roman Catholic Church some gains in Germany. The socialist split has also allowed market capitalism some gains in many parts of the world in recent decades. In the 1580s, the archbishop of Cologne wanted to secularize his land. This would have been very lucrative for him but it also broke the terms of the Imperial Reservation in the 1555 Augsburg Settlement, which forbade such a move. He was removed from his position by the Holy Roman Emperor, who sent Spanish troops to enforce his authority. This was a perfectly legal move by the emperor. A more orthodox Catholic replacement was installed.

But Spanish troops so near to the western French border were not well received in Paris any more than Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuban were welcomed by Washington. The Protestant Evangelical Union was founded in response to this foreign intrusion. It was a defensive alliance of nine princes and 17 Imperial Cities. It was led by the Elector Palatine and its general was Christian of Anhalt. This union was predominantly Calvinist, and many Lutheran leaders stayed away from it as they felt that its existence could lead to anarchy.

In response to this union, Maximilian of Bavaria founded the Catholic League in 1609. Ironically, he did not ask the Catholic Austrian Hapsburgs to join it - a symbol of just how far the status of the Hapsburgs had fallen, to a level similar to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s disparaging reference to uncooperative Western European allies and the "old Europe". Phillip III of Spain sent financial aid to maintain some Hapsburg influence but his involvement in a central European issue was bound to provoke the French. The "war on terrorism" today also brings forth an opposing coalition against US hegemony and unilateralism, such as a new European relationship with China and, more significantly, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) process.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization
Unilateralism in US foreign policy, highlighted by US rejection of the Kyoto Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the hardline approach toward North Korea and China, and until September 11, 2001, support for anti-socialist terrorism in the name of human rights and democracy, has solicited efforts by targeted countries to form their own sets of cooperative multilateral mechanisms that exclude the US. The SCO process, the most significant of such mechanisms, has quietly but steadily built up its economic, military and diplomatic relations, seeking to present itself as more viable counterweight to emerging US hegemony in Central Asia.

The SCO consists of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and, most recently, Uzbekistan. Until that sixth member joined, the group was known as the Shanghai Five. The group emerged from a series of talks on border demarcation and demilitarization which the four former Soviet republics held with China. Since 1996, when the group held its first presidential summit meeting in Shanghai, the five-country group has held annual summits. The statement from the July 2000 Dushanbe summit notes the establishment of a "Council of National Coordinators" that would further foster regularized cooperation among the member states. In addition, the joint statement expressed the group`s view of the international security situation both within and beyond their borders. The Dushanbe statement pledge the member states to crack down jointly on secession movements, terrorism, and religious extremism within their borders and to oppose intervention in another country`s internal affairs on the pretexts of humanitarianism and protecting human rights; and support the efforts of one another in safeguarding the member states` national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and social stability. China has called for strengthening mutual support in safeguarding the national unity and sovereignty of the SCO member nations and jointly resisting all kinds of threat to the security of the region, particularly from outside the region.

With these aims in mind, the SCO defense ministers meet annually along with their foreign ministers, and their militaries conduct joint exercises and training, exchange information about peacekeeping operations, and hold conferences and other exchanges on security issues. The Dushanbe statement also noted the group`s opposition to the use of force or threat of force in international relations without United Nations Security Council approval, a direct reference to recent US undertakings in Iraq. The group also opposes any attempt by countries or groups of countries to monopolize global and regional affairs out of selfish interests. In similar terms, the Dushanbe statement also expressed its opposition to US missile-defense strategy by stating its strong support for the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972 and its opposition to "bloc-based" (ie, US alliance-based) deployment of theater missile defense systems in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in Taiwan and Japan.

The SCO maintains that it is not an alliance, and is not aimed at any third parties. Indeed, the group has a number of internal differences that will likely prevent it from becoming like a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The two biggest countries in the group, China and Russia, have enjoyed much-improved relations over the past decade, but still harbor mutual long-term strategic distrusts. In addition, individual members of the group differ over other important issues, such as relations with various neighbors such as India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and over how best to exploit the rich reserves of energy and other natural resources in Central Asia for common use. Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to welcome additional members to the group (such as Uzbekistan; Pakistan, Iran and India have expressed an interest), which, if admitted, would certainly complicate the achievement of consensus within the group. China and India are engaged with serious efforts to improve relations.

The SCO process has resulted in impressive achievements, such as settling border disputes, introducing confidence-building measures, and moving in cooperative ways to combat illicit activities in their region such as terrorism and drug smuggling. It has also issued increasingly pointed statements in opposition to US hegemony. The SCO is indicative of efforts around the world seeking security-related mechanisms independent of US participation.

End of the Thirty Years` War
The Thirty Years` War was also an international war between France and Spain and a dynastic war between the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs. Foreign powers opposed to the Hapsburgs could not look with equanimity on developments in Germany. The French, English and Dutch formed a league to oppose the Hapsburgs. They found their champion in Christian IV of Denmark, who also had extensive possessions in northern Germany. Christian IV invaded Germany in 1626, but was crushingly defeated in 1627 by the army of the Catholic League and a new Imperial force under the enigmatic Bohemian condottiere Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein. Emboldened by victory, Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Bohemia, issued the Edict of Restitution, requiring the return of all lands expropriated from the Roman Church since the 1550s. Fearing Wallenstein`s rising power, the territorial rulers forced the emperor to remove him from power and reduce the size of the Imperial army. Concerned by growing Hapsburg power along the Baltic, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the Lion of the North, invaded northern Germany in 1630. Cardinal Richelieu of Catholic France wanted an alliance with the Protestant Gustavus to form a counterweight to Hapsburg power in Europe. If Gustavus could also enlist the help of Maximilian of Bavaria and the Catholic League, then so much the better. Both Gustavus and Richelieu were pragmatists. Though they held opposite views on religion, they both realized that they needed each other if they were to form a realistic opposition to Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Bohemia. Gustavus was not welcomed by his fellow Lutherans in Germany. His sole significant ally was the French, who subsidized his army.

After the Swedish-allied city of Magdeburg was destroyed by an Imperial army, the Protestants grew concerned and began to arm. When the Imperial forces moved against Saxony, the elector of Saxony threw in his lot with the Swedes. The Swedish army met the Imperials at Breitenfeld near Leipzig and annihilated them. The Swedes promptly took over most of southwestern Germany. Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Bohemia, had no choice but to recall Wallenstein. The Swedes and Wallenstein`s new army met near Leipzig at Luetzen on November 16, 1632. The battle was a draw, but Gustavus was killed. Fearing Wallenstein`s rising power, and concerned by his intrigues with hostile powers, the emperor had him killed. With some imagination, one can see Saddam Hussein as a modern-day Wallenstein who was first used by the US against an Islamist Iran and then destroyed to punish his intrigues with hostile powers.

The Imperial and Spanish armies joined and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Swedes at Noerdlingen. All the Swedish gains in southern Germany were lost. After Noerdlingen, most of the German territorial rulers made their peace with the emperor. Under the resultant Peace of Prague, most of the church lands in Protestant hands in 1627 were allowed to remain so.

After the invasion of Iraq, most of the Arab states also made their peace with the US, most notably Libya`s Muammar Gaddafi. The Financial Times reported on March 26, 2003, that Libya brought to an end decades of international isolation as a pariah state with a promise to join forces with the United States and the United Kingdom to fight the "global war against terrorism". It promised to provide intelligence to help root out al-Qaeda and secured a gas-exploration deal with Shell that could be worth billions of dollars. Tony Blair, UK prime minister, held two hours of talks with Gaddafi in a bedroom tent a few kilometers outside of Tripoli, the first time a British leader had set foot in the country since 1943. He emerged to declare the Libyan leader an important ally of the neo-imperialists and urged other Arab countries to follow Tripoli`s example.

In May 1635, 17 years after the beginning of the Thirty Years` War, France declared war on Spain and increased the scope of its interventions in the Empire, and gradually weakened the Imperial forces. Earlier, in October 1634, the Holy Roman Emperor, the king of Spain and the Roman Catholic princes of Germany had agreed to a joint attack on France. Louis XIII was simply preempting the inevitable: attack before France itself was attacked.

The military prospects of France were not good. Its troops were undisciplined and lacked experience in the newer forms of fighting. France, therefore, needed alliances. In July 1635, France signed a treaty with Savoy, Parma and Mantua for a joint campaign in northern Italy. The French Huguenot general, the Duc de Rohan, was sent to help the Swiss Protestants in a campaign to overthrow the Valtellina. In October 1635, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and his army were taken into French service.

To sustain the above alliances, Richelieu needed improved finances by taking loans, selling government offices to the highest bidder (though not necessarily the most talented) and to place government tax inspectors (intendants) on permanent location in the provinces to ensure tax collection. French military involvement in the Thirty Years` War got off to a poor start. The Spanish made timely and generous concessions to the Swiss Protestants in the Valtellina and therefore stability was brought back to the area. Rohan was abandoned by the Swiss rebels and had to withdraw to France.

In 1636 came the expected attack on France by the major Catholic powers of Europe. The high taxes in France had made Richelieu a very unpopular man and the invading Catholic forces hoped to capitalize on this and be seen as a liberating force with religious righteousness. France had to endure a three-pronged attack. The Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand attacked through Picardy. An Imperial army led by Graf von Gallas attacked through the Vosges and Phillip IV of Spain led an attack from the south.

The Cardinal-Infante was especially successful and many Parisians feared that their city would be occupied. It was commonly thought that Richelieu would be dismissed as a concession to the Cardinal-Infante but Louis XIII stood by him and asked Parisians to be patriotic and supply money to the government in the defense of Paris. Bernhard of Weimar pushed back Gallas and the attack by Phillip IV failed to materialize. The Cardinal failed to maintain his push and he too was pushed back from Paris.

Though the attack on France failed, the prestige of France as a nation had suffered. It had proclaimed itself as the savior against the domination of Europe by the Holy Roman Emperor, but a nation that had been invaded could hardly claim the status of protector of European liberties.

The German electors had no faith in France. In the autumn of 1636 they were summoned to Regensburg by Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Bohemia. Here, they duly elected his son, Ferdinand, king of the Romans. In February 1637, the elder Ferdinand died and his son succeeded him as Ferdinand III. Like any new emperor or king, Ferdinand had to prove himself, but his start was less than auspicious. France took control of Alsace and much of the Rhineland while the Swedes took over or neutralized northern Germany and carried the war into Bohemia. Over the final four years of the war, the parties were actively negotiating at Osnabrueck and Muenster in Westphalia. On October 24, 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, ending the Thirty Years` War.

Reorganization and compromise
No true Diet or Reichstag had been assembled since 1613. The emperors, Ferdinand II and III both, had ruled by fiat and the consent of the electors. While they had hoped to resolve matters themselves, the electors, at the Kurfeurstentag opened in Nuremberg on February 3, 1640, agreed that a Diet should be called. It was to debate a broader amnesty than that granted by the Peace of Prague in the hopes of at last bringing peace to the Empire. The Diet actually opened at Regensburg on September 13, 1640. At first all went according to the Imperial plan. A safe-conduct was issued to emissaries from Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick-Lueneberg and even to the Winter King`s relict, Elizabeth Stuart. The Diet agreed to a general amnesty. And to put some force behind these pacific plans, the current size of, and subsidies to, the Imperial army were agreed.

In 1640 a short pamphlet, Dissertatio de ratione Status in Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico, was published under the pseudonym Hippolithus a Lapide, but generally attributed to the Swedish court historiographer Bogislav von Chemnitz. This widely read work demonstrated the limits of the authority of the emperors under the Imperial constitution and the manner in which the Hapsburgs had exceeded their legitimate authority in pursuit of power.

In December 1640, Georg-Wilhelm, elector of Brandenburg, died and was succeeded by his son, Frederich-Wilhelm, as the Great Elector who in January 1641 removed his late father`s adviser, the pro-Imperial Schwartzenberg. During the summer of 1641, the Swedes and French had shown that, regardless of the emperor`s wishes, they were not going to disappear from the Empire, nor were they going to permit any solution to be reached of which they were not a part.

On June 30, 1641, they entered into the Treaty of Hamburg, which renewed their 1638 treaty of alliance, which was set to expire. Unlike prior treaties, which had run for a specified term, this was to last until the war was over. In July 1641, Frederich-Wilhelm concluded a two-year truce with Sweden. He then announced to the shocked Diet that he did not consider the Imperial proposals, grounded on an extension of the Peace of Prague and seeking a purely domestic solution to the wars of the Empire, worthy of his support. The lesser Protestant princes immediately began to distance themselves from the emperor and rally to the Brandenburger.

The Swedes and French issued an invitation to the emperor, Spain and the Estates of the Empire to peace conferences to be held in Westphalia. On December 4, 1642, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, died. His health had long been weak and he had persisted in his labors only by dint of his preternatural will. He was succeeded as Louis XIII`s chief minister by the Sicilian Giulio Mazarini, more commonly known as Cardinal Mazarin.

Even though the convening of peace conferences, both domestic and foreign, had been set, peace did not come swiftly to the Empire. After the close of the Reichstag of Regensburg and the signing of the Treaty of Hamburg, a structure for negotiation was in place. In theory, the purely domestic quarrels of the Empire were to be settled at Frankfurt in a meeting of the Princes of the Empire, the Deputationstag. The international dimension of the war was to be settled by negotiations at Muenster and Osnabrueck.

According to the Preliminary Treaty of Hamburg, the Congress of Westphalia was to open on March 25, 1642. However, this was rendered impossible by delays in ratification of the treaty: the emperor delayed his approval until July 26, 1642. As a result, the official opening date was revised to July 11, 1643. Even then, only the Imperial representatives were there on time. As they had no one with whom to negotiate, no progress was made.

On May 14, 1643, Louis XIII died. His widow queen, Anne of Austria, a Hapsburg and sister to Philip IV, was appointed regent to the infant Louis XIV. Hopes of a softening of policy toward the Hapsburgs were misplaced. Anne was far more zealous in the protection of her son`s interests than her brother`s. She confided the running of France to Mazarin, who continued Richelieu`s anti-Hapsburg policies unabated. While the diplomatic front remained static, the war did not.

The Peace of Westphalia represented a compromise rather than an unconditional surrender. Each of the combatants had experienced abrupt reversals of fortune during the course of the war: thus neither was willing to proceed on the assumption that the emperor`s dire military straits would continue. Further, the interests of the Swedes and the French were sufficiently divergent that the emperor was able to play one off against the other. For example, the Swedish desire for a guarantee of Protestant rights in the Hapsburg domains was scotched by the French at Imperial insistence. The peace thus concluded had something for everyone and everything for no one, the classic outcome of a balance of power. The primary component of the peace from the international perspective was a complex series of land transfers within the Empire. This was particularly true of the Swedish acquisition of eastern Pomerania, which led to a complex chain reaction of land transfers, mostly representing re-secularization of bishoprics returned to the Catholic Church under the Edict of Restitution.

After these transfers, all dreams of the Roman Church of its re-establishment in northern Germany were ended. The constitution of the Empire was so adjusted as to render its already loose structure utterly incoherent, with a particular laxity imposed in matters of religion. The Princes of the Empire were granted an expanded version of their German liberties, the Landeshoheit. They could make military alliances among themselves and with foreigners, could wage war and make peace, only provided the alliances and wars were not directed against the emperor. As the future was to display, this was an empty proviso. To protect against the emperor and Catholic electors using the machinery of the Imperial state to advance the old religion, Protestants were to be admitted as judges in the Imperial courts in numbers equal to the Catholics, and in any matter before the Diet that had religious implications, unanimity of decision was required. The followers of John Calvin were at last to be considered followers of the Augsburg Confession, and thus receive the same rights under the Imperial constitution as the Catholics and Lutherans.

Within the Empire, a broad amnesty was granted to all.

The Edict of Restitution was finally laid in its grave. The Peace set the normaljahre to January 1, 1624, with all lands in Protestant hands at that date to remain so for at least 40 years. Since this date was before the Imperial advances in northern Germany attendant upon the Danish war, the north German Protestant lands were to remain secularized.

The pope protested the loss of lands, but purely pro forma, in order to preserve the Church`s rights should the war rekindle. Even these mild protests were met with a provision in the final treaty in which the parties agreed to ignore any formal protest the Church might lodge. The papacy itself was unwilling to endanger the fragile peace through excessive vigor in preservation of its rights: the bull formally protesting the settlement, Zelo Domus Domine, was not issued until August 20, 1650, although it was backdated to November 26, 1648.

The Catholics received confirmation that there would be no more creeping secularizations accomplished by changes in the religion of holders of bishoprics. The Protestants were to recognize the reservatio ecclesiasticorum, and any prelate converting to the reformed faith would henceforward lose his benefices. Various of the parties received monetary settlements, either to compensate them for losses of lands, or to assist in payment of the long-suffering soldiery.

The results of the war and the two peace treaties were highly significant. France replaced Spain as the greatest power in Europe. With Sweden, France had blocked the Hapsburg efforts to strengthen their authority in the Empire. At Westphalia, the right of the individual states within the Empire to make war and conclude alliances was recognized. In theory as well as in fact, the most important of these states became virtually autonomous, and German unity was postponed for more than two centuries. The Empire was further dismembered by the recognition of the independence of Switzerland and the seven northern provinces of the Netherlands. Two new powers emerged in northern Germany. Sweden received part of Pomerania and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden; Brandenburg-Prussia added the rest of Pomerania and several secularized bishoprics to its possessions. In southern Germany, the Bavarian rulers were permitted to keep the upper Palatinate and the title of elector, but the Lower Palatinate was restored to Frederick`s son and an eighth electorate was created for him. France received most of Alsace by the Treaty of Westphalia, and by the Treaty of Pyrenees parts of Flanders and Artois in the Spanish Netherlands and lands in the Pyrenees.

The religious settlement at Westphalia confirmed the predominance of Catholicism in southern Germany and of Protestantism in northern Germany. The principle accepted by the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 that Catholic and Lutheran princes could determine the religion practiced in their territory was maintained, and this privilege was extended to include the Calvinists as well.

The Austrian Hapsburgs had failed in their efforts to increase their authority in the Empire and to eradicate Protestantism, but they emerged from the war stronger than before. In Bohemia, they had stamped out Protestantism, broken the power of the old nobility, and declared the crown hereditary in the male line of their family. With Bohemia now firmly in their grasp and with their large group of adjoining territories, they were ready to expand to the east in the Balkans, to the south in Italy, or to interfere once more in the Empire.

Losers
The above detailed summary of the complexity of the Thirty Years` War presents a glimpse of how unpredictably the "war on terrorism" will affect the shape of world order over its anticipated protracted course of decades. Rising powers such as China, India and Brazil, as well as a revitalized Russia, will eventually become major players, as will a European Union and Japan increasingly independent of US domination. There is also the unstoppable spread of socialist movements in Central and Latin America as a major factor in the evolution of new balance-of-power configurations. If the US persists with its faith-based foreign policy for an extended period, it may fall into the danger of repeating the fate of Catholic Spain.

The real losers in the Thirty Years` War were the German people. More than 300,000 had been killed in battle. Millions of civilians had died of malnutrition and disease, and wandering, undisciplined troops had robbed, burned and looted almost at will. The population of the Empire dropped from about 21 million to 13.5 million between 1618 and 1648. Today, the real losers so far in the "war on terrorism" are the Iraqi people and their Islamic brothers. The Thirty Years` War remains one of the most terrible in history. The long-range result of the war, which was to endure for about two centuries, was the enshrinement of a Germany divided among many territories, all of which, despite their continuing membership in the Holy Roman Empire up to its formal dissolution in 1806, had de facto sovereignty. After the fall of imperialism, the Westphalia principle of sovereign states has been deviously used by Western neo-imperialists to rule the region through a proxy of puppet sovereign states to oppose pan-Arabism. As unnatural fragmentation of the German nation has been identified by analysts as a long-term underlying cause of later German militarism, the unnatural fragmentation of the Arabic nation is also an underlying cause of Islamic terrorism.

Next: Militarism and failed states

Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.

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Tomgram:
George`s Amazing Alphabet Book
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2315

[Editor`s note: It`s unprecedented for any official -- high or low -- to leak information to Tomdispatch, but some weeks ago a Senior Official in one of our intelligence agencies -- and since we have so many, that`s a little like saying none-of-your-business -- slipped me the text of a book allegedly written by our President and due to be published early this Fall. (Unfortunately, the illustrations by Paul Wolfowitz, mentioned on the title page, did not accompany the manuscript, and a page and a half of the text was missing.)

If my informant`s account is accurate, George`s Amazing Alphabet Book of the Contemporary World, or Al-Qaedas All Around was produced before the November election when the White House grew tired of kiss-and-tell memoirs from former administration officials and decided to strike back. The text was then held up by hostile CIA vetters; and further delayed when, in a post-election euphoria, the President decided to "update" the book before handing it over to new CIA Director Porter Goss for a final vetting (which reportedly took less than ten minutes).

I`ve delayed releasing the text at Tomdispatch because I was suspicious of its provenance and authenticity, and because I`ve so often criticized the use of anonymous sources in mainstream journalism. Yet everything about the text rang true to me and, in the end, it seemed unreasonable to hold back a story of this magnitude.

To be safe, I had the Alphabet Book informally vetted by several well-known children`s book writers (all of whom asked that their names not be used) as well as two former Yale classmates of the President. They concluded, beyond almost a shadow of a doubt, that it was the genuine article. Two of the writers suggested that, given its chatty tone, the President might actually have spoken the text into a tape recorder.

My Senior Intelligence Source does not believe that Paul Wolfowitz, well known as an amateur artist, actually drew the illustrations (which he hasn`t seen). His sources, including an Iraqi informant known inside the Intelligence Community as Screwball, suggested that they might have been outlined on cocktail napkins by Donald Rumsfeld during an especially tedious meeting about torture in early 2004 in the office of then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and subsequently colored in by Vice President Dick Cheney from a secret bunker somewhere in the greater Washington area. Rupert Murdoch`s HarperCollins is reportedly set to publish the book in September with a million copy first printing aimed, according to a publicist for the firm (who also insisted on anonymity), at the burgeoning evangelical children`s market.

I was convinced of the book`s authenticity, in part, by the ever-expanding White House website aimed at children. It even includes a sub-site focused on the President`s dog (Barney), cat (India), pet Longhorn (Ofelia), and the Vice President`s two dogs (Jackson and Dave), which contains "answers" -- also, according to my source, written by the President -- to children`s questions. (Q: Dani from Dallas, Texas writes: Barney -- My scottie, Cooper has a question for you. How does sandpaper feel? A: Barney, First Dog: Ruff!!!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HEE HOOO HAAA.") Clearly, Karl Rove has launched a new campaign to reach around the "filter" of the media and directly mobilize a new generation of Americans for the Republican Party. The President`s ABC book will evidently be the centerpiece of that campaign.

Of course, I have no way of confirming any of this, my resources being slim, and so must leave what follows to your judgment. But whatever the reason it was slipped my way, I`m pleased to be the first to release the President`s manuscript to the world, word for word as it arrived at my doorstep. Make of it what you will.
Tom Engelhardt

George`s Amazing Alphabet Book of the Contemporary World, or Al-Qaedas All Around (completely cross-referenced)
By George W Bush
Illustrated by Paul Wolfowitz
A Laura Bush Production for a Literate Society

A as in Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaedas all around. I know. I know. It`s usually alligator or aardvark or ant or armadillo, but kids, really, it`s a New World and it`s never too early to be armed and ready for it. (By the way, boys and girls, prepare yourself for the first White House single-shooter video game, Armageddon Battles Al-Qaeda! In your neighborhood stores soon!) Amazing Fact: Did you know that, according to my friend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, at least ten terrorists could fit in your room and you wouldn`t even know it?

B as in Bases. Bases are for bashing bad guys (see A). A base is a little world built by the good guys of KBR (see H) for the good guys at the Pentagon to house our good guys who hunt their bad guys in the sorts of places -- and, believe me, there are a scadzillion of them (other than your bedroom) -- where they love to hide and that, until a few years ago, nobody even knew existed, and that nobody can spell like Youzebeckistan (see U). Kids, if your teacher tries to make you spell Youzebeckistan, write a letter of complaint to my friend Attorney General Gonzales (and spell any way you like), or report your teacher to the U.S. Air Force`s Eagle Eyes program (see E). To get the bad guys before they get us, we build bases everywhere! My friend Paul Wolfowitz, who used to work for the Pentagon, likes to call our bases "lily pads," and we`re the frogs who jump from one of them to the other hunting down the flies. You know how irritating flies are. (By the way, our bases have nothing to do with oil [see O].)

C as in Counting. See Rummy count the WMD! (WMD are three well-respected letters -- see W, M, and D -- which when put together are massively destructive! They mean Weapons of Mass Destruction, which can destroy massively, which is why we went to war with Saddam Hussein who was hiding in a spiderhole and threatening to spray WMD all over our country! WMD are still in Iraq even though we haven`t found them yet because they`re probably in one of those spiderholes like the one we found Saddam in, which is what my friend Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld says. Actually, here`s an Amazing Fact that will soon appear in a companion volume, Rummy`s Amazing Counting Book of the Contemporary World: Rummy says: "You could put enough biological weapons into the room you`re sitting in today to kill tens of thousands of people!" Now, how about that! For those of you who are Math wizards, how many rooms like the one you`re sitting in would fit inside Iraq. Hint, it`s 171,599 square miles of sand! By the way, I made a great joke about WMD at a media "roast" for all those stupid reporters a while back. I showed a picture of myself looking out the window of the Oval Office (which could have been a really good "O," a lot better than "Oil") and I said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." And then I showed a picture of myself looking under the furniture and said, "Nope, no weapons over there." That cracked them up. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HEE HOOO HAAA.

D as in Detention. Ahmed, the terrorist, was detended in Guantanamo [See G].

E as in Empire. (E could have been Energy, but honestly, energy`s not that important to the people I know, especially not to my friend Vice President Cheney and his Energy Task Force). My uncle empired at the Little League baseball game. Amazing Double Bonus Letter: E as in Eagle Eyes. I eagle-eyed Ahmed, the beady-eyed terrorist (see A). Kids, the Air Force has set up a special Eagle Eyes program just in case Ahmed, the terrorist, sneaks into your neighborhood. You can go to the cool USAF Eagle Eyes web page and study "categories of suspicious behavior." Be the first to report a terrorist moving in next door! If you`re lucky, maybe you can be the first kid on the block to call in an air strike on a neighbor!

F as in Florida. I love Florida. It`s the best F-word around! It`s how I F-ed the Democrats!

G as in Guantanamo. My [EXCISED] [CLASSIFIED] with the [CLASSIFIED] while my hands were [TOP SECRET]. Guantanamo, which is a [CLASSIFIED] for the [CLASSIFIED] [EXCISED][CLASSIFIED], more than the [TOP SECRET] justice.

H as in Halliburton. See Dick run Halliburton. See Halliburton buy Kellog, Brown & Root. See Dick Quit Halliburton. See Dick become Vice President. See Halliburton get no-bid contracts for I-raq. See KBR build bases in I-raq. See Halliburton deliver oil to I-raq. See Halliburton and KBR take the taxpayer to the cleaners. See Dick smile. See Dick hunt Quail. (See I, see Q.)

I as in I-raq. I wracked I-raq! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HEE HOOO HAAA. I-raq is a really, really interesting country. Lots of Moolahs live there. I visited once and, believe it or not, they even have turkeys… but they`re plastic!

J as in Jee-whiz, I can`t think of a J, except for Jail (see D, see G), but kids, the truth is -- and don`t tell Laura I said this -- you really don`t need all these letters! I mean, honestly, 26 of them? You can just use G for J and C for K and some of them like U are only good to make funny names for ridiculous countries. Tell your teacher that George said it was okay to skip the weird and useless ones. If she objects, follow the instructions outlined in B.

L as in Lion. Lions Live Lively Lives in Africa, where we`re building new bases (see B) to protect Americans who want to take safaris and check out the lions and zebras (see Z), and not because of oil which I haven`t mentioned yet because it`s not very important (see O).

M as in Mission. The Caped Crusaders went on a mission to rescue the I-raqis from Saddam`s terrorists (see A). Whoops, kids, never use the word "crusade"! Not that it`s not a great word headed by an all-star letter, C, but I used it twice and you wouldn`t believe how reporters jumped down my throat. See, when I was a kid, Errol Flynn went crusading to the Middle East and kicked some Arab butt, but that`s ancient history that you can`t mention now. And you know what? Dwight D. Eisenhower, another Republican president, used "crusade" in a book title, and no one said a word! But that was before the planet was filled with Muslims with TVs. These days, instead of "crusade" I use "global war on terrorism," or "spreading democracy," or I even speak of my "calling," which is a good Christian word that leaves Muslims out completely. But just so you know, when I "call" you -- or your daddies and mommies in the Reserves -- to my Global War on Terror, I really mean Crusade! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HEE HOOO HAAA.

N as in Nucular. The nuculus went nucular. Boom! Nucular weapons are terrible things (see C). We went to war, as my friend Secretary of State Condi Rice used to say, to stop mushrooms from growing in American cities! Mushrooms can poison you and Saddam Hussein wanted to poison us! But don`t worry, kids, we won`t let the bad guys get nucular weapons! We`re building lots of nucular weapons right now to take them out!

O as not in Oil. The handyman put oil on the squeaky door hinge. Oil is good for fixing things and oil is something you change. Sometimes you even regime-change oil regimes. But it`s not worth wasting a letter on, that`s for sure. Amazing Fact: Chevron once named an oil tanker after my friend Condi!.

P as in Patriot Act. Peter Patriot acts to protect the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act patriotized our country. It patriotized our courts. It patriotized our jails (see G). It patriotized our medical records. It patriotized our libraries. It patriotized your parents. Keep your eyes and ears open! If Ahmed, the terrorist, or anybody else in your neighborhood doesn`t support the Patriot Act, call Eagle Eyes (see E) and let us know. We`ll be sure to patriotize them.

Q as in Quail. See Dick shoot the Quail, all 400 of them! Quail are tiny, chicken-y birds with lots and lots of little bones and no meat, but Dick loves to…

[Note: A page and a half of text is missing here, assumedly including the rest of the letter Q and all of R.]

S as in Social Security. The Department of Homeland Security should be responsible for our country`s social security. Boys and girls, you know how when you`re really little you have a security blanket you just drag around everywhere? And then, when you get older, it`s kind of embarrassing, so you toss it away? Well, here`s the funny thing, thanks to a bunch of ancient Democrats, old people have a money security blanket we call Social Security. Don`t you think it`s time for your grandmas and grandpas to grow up and toss that blankie away? My friend Dick thinks so. He says he doesn`t need a social-security blankie. (see H) And neither do I, and neither do my Mom and Dad. And believe me, they`re old. We all just want to invest our own money and make it ourselves. Don`t you?

T as in 2000 election. (Kids, this is a trick one, but so was that election!) Amazing Fact: 2000 looks like it starts with 2, but it actually starts with T! I always liked what my old Texas pard Phil Gramm said with a whoop when he won his Senate seat back in 1984: "We`re going to keep on building the party until we`re hunting Democrats with dogs." He was right. Now, when Democrats whoop -- like Howard Dean did -- we hunt them with Karl Rove`s dogs like Dick hunts quail (see Q).

U as in Uzbekistan (or Oozebeakustan or whatever). I bet u can`t spell Uzbekistan! HA HA HA HEE HEE HEE HO HO HO. If you`re looking for terrorists, they usually hide in countries whose names I can`t spell -- like Yousbekistan and Afghanistan and Yemenistan. Countries whose names I can`t spell have lots of caves for terrorists to hide in.

V as in Camp Viper. Don`t let the Vindow Viper near Camp Viper! (HA HA etc.) Ur was one of those old, old U-places (see U) in I-raq (see I). A two-letter city! If that isn`t suspicious, I don`t know what is! Imagine if Duluth was Du, or Laredo was La, or Peoria was Pe (HEE HEE etc.) Name a place Ur and it`s bound to fill up with terrorist vipers. So we built bases nearby including Camp Viper and Ve Viped them out (HO HO etc.).

W as in Waterboarding. Wally waterboarded Ahmed (see A). Kids, it`s not surfboarding, but almost! There`s the board and the water and the person on the board, and it`s the main sport of the Central Intelligence Agency (see G), and the great thing is -- you can do it twenty-four hours a day. You never have to wait for the surf to be up.

X as in X-ray. Agent X X-rayed your car to see if it contained terrorist contraband or a secret nucular weapon [see N]. No kidding, kids, our Homeland Security Department can do drive-by X-rays of cars in their constant search for terrorists. And if your teddy bear is filled with explosives, then it`s Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay (see G) for you, which is [CLASSIFIED] for [CLASSIFIED] in which [TOP SECRET], not far from the Bermuda Triangle.

Y as in you`re with us or you`re against us. Ahmed was against us (see W) and he came from Yemenistan. Okay, "you`re with us or you`re against us" isn`t one word, but how many words begin with Y, other than Yemenistan (and, believe me, you don`t want to know about that)?

Z as in Zebra. Ziggy the Zebra hates terrorists (see A). Zebras live in Africa where we`re setting up bases (see B), but not because we`re interested in oil (see O). No kidding! Just like that other George, the one who chopped down the cherry tree with that weapon of mass destruction (see N, see C), I would never lie to you.

Copeyrite 2005 George W. Bush


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Mein Bud, dein Bud.

Published on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 by the Associated Press
Beer Giant Says it Won`t Buy Rice from States That Grow GM Crops
http://www.ap.org/

WASHINGTON -- Anheuser-Busch Cos., the nation`s No. 1 buyer of rice as well as its largest brewer, says it won`t buy rice from Missouri if genetically modified, drug-making crops are allowed to be grown in the state.

The St. Louis-based beer giant, which says it is concerned about possible contamination, is the latest company to express concern over plans by Ventria Biosciences to grow 200 acres of rice engineered to produce human proteins that can make drugs.

Biotechnology firms have been seeking federal approval for outdoor plantings, often called "biopharming," because the idea is to lower drug- making costs by using plants to grow medications.

Other food companies, environmentalists and farmers have said they fear genetically altered rice could cross-pollinate with other food crops, introducing the foreign genes into the regular food chain.

Last month, Arkansas-based Riceland Foods Inc., the world`s largest rice miller and marketer, asked federal regulators to deny a permit for Ventria`s project, saying Riceland`s customers don`t want to risk buying genetically modified rice.

Anheuser-Busch is believed to be the first major company to threaten a boycott over the issue, according to comments filed last month with the Agriculture Department.

"Given the potential for contamination of commercial rice production in this state, we will not purchase any rice produced or processed in Missouri if Ventria introduces its pharma rice here," Jim Hoffmeister, a vice president at Anheuser-Busch, said Tuesday.

Scott Deeter, president of Sacramento-based Ventria, called Anheuser- Busch`s threat "totally irresponsible" and said fears of contamination are overblown. He cited Ventria`s plans to use "a totally closed system of production" with a plant that pollinates itself and is separated geographically from any other crop.

Biopharming has been growing for a decade despite continued attacks from genetic engineering foes who fear such work hasn`t been studied enough to ensure the safety of the nation`s food supply if accidental mixing occurs.

Genetically modified crops are regulated by the USDA, with state governments allowed to review safety procedures and suggest more stringent regulation of the companies before a permit is issued.

Ventria is seeking USDA approval to grow rice genetically enhanced with synthetic human genes to produce the proteins lactoferrin and lysozyme, which the company hopes to harvest and refine for use in medicines to fight diarrhea and dehydration. The USDA can either deny Ventria`s permit or issue a permit with additional conditions.

Since 1995, the USDA has approved more than 300 biopharming plantings around the country, though most are for small outdoor plots of less than an acre each. If Ventria`s application is approved, it would be the largest such growth site to date, USDA spokeswoman Karen Eggert said. No human drug made from genetically engineered crops has been approved for commercial use.

The issue has already roiled California`s $500 million-a-year rice industry. Last year, California regulators denied Ventria`s application to grow commercial quantities of rice with human genes after rice growers said they feared international customers would refuse to buy conventionally grown crops out of contamination fears.

Meanwhile, farmers in southeast Missouri, where nearly all of the state`s $100 million rice crop is grown, have presented Missouri`s agriculture director a petition with 175 signatures opposing the plans. Missouri is the sixth-largest rice-producing state.

Despite the concerns, the Missouri Farm Bureau has continued to support Ventria, which recently announced it was moving from Sacramento, Calif., to Northwest Missouri State University to be the anchor tenant of a new center for plant-made pharmaceuticals.

"Any concerns have been addressed thoroughly to the satisfaction of the scientific community," said university president Dean Hubbard.

In trading Tuesday, Anheuser-Busch shares rose 66 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $46.71 on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has traded in a 52-week range of $45.45 to $54.74.

© 2005 The Associated Press

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Published on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Latest Neocon Con: At the UN, As Elsewhere, If Their Lips Are Moving, They’re Lying
by David Michael Green
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0413-21.htm

Here’s a shocker: conservatives (I prefer the term ‘regressives’) are being dishonest with the American people.

This time it concerns the United Nations, and their subtle disinformation campaign aimed at debilitating, if not destroying, an institution which is important and popular even in the United States, but one which they passionately despise.

As usual, these regressives have shown themselves more masterful at marketing their falsehoods than any political figures we’ve seen this side of the 1930s. And so they must be, for to tell the truth about their ideas would condemn them to the garbage can where American public opinion rightly places such national disasters as massive deficits, wars of imperialism, and the privatization of Social Security.

This week, as the Senate contemplates whether to send to the United Nations one of the most hostile imaginable of these neanderthals to represent the United States, it would serve us well to step back and take a long view of the neoconservative game concerning the UN, and the very concepts of international governance and law.

The first rule of analysis with these guys is, of course, accept nothing at face value. So, when you hear them discuss the scandals at the UN, the reform needed to address them, the expressed desire for a more effective institution, or America’s difficulties there, forget it completely. These folks are just as interested in saving the UN as an effective institution as they are in saving Social Security.

The problem – in both cases, actually – is that when your ideas are radical and radically unpopular, you can’t get what you want by going through the front door. The solution is to create or inflate ‘crises’, act like you really care about the item in question (e.g., the Iraqi people, Social Security, the UN), and then jam your march-to-the-sea scorched earth plan down people’s throats in the guise of a solution to the bogus crises you’ve just invented or hyped.

It was precisely this approach which proved highly effective in laying the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq amongst frightened and ill-informed American citizens. It may work again on Social Security, where it is currently in play. While Bush has not yet sold his plan to unravel what has been described by some as the most successful government program anywhere, ever, poll data suggest that he has now emerged triumphant from at least the first phase of his campaign, laying the groundwork for the privatization ‘solution’ by convincing Americans that the system is in crisis.

And this is exactly what the regressive right is doing with respect to the UN, only a bit more subtly – the Bolton nomination notwithstanding. The truth is that neoconservatives hate the UN, hate international law, and hate international governance of any sort. This is, above all, because they hate any limitations on American sovereignty, including the capacity to belligerently deploy US military might wherever they see fit, for purposes which need satisfy only their own power-lusting criteria.

And the truth is, further, that they therefore wish to destroy the United Nations in any meaningful form, though they’d probably settle for the British monarchy model of institutional problem solving: gut it of all power, but leave the building for tourists to visit. A sort of neutron bomb of international governance.

To be sure, the UN isn’t wildly popular in the United States, but it is popular enough (and its braking capacity on US foreign policy blunders perhaps more so), that the neocons have a serious marketing problem to overcome. This can be seen in American attitudes toward the Iraq invasion, where late and tepid support of the war was conditioned, for a substantial segment of even the US public, on prior UN approval. This is the neoconservative version of hell itself.

Fortunately for the right, and unfortunately for humanity, there is the tried and true method described above to undermine the UN through the back door, a portal reserved for only the most diseased and squalid of policy ideas.

So we continue to see apoplectic outbursts of shock and anger from regressives at Kojogate (the Oil-for-Food scandal implicating Kofi Annan’s son), or rape by peacekeeping forces in Africa. But somehow they are silent on the $8 billion in oil revenues that the United States has lost in Iraq, after the UN granted it control on condition of providing a full accounting for funds handled. And we hear little from them about the hundreds of thousands imperiled in Darfur. Could that be because their concern is really more about framing the UN negatively than the outrage for integrity and compassion for human rights they’ve expressed?

In the end, though, the biggest lie of them all is the notion that the UN has proven itself ineffective, and therefore must be ‘reformed’.

To put this one over, they must first ignore all the accomplishments in non-security domains the UN has achieved over the last half-century. Whether it is food aid, environmental protection, disease control or human rights advocacy, the UN, it can safely be said, has saved lives, no doubt in the millions. But these successes cannot be acknowledged.

Next, they must also ignore even the security-related successes of the organization. To be sure, not all peacekeeping operations have worked as intended, but then what human institutions are one hundred percent effective? Would the regressive right-wingers in charge of America today agree to close down the corporation as a form of economic actor on account of Enron or WorldCom? Maybe I need to check the headlines more often, but I haven’t heard them calling for an end to all corporations. Meanwhile, ask the people of Cambodia and East Timor, among many others, whether UN peacekeeping can be successful.

In any case, ironically, the biggest single reason for the failure of UN security efforts is precisely the attitudes of neocons like John Bolton, Dick Cheney or Richard Perle.

Which brings us directly to the biggest bit of legerdemain in this whole absurd kabuki dance. But first, a bit of background. The UN’s very raison d`être is to replace the historical scourge of war with a system of international security. That system is built around the concept of collective security: an attack on one member (e.g., Iraq on Kuwait) is to be treated as an attack on all, with a militarized response, if necessary, by all.

Collective security works great on paper, but not so well in practice, because member-states have real interests in particular events; they rarely vote in some vacuum of abstracted principle. The paradigmatic example of this, of course, was the Cold War’s grand contest of international politics, which consumed about 45 of the 60 years the UN has been in existence. During this time, one could generally assume that anything the US was for, the Soviets would oppose. And, likewise, America almost always returned the favor. Thus the only time during the Cold War that collective security was ever actually invoked was the case of the Korean War, and that was a freakish accident. Angry about mainland China’s then absence of representation at the world body, the Soviets foolishly left the room in protest, unwittingly taking their veto with them. That mistake never got made again, and neither did another collective security mission.

So what’s the rub? Why not just invoke the collective security principle according to the profoundly democratic concept of majority rule? Here we come finally to the real source of the United Nations’ failures: the sovereignty question. Imagine if you cut the arms off a farmer, and then turned to him and said “I’m sorry, but since you are not a productive member of the community we can no longer spare the grain to feed you”, thus condemning the farmer to death by starvation. If you’ll pardon the gruesome metaphor, this gives you a pretty good approximation of the game neocons are playing in order to destroy the UN along with anything else that diminishes, even slightly, US sovereignty (read unlimited prerogatives).

That is, the UN has failed – where it has failed, which is far less than suggested – precisely because certain key members refuse to give it the power to do its job. Note, for example, that there is no UN military, or even permanent command structure. Note, for example, that issues of war and peace are handled by the rarified Security Council, not the General Assembly where each member-state has a vote. And note that those Security Council resolutions can be spiked entirely by the veto of any one of the five permanent members. What this means is that the UN is like the hapless farmer, whose neighbor has taken away his capacity to act, only to then condemn him to death for his failure to contribute.

In short, the single most important fact for anyone to understand about the UN is that it is, by design and practice, never more than the sum of its parts, and quite frequently less. In this sense, John Bolton was actually right when he said there’s no such thing as the UN. But, of course, he doesn’t tell us why that is true, nor that, if he were to have his druthers, it would be even more true. A very big component of the UN’s inability to solve global problems is the tight leash the United States keeps it on, even cutting off funding for years on end when it feels the need.

And so it is more than a little disingenuous, and therefore more than a little obnoxious, when neocons complain about the UN’s failings, and then use this pretext as an excuse to call for its effective dismantling. But, of course, the modern conservative movement has become expert, out of necessity, at the boldest of bold-faced deceits in order to sell Americans on the diminishment of their own quality of life. Just as the coward who ran from Vietnam thirty years ago, and who ran again to Nebraska on 9/11, is a war hero, so the UN must be punished for the crime of an ineffectiveness fostered by the same folks seeking to kill it.

But, as usual with this crowd, it gets a lot worse yet. Most Americans labor under the gross misapprehension that their country is a leader and a team player in doing the very things neocons accuse the UN of failing at – namely, making the planet a safer, healthier and happier place. You know, a world were land mines don’t continue maiming children long after a war has ceased (wrong). A world where we don’t destroy the ecosystem on which we depend via reckless energy policies producing global warming (wrong). A world where those who practice genocide or crimes against humanity can be tried and punished, or better yet, deterred (wrong). A world where children cannot be forcibly recruited in military forces (wrong).

On all these initiatives, and plenty more where those came from, not only has the US not led, it has actively sought to block such humane and sensible efforts, precisely because regressive neoconservatives want zero restriction on their capacity to rape and plunder as they see fit. Indeed, so precious to them are these individual freedoms to act any way they want that they stand foursquare for the principle of destroying all international law and governance, to make sure nothing ekes its way through the dike, just as the gun lobby feels it must not allow bans on assault rifles or hollow-point bullets, lest permitting the very concept of gun control to exist should lead to an opening of the floodgates.

Even the much-despised Bill Clinton came through for the neocons, proving just how absolutely nonexistent is UN autonomy on the big issues. Some big liberal, he. Not only did he do nothing while Rwanda drowned in its own blood, but this US president actually blocked the UN from doing anything either, consigning 800,000 Africans to be hacked to death by machete. Sure, you’d be right to argue that the UN was completely ineffective in Rwanda. But it takes a malevolence of epic proportions and a capacity for truly Orwellian truth-destruction to ignore the real reason why, and to then use this failure as a pretext for further enervating the institution.

But then we all long ago learned one thing above all else when it comes to the cancerous tumor of an administration now sitting in the White House: unless proven otherwise, assume they are lying any time their lips move. This issue is no different. Neither George Bush nor Dick Cheney nor John Bolton want to reform and revitalize the UN any more than they wanted to free the Iraqi people, revive the economy with tax giveaways for the rich, or save Social Security. But there’s enough common sense still left in the American body politic that telling the truth about their intentions would impede their pernicious schemes.

So they lie.

David Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He teaches a course and has published research on the United Nations. Mr. Green can be reached at [e-mail].

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US: Iran Several Years from Nuclear Weapons Capability
By David Gollust
State Department
13 April 2005
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-04-13-voa75.cfm

U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stressed concern about Iran`s nuclear program in his meeting Monday with President Bush. The State Department says the United States shares Israeli concerns, but believes Iran will not have a nuclear weapons capability before the beginning of the next decade.

News reports quoting Israeli officials say Prime Minister Sharon gave President Bush photographs of Iranian nuclear sites and told him Iran was near a point of no return in acquiring the know-how for a nuclear weapon.

While not providing details of the Texas conversation, Bush administration officials confirmed the issue came up, though the State Department appeared to differ with Israel on the immediacy of the Iranian nuclear threat.

At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States shares the concern of Israel and others in the international community about secret Iranian nuclear fuel-cycle activities, for which he said there can be no explanation other than a bomb project.

But in a departure from the usual practice of declining to discuss such matters, Mr. Boucher said the view of U.S. intelligence is that Iran is several years away from having an actual nuclear weapon.

"Our intelligence community has used in the past an estimate that said that Iran was not likely to acquire a nuclear weapon before the beginning of the next decade. That remains the case. But I don`t think there`s any dispute that Iran should not have the capabilities, the programs, that have been used and that can be used as cover for nuclear weapons development," he said.

Both Mr. Boucher and White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush, in his meeting with the Israeli leader, stressed the importance of European Union efforts to persuade Iran to end its nuclear activities.

Last month to bolster the initiative, the Bush administration said it would join the so-called EU-3, Britain, France and Germany, in offering Iran incentives to permanently end uranium enrichment and provide objective guarantees that it is not trying to develop a weapon.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this included a U.S. offer to drop its opposition to Iran`s bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), and to allow the sale to Iran of spare parts for its aging fleet of U.S.-made civilian airliners.

The European initiative began in October 2003 with an unprecedented joint visit to Tehran by the British, French and German foreign ministers. The talks have continued intermittently since then, with no breakthrough.

Under questioning, spokesman Boucher declined to assess the state of the talks. But he said the United States believes that it is time for Iran to take the opportunity posed by the European initiative to end covert activities aimed at a nuclear weapons capability.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Mr. Sharon complained to President Bush that the European nations were softening their approach and may be willing to allow Iran to retain a limited uranium enrichment capability.

Mr. Boucher said the U.S. view is very clear that Iran`s current suspension of enrichment must become permanent, and that this is the only way to satisfy international concerns.

Iran, which maintains its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, has in the past argued that it has the right to develop a complete nuclear fuel cycle for civilian power plants.

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Der Kampf von BushCo gegen die unabhängige Justiz geht weiter.

April 14, 2005
Majority Leader Asks House Panel to Review Judges
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/politics/14delay.html?hp&e…

WASHINGTON, April 13 - Deflecting all questions about his ethical conduct and political future, Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, on Wednesday stepped up his crusade against judges, announcing that he had instructed the Judiciary Committee to investigate federal court decisions in the Terri Schiavo case and to recommend possible legislation.

At a crowded news conference, Mr. DeLay said he would not entertain questions about his political activities. It was his first question-and-answer session with reporters since one fellow Republican, Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, called for him to resign his leadership post and another, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, said he should explain himself to the American people.

"I`m not here to discuss the Democrats` agenda," Mr. DeLay declared.

He has asserted that Democrats and the "liberal media" are orchestrating a campaign to discredit him by raising questions about possible ethics violations, including overseas travel financed by outside groups.

But the questions persisted. Mr. Gingrich, who in a television interview Tuesday said Mr. DeLay seemed to be blaming a left-wing conspiracy, told a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors on Wednesday that the majority leader must ultimately "brief the country in a public way."

"He and his lawyers have to decide when that is," Mr. Gingrich said. "But he at some point has got to convince people that what he has done was reasonable and authentic and legitimate."

Mr. DeLay was also a topic at the White House press briefing, where Scott McClellan, President Bush`s spokesman, said the president supported what Mr. DeLay and other Congressional leaders were doing "to move forward on the agenda that the American people want us to enact."

But Mr. McClellan suggested that the relationship between Mr. Bush and Mr. DeLay, a fellow Texan, was more business than social.

"Sure," Mr. McClellan said, when asked if the president considered Mr. DeLay a friend. He went on, "I think there are different levels of friendship with anybody."

Mr. DeLay, the No. 2 House Republican, , has been embroiled in ethics controversies for months, ever since a grand jury in Texas indicted some of his top operatives. But the spotlight has intensified in recent weeks since he led Congress to intervene in the case of Ms. Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died after her feeding tube was withdrawn by court order.

Despite the unusual Congressional legislation, several federal courts refused to reopen the Schiavo case, enraging Mr. DeLay and other Republicans.

Mr. DeLay`s subsequent criticisms of the courts - at one point he suggested that the judges responsible could be impeached and at another point said that they would be held responsible - have brought ridicule from Democrats. They have also prompted some prominent Republicans, including Mr. Bush and Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, to distance themselves from him.

Asked last week about Mr. DeLay`s attacks on judges, Mr. Bush would only say that he believed in an independent judiciary, in a system of checks and balances, in judges who strictly interpreted the Constitution.

On Wednesday, Mr. DeLay seemed to adopt the president`s language: "Of course I believe in an independent judiciary," he said. He also apologized for the impeachment comment, even as he insisted it was well within the purview of Congress to rein in the courts.

"Sometimes I get a little more passionate," Mr. DeLay said, "particularly during the moment and the day that Terri Schiavo was starved to death. Emotions were flowing."

"I said something in an inartful way," he added, "and I shouldn`t have said it that way, and I apologize. I apologize for saying it that way. It was taken wrong, and I didn`t explain or clarify my remarks as I`m clarifying them here."

Mr. DeLay was not specific about what legislative changes, if any, he would like to see emerge from the Judiciary Committee`s review. But in announcing that he had asked Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and the committee chairman, to examine the actions of federal judges in the Schiavo case, Mr. DeLay said the House had previously passed legislation limiting the jurisdiction of the courts and breaking up the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a bill that died in the Senate.

"We set the jurisdiction of the courts," Mr. DeLay said. "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts."

As to the ethics questions, Mr. DeLay repeated that he was "more than happy" to have the House ethics committee review those issues. But it cannot do so because the committee is embroiled in a fight over rules changes that critics say will discourage ethics inquiries. Democrats, upset that Republicans adopted the changes without their cooperation, are refusing to constitute the committee this session. The panel met Wednesday to try to resolve the impasse, but was unsuccessful.

"We`re trying to find some common ground," said the chairman, Representative Doc Hastings, Republican of Washington. "We have been talking. As long as we can talk, I tend to be an optimist."

Democrats, meanwhile, sharply criticized the ethics rule changes on Wednesday at a news conference that featured Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, and the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. Ms. Pelosi warned that House Republicans, who rode to power in 1994 by portraying Democrats as arrogant, had become arrogant. "I have said for a long time their greed will be their downfall," she said.

At least one Republican, Mr. Shays, seemed to agree on Wednesday. "I`m no fan of Nancy Pelosi," he said. But, he added, "we said we would be different and we were when we started out. We are quickly becoming like they were when they were in the majority."

Katharine Q. Seelye contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Mr. Potemkin wäre stolz auf die USA und ihrer Darstellung der Fortschritte in Fallujah.

washingtonpost.com
In Fallujah, U.S. Envoy Greeted by Complaints
Local Leaders Decry Pace of Rebuilding
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49091-2005Apr…

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A18

FALLUJAH, Iraq, April 13 -- Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick paid a surprise visit Wednesday to this former insurgent stronghold to view the pace of reconstruction and meet with local officials. He was greeted with an earful of complaints.

Zoellick is the most senior U.S. official to venture inside the city since it was retaken by U.S. and Iraqi forces in November, and his trip appeared intended to demonstrate that normality was returning to what was once a symbol of the Sunni Muslim resistance.

Yet Zoellick, who wore body armor under his suit jacket, was told by military commanders that he could not leave his armored Humvee because of security concerns during the lightning tour of the shattered downtown. His heavily armored motorcade briefly paused so that he and others could gaze at a revived water treatment plant -- within view of the bridge over the Euphrates River where the charred bodies of American civilian contractors were hung after they were ambushed a year ago. The motorcade then moved so quickly past an open-air bakery reopened with a U.S.-provided micro-loan that workers tossing dough could be glanced only in the blink of an eye.

Cafes and stores were open in the central area, but blasted husks of buildings still line block after block of large sections of the city. Children playing in the rubble waved as the motorcade roared past uprooted palm trees, burned-out vehicles, pools of brackish water and piles of garbage. Patrols moved carefully down streets looking for hidden explosive devices.

A one-hour session with the city`s recently elected leaders was held downtown in a heavily guarded Marine enclave, in a sweltering room with windows covered with sandbags. At first, Zoellick heard words of praise for the U.S. intervention. But as he prodded the officials to air their concerns, a torrent of complaints poured out, focusing on such issues as the slow pace of reconstruction aid, frequent intimidation of citizens by American soldiers and the inability to buy fresh produce because of military checkpoints.

State Department fact sheets on Fallujah say that 95 percent of its residents have water available in their homes and that $40 million is being spent to overhaul water plants. But when Zoellick asked Khlaid Jumaly, chairman of the city council, if most people have safe drinking water, the answer suggested they did not.

"The drinking water is not really safe for health," Jumaly, who had a long salt-and-pepper beard and wore a white turban, replied though an interpreter. "The whole sewer system is in very bad shape."

Zoellick said he had just seen the rebuilt water treatment plant and wondered whether that would ease the problem. Jumaly said the repairs were insufficient and even damaging. "The people who are working on the sewer are not very clear about what they are doing," he said.

At one point, the council vice chairman, Ibrahim Mohammed Jassam, implored: "We ask of you, please, that you get involved in the situation of the Fallujah people. You guys did this with your own blood, risked your life, for this situation."

Zoellick acknowledged later that some of the images in Fallujah were troubling. "When you travel the country, you look at the rubble and you look at the devastation, you know there is a long way to go," he told reporters traveling with him. "And when you are putting on vests for security, you know that there is still danger out there."

But Zoellick said he enjoyed the give-and-take with Fallujah leaders: "To me that was a sign that democracy was at work. I got a sense of their overall spirit, that they were trying to make something of it."

Zoellick was the second senior U.S. official to make an unannounced visit to Iraq in as many days. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was in Baghdad on Tuesday to meet with Iraq`s new leaders, and Zoellick flew to the Iraqi capital after his trip to Fallujah for meetings with top Iraqi politicians, including President Jalal Talabani and the incoming prime minister, Ibrahim Jafari. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has not yet come to Iraq, in part because top spots in the country`s transitional government have only recently been filled.

Zoellick and his entourage arrived in Baghdad early Wednesday and then boarded two Black Hawk helicopters for Fallujah, skimming the tops of palm trees and electrical wires to thwart possible snipers or surface-to-air missiles. Then the officials moved into eight armored vehicles, mostly Humvees, for the tour of the city.

His unannounced visit to Iraq came during a week when he was focusing on the conflicts in Sudan. Zoellick told reporters that he was making the trip because the recent naming of an Iraqi government had signaled "a process of political transition, the formation of Iraqi democracy."

A State Department team led by Richard H. Jones, the senior coordinator for Iraq, came recently and submitted recommendations on how to adjust U.S. policy. Zoellick has been given responsibility for shepherding the approval of those recommendations by President Bush`s senior advisers, though several officials said the proposals did not represent any major shift in direction.

One focus of the policy review is whether to revise the priorities in the allocation of more than $18 billion earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction. Zoellick said the administration also wanted to draw its European allies and the Japanese more deeply into the reconstruction efforts.

"What I hope to do in coming weeks," Zoellick said, is "try to lay the groundwork for some more in-depth cooperation, particularly with our European partners, on the reconstruction and economic support side." He said that once the Americans get a feel for the top four or five reconstruction priorities, the administration will work to coordinate with the Europeans and the Japanese so "we can kind of share the load here."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Lebanon delays its election despite US demands
By Robert Fisk in Beirut
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=629…

The Independent

14 April 2005

Beirut survived its "celebration" of the start of the 15-year Lebanese civil war but pro-Syrian members of the country`s government failed to form a new cabinet, meaning that the national elections scheduled for May will have to be postponed - despite the demand of Presidents George Bush and Jacques Chirac that they be held on time.

While thousands of opposition supporters therefore demonstrated in favour of "unity", the demands of their leaders seemed likely to be ignored.

This is far more serious than it might appear. While the country remains leaderless, the possibility of further provocations to restart the 1975-90 civil war grows. A 30kg bomb was found on a truck in the Bekaa Valley at the weekend; a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a bank in the suburban town of Dour Cheir. In east Beirut, there remain pockets of men calling themselves "vigilantes" - supposedly dedicated to the protection of Christian property from further bomb attacks - who look suspiciously like a revival of the old Phalangist militia.

Ghazi Aridi, a close adviser to Walid Jumblatt, the opposition leader who led Druze fighters in the civil war, said Prime Minister Omar Karami`s useless second attempt to form a government - he crept off miserably to his home town of Tripoli after admitting failure - was "a scheme to postpone the elections". This kind of political disgrace, of course, was one of the principal reasons why hundreds of thousands of Lebanese demonstrated last month.

Only 4,000 Syrian troops remain in the Bekaa Valley in the east and their withdrawal is taking place faster than expected. In some cases, civilians have led their families to the Syrian dungeons where they were tortured more than a decade ago. But anger that the retreat was taking so long has now been replaced with concern about its speed.

But if President Emile Lahoud, Syria`s most faithful friend, remains leader, and the ghost of the pro-Syrian cabinet is merely waiting to reconstitute itself, what will have been the purpose of the Syrian withdrawal?

The "loyalists" - ironically, the name of the Lebanese loyal to Syria - are hoping a delay will allow the more disreputable opposition leaders to split the movement. Lahoud, it is said, looks forward to the return from exile in Paris of the messianic Maronite general, Michel Aoun, whose pretentions to be president in 1990 cost 1,000 lives and who fled to the French embassy in his pyjamas when Syrian bombers attacked his palace. Aoun, Lahoud is said to believe, will surely break the opposition apart, alienating its Druze and Sunni followers.

This may be wishful thinking. But over the weekend, the Hizbollah - still allied to Syria - sent a pilotless drone 50 miles over Israel, bringing the aircraft safely back to Lebanese territory. It was a militarily pointless exercise but contributed greatly to the fear that it may be trying to provoke another conflict with Israel. The movement`s leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, astonished Lebanese yesterday by appealing in an open newspaper letter to M. Chirac for help in preserving the country`s unity. Chirac and Bush pushed for the UN resolution which demanded the disarming of Hizbollah. Wondrous things are thus happening in Lebanon; their results may be less than wonderful.

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Eine Messe in Rom und deren Folgen, siehe #27701

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Noch ein Märchen aus der US-britischen Gerüchteküche, das sich in Luft aufgelöst hat.
Da sind die USA schon viel gefährlicher. Ein Versehem oder ein Versuch `[urlArmageddon]http://www.countdown.org/index.htm[/url] und Rapture` schneller herbeizuführen?
[urlFlu alert as killer strain is sent to labs by mistake]http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=629165[/url]

The ricin ring that never was

Yesterday`s trial collapse has exposed the deception behind attempts to link al-Qaida to a `poison attack` on London
Duncan Campbell
Thursday April 14, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1459096,00.ht…

Guardian
Colin Powell does not need more humiliation over the manifold errors in his February 2003 presentation to the UN. But yesterday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring.

Yesterday`s verdicts on five defendants and the dropping of charges against four others make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ricin ring" make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday`s acquitted defendants. It wasn`t.

The third plank of the al-Qaida-Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the "UK poison cell" and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaida was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?

The information - five pages in Arabic, containing amateur instructions for making ricin, cyanide and botulinum, and a list of chemicals used in explosives - was at the heart of the case. The notes had been made by Kamel Bourgass, the sole convicted defendant. His co-defendants believed that he had copied the information from the internet. The prosecution claimed it had come from Afghanistan.

I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites that publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby.

The experience of being an expert witness on these issues has made me feel a great deal safer on the streets of London. These were the internal documents of the supposed al-Qaida cell planning the "big one" in Britain. But the recipes were untested and unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings and attempted killings.

If this was the measure of the destructive wrath that Bin Laden`s followers were about to wreak on London, it was impotent. Yet it was the discovery of a copy of Bourgass`s notes in Thetford in 2002 that inspired the wave of horror stories and government announcements and preparations for poison gas attacks.

It is true that when the team from Porton Down entered the Wood Green flat in January 2003, their field equipment registered the presence of ricin. But these were high sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative result could be fatal. A few days later in the lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin. But when this result was passed to London, the message reportedly said the opposite.

The planned government case on links to Afghanistan was based only on papers that a freelance journalist working for the Times had scooped up after the US invasion of Kabul. Some were in Arabic, some in Russian. They were far more detailed than Bourgass`s notes. Nevertheless, claimed Porton Down chemistry chief Dr Chris Timperley, they showed a "common origin and progression" in the methods, thus linking the London group of north Africans to Afghanistan and Bin Laden.

The weakness of Timperley`s case was that neither he nor the intelligence services had examined any other documents that could have been the source. We were told Porton Down and its intelligence advisers had never previously heard of the "Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, containing recipes for ricin and much more". The document, written by veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, has been on the net since 1998.

All the information roads led west, not to Kabul but to California and the US midwest. The recipes for ricin now seen on the internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon. He advertises videos and books on the internet. Before the ricin ring trial started, I phoned him in Arizona. For $110, he sent me a fistful of CDs and videos on how to make bombs, missiles, booby traps - and ricin. We handed a copy of the ricin video to the police.

When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaida link claims. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. "Al-Qaida and the international network is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives," he said on November 14.

The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an "al-Qaida manual" into the case. The manual - called the Manual of the Afghan Jihad - had been found on a raid in Manchester in 2000. It was given to the FBI to produce in the 2001 New York trial for the first attack on the World Trade Centre. But it wasn`t an al-Qaida manual. The name was invented by the US department of justice in 2001, and the contents were rushed on to the net to aid a presentation to the Senate by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, supporting the US Patriot Act.

To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s and the period of the US-supported war against the Soviet occupation was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner`s Handbook, by Maxwell Hutchkinson.

We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.

· Duncan Campbell is an investigative writer and a scientific expert witness on computers and telecommunications. He is author of War Plan UK and is not the Guardian journalist of the same name

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Bolton ist auch eine Biowaffe.

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Thursday, April 14, 2005

At least 17 Killed by Bombs, 4 US Contractors Wounded

AP reports that guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a US convoy, killing five Iraqis and wounding 4 US contractors. Two other explosions in the capital did little damage. A fourth set a fuel tanker ablaze near two US Humvees. AP adds:


"Near Kirkuk, 12 policemen gathered to help dismantle an apparent decoy bomb were killed by another explosion Wednesday, police said. Three others were injured."



Ghazi al-Yawir, a vice president of Iraq, is complaining that the new elected government (dominated by religious Shiites and by Kurds) is not doing enough to reach out to the alienated Sunni Arabs. He is incensed by the decision to reduce the number of ministries going to Sunnis from 6 to only 4. Further alienating the Sunni Arabs could deepen and prolong the civil war.

Al-Zaman says that Ibrahim Jaafari is offering Iyad Allawi`s Iraqiya bloc only 4 ministries, and no central ones. Allawi had wanted Interior, but it seems likely to go to the religious Shiites. (Interior in Iraq is concerned with domestic spying and security).

The same newspaper says that a prime candidate to head Interior is Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organization. (The Badr Corps, trained by Iran`s revolutionary guards, was the paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq when they were in exile in Iran. Badr is now evolving into a political party in its own right, the Badr Organization.)

Al-Amiri says that if he became Minister of Interior, he would meld the Badr Corps fighters into the regular Iraqi army and police.

Many are suspicious that if he got the ministry, he would immediately purge it of ex-Baathists appointed in the interim regime of Iyad Allawi. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld`s recent warning against a purge of the ex-Baathists was believed directed at al-Amiri.

The increasing prominence of the Badr Organization has triggered criticism from Iraqis who had been taken prisoner of war by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, and who maintain that the Iranians turned them over to Badr to be interrogated and tortured. Al-Amiri denies the allegations.

Al-Zaman says many Iraqis are suspicious of the Badr Organization, being aware that it spent 20 years in exile in Tehran and was close there to the hardliners.

Al-Amiri is complaining that fundamentalist Muslim militias such as his are increasingly marginized and have been fired from their jobs in the ministries.

President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday that an independent Kurdish state would not be viable.

Telling tidbits from the Iraqi Press (via BBC world monitoring):


"Al-Manarah publishes on page 3 a 100-word report citing Maysan Governorate Council chairman as saying that the council has decided unanimously to make Thursday a holiday instead of Saturday . . ."



This is the influence in Maysan of the Sadr Movement, which objects to Saturday as a day of rest, saying it isn`t traditional in Islam.


"Al-Furat publishes on the front page a 500-word article by Hayyan al-Baghdadi commenting on recent calls by members of the United Iraqi Alliance during the National Assembly`s meeting, for eliminating all former Ba`thists from various state institutions. The writer criticizes the deba`thification process and calls for presenting all Ba`thists before courts of law in order for those who committed crimes against the Iraqi people, most of whom managed to escape the country, to be punished; and to clear the innocent . . .

Al-Mada publishes on page 2 a 100-word report saying that Ayatollah Ali-al-Sistani has issued a fatwa prohibiting the stealing of electrical power and exchanging it among neighbourhoods, because such actions put people`s lives at risk.

Al-Mada publishes on page 2 a 100-word report saying that Misan Governorate Council has dismissed the head of the Misan Education Directorate, Layth Hatim, because he was a member in al-Ba`th dissolved party . . .



Reading Matter:

Michael Klare on Blood, Oil and the Coming War on Iran.

Mark Danner on the real Iraqi elections.

posted by Juan @ [url4/14/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/at-least-17-killed-by-bombs-4-us.html[/url]

Neoconning the Media

Eric Alterman`s "Neoconning the Media: A Short History of Neoconservatism" is a must-read account of the movement and its main institutions and media outlets.

Alterman lists "half of the New Republic" as among the assets of the Neocons. That`s about right, though I suspect that the other half (In the Barefoot And Naked Blog accounting that would be: John Judis, Spencer Ackerman, Michelle Cottle, Mike Crowley) is not as connected to the editorial direction and especially ownership of TNR as the Neocon half.

Michelle Goldberg at Salon.com isn`t so generous.

This was after all the same TNR that beat the drums in fall of 2001 to get 100,000 American boots on the ground in Afghanistan. (That is my recollection, from the interface of their online website of the time, and it is the tenor of this editorial from those days.) But we didn`t need that kind of troop force there, and, indeed, it would have been counterproductive. What was this mania to occupy other people? Wasn`t it treasonous to want to put our servicemen in harm`s way when the Northern Alliance was perfectly capable of taking Kabul with our close air support? What philosophy of life would cause you to want such a thing? (What ignorance of mountainous, rugged, Afghanistan would cause you to imagine such a thing possible?) Surely it was just a colonial power fantasy, a dream of subjecting brown men to the will of TNR`s editors. You could see Lawrence Kaplan chomping at the bit to go on to occupying Iraq, Syria, and et cetera.

That is the thing nowadays often forgotten about colonialism--its psychological benefits to the colonizing society. There are often material benefits as well, but sometimes those don`t materialize. The psychological ones are a sure bet if the conqueror prevails. Racism functions to give the dominant "races" in society cheap self-esteem (`at least we are better than those people`). That is why "whiteness" is so powerful as an American construct. Everyone can hope to join the category and become "white" except African-Americans, who must remain Black to keep the system of racial hierarchy going, ensuring that the lowliest of "whites" can feel good about themselves. It is now often forgotten that Irish, Poles, Italians and Jews were not considered "white" when they first immigrated. But gradually they joined the club.

Likewise, colonial occupation gives the occupiers an easy sense of self-worth and powerfulness. Thus the appeal of occupying other countries precisely for those sections of the dominant "whites" in US society that are least secure in their whiteness (e.g. lower middle class Southerners). Much about the Abu Ghuraib torture scandal can most easily be explained in these colonialist/racist terms. Likewise, the sex and power fantasy of white men saving brown women from brown men, which has figured so prominently in the new discourse of American empire, is best explained in this way.

posted by Juan @ [url4/14/2005 06:10:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/neoconning-media-eric-altermans.html[/url]

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Thursday, April 14, 2005
War News for Thursday, April 14, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Eighteen Iraqis killed, 36 wounded by two Baghdad car bombs.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed in fighting near Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi policemen killed, four wounded in attack on Kirkuk police station.

Bring ‘em on: Nine Iraqis wounded in car bomb attack on US installation near Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: US Marines kill 30 insurgents in heavy fighting near Qaim.

Bring ‘em on: Police patrol ambushed in Baquba; one policeman killed, three wounded.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi intelligence official assassinated in Baghdad.

South Korean soldier killed by accidental discharge near Irbil.

Refugee. “Alyaa said she was the first woman in her neighborhood to sign up to work with the U.S. government after Saddam Hussein fell. She used to stand shoulder to shoulder with an American soldier in front of the U.S. military`s Camp Scania in the Rashid section of Baghdad. As a translator, Alyaa, 24, talked to Iraqis who lined up at the entrance seeking compensation for dead relatives and destroyed homes. Now, because of that work, her life is in danger and in limbo. Alyaa, who asked that her last name be withheld out of fear for her safety, fled to Jordan with her cousin Shaimaa after insurgents killed an uncle and kidnapped Shaimaa and another cousin. Alyaa hoped to find a haven in the United States but discovered the State Department isn`t resettling refugees from Iraq. She`s lost her faith in the country she once loved.”

Systemic deficiencies. “Poor planning, lagging funding and an ineffective distribution system have led to delays in getting supplies to troops in Iraq, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. The agency found the Defense Department spent more than $60 billion supplying troops with 2 million tons of equipment, spare parts and other items before, during and after major combat operations in Iraq from October 2002 to September 2004. ‘Despite these expenditures, there have been widespread reports of serious shortages of critical items needed by U.S. troops,’ the report (GAO-05-275) stated. Specifically, GAO cited shortages of batteries, tires, vehicle track shoes, body armor, meals ready to eat (MREs), Humvees with extra armor, and add-on armor kits for Humvees. Auditors found that those items were not available for five reasons that it called ‘systematic supply system deficiencies.’”

Consequences. “Senator Mark Dayton is questioning the circumstances surrounding the death of a Rochester soldier killed last month by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq. Dayton sent a letter to President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In the letter, Dayton says the day before 22-year-old Travis Bruce died, he told his girlfriend he did not have enough sandbags to fortify his position adequately.”

Ukraine announces troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Flowers and music. “But the protests reflect a growing impatience with American troops, viewed here both as protectors and antagonizers. Insurgents fueling the conflict direct their rage at U.S. troops and Iraqis seen as cooperating with them. That, in part, has delayed any talk of a pullout, with U.S. leaders saying they will only leave when the Iraqi government asks them to go. On Sunday, protesters shouted anti-American slogans in Duluiyah, 45 miles north of the capital. A day later, a similar demonstration was held in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. On Tuesday, in the troubled city of Samarra, tribal, city and religious leaders gathered along with students in the shadow of a spiral minaret, throwing rocks at U.S. tanks and shouting for the Americans to leave.”

PTSD. “For seven months, Pfc. Herold Noel of Brooklyn drove fuel trucks on the front lines in Iraq for the Army`s 3rd Infantry Division. He thought that he would come home a hero. Instead, he`s become a symbol of the increasing number of former Iraq and Afghanistan service members suffering post-traumatic stress disorder who are seeking help from a veterans health-care system unequipped to handle their needs. ‘Raising my kids while living in a car was not what I expected,’ said Noel, 25, at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday about a bill designed to help veterans like himself. ‘I expected the American dream.’”

Democracy on the march. “The brother of an Iraqi doctor living in Scarborough has been arrested by Occupation forces in his home-town of Mosul and detained without charge at an unknown location. Dr Amer Hamed, who moved to Scarborough four years ago, has been unable to find out why his brother was arrested by American troops on March 24, shortly after he opened an internet cafe to help pay for his studies.”

Commentary

Opinion: “The literal facts did not in the least give Bolton pause. Weapons of mass destruction would be found, he insisted. Where? When? How come they had not yet been discovered? The questions were insistent, but they were coming, please remember, from Italians, whose government was one of the few in the world to actively support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Bolton bristled. I have never seen such a performance by an American diplomat. He was dismissive. He was angry. He clearly thought the questioners had no right, no standing, no justification and no earthly reason to question the United States of America. The Bush administration had said that Iraq was lousy with WMD and Iraq therefore was lousy with WMD. Just you wait.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: California soldier dies from injuries received in Iraq.

Local story: Iowa Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Idaho soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Four Pennsylvania Guardsmen wounded in Iraq.
# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:30 AM
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Apr.05: 15

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Published on Thursday, April 14, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Courting Armageddon
How the Bush Administration`s Biological Weapons Buildup Affects You
by Heather Wokusch
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0414-21.htm

News that a U.S. company recently sent vials of a 1957 pandemic flu strain to laboratories across the world by accident is only the latest outrage from the billion-dollar boondoggle called the federal biological weapons program.

As you might recall, the Bush administration started its "biodefense" spending spree following the September 2001 deadly anthrax attacks, and one of its first projects was to genetically engineer a super-resistant, even more deadly version of the anthrax virus.

Our leaders are nuts.

Unfortunately, Project Jefferson has good company. A US Army scientist in Maryland is currently trying to bring back elements of the 1918 Spanish flu, a virus which killed 40 million people. And a virologist in St. Louis has been working on a more lethal form of mousepox (related to smallpox) - just to try stopping the virus once it`s been created.

Lack of oversight and runaway spending are exacerbated by the Bush administration`s disrespect for the internationally-recognized Biological Weapons Convention. In short, reduced pressure on weapons labs to issue declarations and allow inspections means less accountability - and more opportunities for secrecy and abuse.

Put bluntly, the increasing number of stateside bioweapons blunders should come as no surprise. In February 2003, for example, the University of California at Davis (UCD) took a full ten days to inform nearby communities that a rhesus monkey had escaped from its primate-breeding facility. Coincidentally, UCD had been vying for government funds to set up its own "hot zone" biodefense lab which could use primates for biological weapons testing. If that monkey had been infected with ebola, or some other virus, it`s unclear when or if the public would have been informed.

At roughly the same time that the monkey ditched UCD, the Pentagon unearthed over 2,000 tons of hazardous biological waste in Maryland, much of it undocumented leftovers of an abandoned germ warfare program. Nearby, the FBI was draining a pond for clues into 2001`s anthrax attacks.

Doesn`t inspire much trust in the transparency of US biological weapons programs. And things appear only to be getting worse.

In 2004, a whopping $6 billion went up for grabs for federal biodefense programs, and laboratories across the country went ballistic trying to get their hands on some of that cash. Predictably, cases of fraud and abuse quickly surfaced.

In June 2004, for example, the Army was caught shirking inspections at a major biodefense lab under its domain. The scandal went back to 1999, when the Army commissioned a biological and chemical weapons-agent lab at Tennessee`s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Oversight regulations obligated the Army to inspect the lab each year thereafter, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were supposed to have inspected the lab on a regular basis too.

Everything seemed to be running smoothly; in December 2003, the committee in charge of safety at the Oak Ridge lab announced that it "remains comfortable of the review and inspections of the Chem/Bio Facility conducted by the CDC and the Army."

Small problem. In 2004, the Department of Energy`s Inspector General discovered that the Army actually hadn`t inspected the Oak Ridge biodefense lab for the previous three years, and that the CDC hadn`t been there for four years. Yet the lab`s safety committee said it was "comfortable" with the imaginary inspections.

Also in 2004, a military biodefense contractor called Southern Research landed in hot water by accidentally sending live anthrax across the country from Frederick, Maryland to the Children`s Hospital of Oakland (California). To make matters worse, it turns out that Southern Research`s lab in Frederick, Maryland didn`t even maintain the institutional biosafety committee required by federal research rules. The punishment for these acts of gross incompetence and irresponsibility? The Bush administration gave Southern Research the task of safeguarding a new $30 million biological weapons facility being built near Chicago.

In September of the same year, three lab workers at the Boston University Medical Center were accidentally exposed to a potentially lethal biowarfare agent called tularaemia bacterium. The lab didn`t report the tularemia infections until two months later though - after it had won a contract to build a new, $178 million biodefense laboratory.

Concerns about lack of transparency and monetary waste aside, the administration`s bioweapons buildup raises obvious ethical problems. Why should the U.S. create newer, even deadlier viruses? Who are these catastrophic weapons going to be tested on? What populations will they ultimately be used against?

These questions take on urgent meaning given the Bush administration`s military adventurism coupled with the US media`s poor coverage regarding war victims. For example, eyewitnesses to the late-2004 attack on Fallujah claimed that US forces used poisonous gases, and "weird" bombs that exploded into fires that burned the skin despite water being thrown on the burns - a telltale sign of napalm or phosphorus bombs.

UK reaction to the revelation was swift and strong, with demands that Prime Minister Blair remove British troops from Iraq until the US ceased from using such savage weaponry. Labor MP Alice Mahon demanded that Blair make "an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: `Did we know about this hideous weapon`s use in Iraq?`"

No similar outrage in Congress. In fact, no comment at all. The US mainstream media didn`t cover the "weird bomb" allegations.

But it doesn`t take a genius to put two-and-two together: if we permit our government to ignore international weapons-control conventions and then say nothing while fresh billions are invested in barbaric new weaponry, we lose the right to act surprised when our own military uses that weaponry on innocent civilians abroad.

Or even on us.

You may be surprised to learn that in 2003, the Pentagon quietly admitted to having used biological/chemical agents on 5,842 service members in secret tests conducted over a ten-year period (1962-73).

In operations called Project 112 and Project SHAD, the Defense Department tested its own weapons on service members aboard Navy ships, and in all sorts of other nasty ways - such as spraying a Hawaiian rainforest and parts of Oahu. All in all, tests were conducted in six states (Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Utah) as well as in Canada and Britain.

Many military personnel were not informed when the toxic agents were being tested on them. Only decades later, as crucial documents slowly become declassified, have the veterans` health complaints been acknowledged.

You might think such barbarism could never happen again: too many legal protections for citizens in place. Think again.

There`s a tricky clause in Chapter 32/Title 50 of the United States Code (the aggregation of US general and permanent laws) which states that the Secretary of Defense can conduct a chemical or biological agent test or experiment on humans in certain cases "if informed consent has been obtained."

So far so good. But check out a different part of Chapter 32, Section 1515, entitled "Suspension; Presidential authorization":

After November 19, 1969, the operation of this chapter, or any portion thereof, may be suspended by the President during the period of any war declared by Congress and during the period of any national emergency declared by Congress or by the President.

You got it. If the President or Congress decides we`re at war then the Secretary of Defense doesn`t need anybody`s consent to test chemical or biological agents on human beings. Gives one pause during these days of a perpetual "War on Terror."

In January 2005, US Senate majority leader Bill Frist called for a new Manhattan Project (referring to the WWII-era nuclear weapons bonanza) for biological weapons. Frist told an audience at the World Economic Forum, "The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is biological," and he went on to predict a biowarfare attack "at some time in the next 10 years."

How ironic that while Frist cited the 2001 US anthrax attacks as proof more biological weapons research was necessary, he failed to mention that those incidents involved anthrax produced right in the good `ole USA - or that the primary suspect in the attacks was a US Army scientist. Frist also didn`t clarify how developing even more biological warfare agents would make the world safer.

The original Manhattan Project ultimately led to US forces dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the resulting slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. It`s terrifying to consider the potential repercussions, both domestic and abroad, of the Bush administration`s coveted new biological-weapons Manhattan Project.

Heather Wokusch is a free-lance writer who can be reached via her web site: www.heatherwokusch.com. This article was partially excerpted from her upcoming book entitled "The Progressives` Primer: 100 Easy Ways to Make a Difference Now." Heather`s currently on hiatus, putting together a multimedia project on women and war.

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Published on Thursday, April 14, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Welcome to Bush World
by Bob Burnett
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0414-31.htm

After 51 months, America has come to know, if not understand, the George Bush philosophy. The Administration`s trademark has been its pragmatism; rather than be strategically ideological, it is tactically political. As a consequence, its record is riddled with inconsistencies; for example, it has railed against big government but promoted the growth of massive federal bureaucracies in defense and homeland security. Viewed from afar the Bush legacy appears as a collage of conservative concepts stitched together by clever politics; a philosophy best described as a baroque theme park - Bush World - filled with thrill rides and exhibits driven by self-serving values.

To understand what George hath wrought, it`s informative to traverse Bush World, to experience a landscape that, while bearing a superficial resemblance to Disneyland, has a more sinister topography. As we enter the Administration`s theme park we find ourselves in a pristine bourgeoisie suburb, where the houses have immaculate lawns and their residents perfect teeth. We are in "virtue land," occupied exclusively by those who have "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps," developed discipline and morality, and earned their power and privilege. (This virtuous image ignores the reality that George Bush, and many in his Administration, took advantage of inherited wealth, and the old-boy network, to get where they are.)

Next-door we board the Bush version of the Jungle ride. Out of the shadows comes a torrent of our worst fears: terrorists, criminals, flesh-eating bacteria, calamitous weather and mammoth tidal waves. As we encounter each peril, gun-toting men rush in to save us. We have entered "guy land," which views the world as a jungle and argues we need the patriarchy to protect us, men who possess the right stuff, who are willing to do whatever it takes to protect the citizens cowering in fortress America. (This myth skips over the reality that the Bush Administration has ignored sage military advice about the war on terrorism and homeland security; as a result, our defenses have been weakened.)

A short distance away we find "God land." In its center is the shrine of infallibility, which celebrates two key conservative beliefs. The first is that America is God`s favored nation, which has been chosen to carry democracy, capitalism, and Christianity to the rest of the world. Closely related is the notion that God selected George W. Bush to be president, so that he could lead a moral crusade to purge the US of secularism, and create a Christian nation. Because of his divine mission, Bush can do no wrong. While there may be occasional missteps along the treacherous path, these are not his fault, or those of his advisers; rather they are an indication of the difficulty of doing battle against the forces of evil. (Of course, if you never admit making mistakes, then you never learn from them, and are prone to making them over and over again; for example, by continuously arguing that tax cuts for the wealthy will solve whatever economic woes beset America.)

Moving on, we come to "Adventure land," where we can play the political board game, "Hegemony," whose objective is the rapid expansion of American power throughout the world. The contest challenges us with vexing world problems, such as terrorism and global warming. We`re certain to win as long as we remember that the correct answer is always, "send in the Marines." (This homage to unilateralism ignores the reality that world affairs cannot be managed solely by military power; for example, we depend upon other nations to prop up our economy through their purchases of US securities.)

Our next stop is the Bush vision of Frontier land, which celebrates entrepreneurs who pursue open markets. Here we board the free-market roller coaster, where passengers experience gut-wrenching twists and turns and daunting obstacles, such as governmental red tape and environmental impact statements, on their way to a lucrative "cost plus" contract. (Once again, the Administration cultivates an image of rugged individualism, but glosses over the reality that the President and his associates made their money through crony capitalism.)

At the heart of Bush`s magic kingdom is "Fantasy Land." Here we take the newest thrill ride in the Park, the "dark labyrinth of falsehood." Citizens find themselves careening through a vast maze of misinformation; they struggle to discern the truth while beset by Administration prevarications, bogus news stories, cleverly conceived distractions and skillfully orchestrated conservative punditry. (When you rule America, you get to create your own reality.) Logically, visitors would expect that the final section of Bush World would be "Tomorrow land." Unfortunately, this Administration has no real plan for the future; therefore this area is closed, marked as "under construction."

The Administration`s theme park is successful because it provides Americans with enough vivid, synthetic experiences, artificial thrills and saccharine homilies, that they don`t notice the inconsistencies and the lack of meaning. The problem with this approach to governance is that America`s problems require serious thinking and comprehensive strategic plans. We need to enter reality land.

Nonetheless, America is stuck with George Bush and his magical kingdom. Welcome to Bush World. Fasten your seat belt.

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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Agathidium bushi
Fragwürdige Ehre

Ein Käfer namens Bush
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/erde/0,1518,351375,00.htm…

Selten hat sich eine US-Regierung in der Wissenschaft so viele Feinde gemacht wie die von Präsident George W. Bush. Einige Forscher haben sich nun auf ihre Weise gerächt: Sie benannten Schleimpilze fressende Käfer nach Bush, Vizepräsident Cheney und Verteidigungsminister Rumsfeld.

Schwammkugelkäfer: Ein Krabbeltier namens Agathidium bushi
Großbildansicht
Cornell University
Schwammkugelkäfer: Ein Krabbeltier namens Agathidium bushi
Es gibt Tiere, zu denen selbst der Enthusiast eine gewisse Distanz pflegt. "Eine obskure Art kleiner, Schleimpilze fressender Käfer" sei der Agathidium, schreibt der US-Forscher Kelly Miller auf seiner Webseite über seine winzigen Forschungsobjekte. Irgendwann müssen Miller und sein Kollege Quentin Wheeler entdeckt haben, dass die harmlosen Krabbeltiere auch in eine Art Biowaffe verwandelt werden können - um die ungeliebte US-Regierung satirisch zu bekämpfen.

Miller und Wheeler mussten sich kürzlich Bezeichnungen für 65 neu entdeckte Arten von Schwammkugelkäfern einfallen lassen. Nun krabbeln die insektenartigen Namensvettern des US-Präsidenten, seines Stellvertreters und des Pentagon-Chefs über die Schimmelpilze der südlichen USA und Mexikos: Agathidium bushi, Agathidium cheneyi und Agathidium rumsfeldi.

Mit dem Trio infernale der Tierwelt war die geistige Schaffenskraft der Forscher längst nicht am Ende. Andere Käfer wurden nach Berühmtheiten wie Pocahontas, Hernan Cortez oder "Star Wars"-Bösewicht Darth Vader benannt - Letzterer, weil Agathidium vaderi einen breiten, schimmernden, helmartigen Kopf habe. Anderen Agathidium-Arten verpassten die Entomologen griechische und lateinische Wörter für "hervorstehende Zähne", "seltsam" und "hässlich".

Die Benennung dreier Käferarten nach Bush, Cheney und Rumsfeld habe dagegen nichts mit physischen Merkmalen zu tun, beteuerte Wheeler, der 24 Jahre an der Cornell University lehrte und - welch ein Zufall - seit Oktober 2004 am Londoner Natural History Museum arbeitet. "Wir bewundern diese Führer als Mitbürger, die den Mut haben, zu ihren Überzeugungen zu stehen", erklärte Wheeler. Immerhin leisteten Bush, Rumsfeld und Cheney "die sehr schwierige und unpopuläre Arbeit, die Prinzipien der Freiheit und Demokratie zu leben, anstatt das Zweckdienliche oder Populäre hinzunehmen".

Die Frechheit der Forscher dürfte eine kleine Rache für zahlreiche offene und verborgene Gängeleien der Regierung Bush sein. Insbesondere bei Biologen, die mit biowaffenfähigem Material zu tun haben, aber auch bei Klimaforschern hat sich die US-Regierung mehr als unbeliebt gemacht. Das führte zu beispiellosen Vorgängen, wie etwa der offenen Unterstützung zahlreicher prominenter Forscher für Bushs Herausforderer John Kerry im Präsidentschaftswahlkampf.

Bei der Cornell University freut man sich offenbar diebisch über die kleine Rache von Wheeler und Kelly. "Präsident Bush, Vizepräsident Dick Cheney und Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld werden vielleicht keine nach ihnen benannte Bibliotheken, Flughäfen oder Highways bekommen", ätzte die Hochschule in einer Mitteilung. "Aber jeder kriegt einen Schwammkugelkäfer, benannt zu seinen Ehren."

Wheeler verrate auch gern, wo sich die Regierungskäfer befinden - "für jeden", heißt es in der Mitteilung wörtlich, "der einen Bush-, Rumsfeld- oder Cheney-Käfer zur Strecke bringen will".

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April 15, 2005
G.M. and Ford Stuck in Neutral as Buyers Look Beyond Detroit
By DANNY HAKIM
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/automobiles/15auto.html?hp…

DETROIT, April 14 - In just the last few weeks, the grand plans that were supposed to carry General Motors and Ford Motor into their second centuries have crumbled.

Sales at G.M. have fallen, profits have tumbled to losses. Last week, Ford also warned of a drop in earnings. Thursday, in yet another blow, its union refused to give much ground on G.M.`s health care coverage. If that were not enough, G.M.`s stock hit a 12-year low. (Related Article)

The Big Two automobile giants offer plenty of explanations, from soaring health care costs to rising gas prices and creeping interest rates. But consumers and industry specialists say G.M. and Ford have swerved off course for a more basic reason: not enough people like their cars.

"I still hate to buy a foreign car," said T. J. Penn, a 44-year-old painting and drywall contractor walking through a Toyota lot this week in Ann Arbor, Mich. "But the quality and reliability makes it hard not to."

Despite free loans and rebates worth several thousand dollars, G.M. and Ford are losing sales to perennial competitors like Toyota and newer rivals like Hyundai, which are more often getting the carmaking formula right: consistent quality, reliability and that intangible appeal.

G.M. and Ford are having such a hard time bringing in the real American consumer that about a third of their sales go to their own employees, their family and friends, or to rental companies and corporate fleets, at razor-thin margins.

And now they are also losing their safety net. Detroit turned the S.U.V. and pickup truck into popular consumer products that propelled profits for much of the last decade. But with Asian makers now entrenched in the S.U.V. market - and setting their sights on pickups - G.M. and Ford have lost any margin for error.

In their storied pasts, both G.M. and Ford did best when they offered something others did not. Henry Ford created a car for the masses, the Model-T, which was far more efficiently made and cheaply priced than rival cars. G.M., the first car conglomerate, struggled to compete with Ford until an executive emerged in the 1920`s, Alfred P. Sloan Jr., who believed the company`s amalgam of brands - including Chevy, Buick and Cadillac - could be organized to offer what Ford did not, namely choice and plenty of it.

Today, both companies occupy the dreaded middle, offering neither compelling value nor compelling beauty, with exceptions like the popular new version of the Ford Mustang or G.M.`s revived Cadillac line. Auto companies can make up for a lot by making enticing automobiles, and right now analysts see something of a storm approaching that needs a survival plan.

"If I was in their styling studio I`d be working 24 hours a day on models that excited me when I walked through the door," said Gerald Meyers, a University of Michigan professor and the former chief executive of American Motors, which was taken over by Chrysler. "There has to be excitement in that instant when the customer walks through the door. That decision to look and buy happens very quickly."

Soaring health care costs are a crushing burden because G.M. and Ford cover 1.7 million Americans, or more than half a percent of the total population. Raw material prices, gas prices and interest rates are all rising. The two companies now command roughly 45 percent of the domestic market, their core profit center, down from 58.4 percent a decade ago, according to Ward`s Automotive, even though they have acquired European brands like Saab, Volvo and Jaguar in the interim.

Mr. Penn`s mother worked "at Ford`s," he said, using the local vernacular for the family-controlled company. The idea of buying import cars "was out of the question, but then I had a Subaru Forester and it was a great car." Now he owns a Toyota Sienna minivan and said he was even considering eventually trading in his fifth Ford F-150 pickup for a Toyota Tundra.

"A lot of it is the engineering and that they stay on the road a long time," he added. "It seems like the Japanese technology in cars are better value."

Many analysts see a prescription for success in Chrysler, a division of the German automaker DaimlerChrysler. The company`s recent recovery has been driven by hot sales of a few key products, particularly the one that stands out on the road, the Bentley-like Chrysler 300 sedan.

"American cars were like the Marlboro man for years - there was an ideal of freedom, space, luxury and abundance," said G. Clotaire Rapaille, a consultant on what makes consumers buy cars.

"The brands are being watered down so they are generic," he added. "And people have always said that if they want to buy generic cars, the Japanese or the Koreans build them better."

What is worse is that Asian cars are not even generic anymore. One of the most profitable automakers, Nissan, is now widely considered one of the boldest designers. G.M. and Ford have been vocal in recent years about making what G.M.`s vice chairman, Robert A. Lutz, calls "gotta-have" cars. But entrenched bureaucracies and cost-cutting pressure do not easily produce elegance.

Cars can fail to measure up on a variety of sensory fronts. Ford`s new Five Hundred sedan has been criticized for borrowing an engine from the aged Taurus that lacks pep; a review in Car and Driver magazine lamented that the car "merely oozes forward." The Detroit Free Press criticized G.M.`s Pontiac G6, a sedan pitched as sporty and exciting, for a "rather numb" feel behind the wheel.

Pressure is coming from BMW and Mercedes, selling cars starting around $30,000, and Asian makers offering vehicles under $20,000.

"You want to put money into something you`ll get return back from," said Nathaniel Nix, a 37-year-old pastor at a church in the Detroit suburb of Ypsilanti, in an interview this week at a Toyota dealership. Mr. Nix, who was a car salesman for both Ford and Toyota more than a decade ago, said Toyota`s higher resale value and more consistent quality made its cars a good investment.

And if Japanese automakers "were the boring ones" in the past, he said now "they`re doing an awesome job in the styling realm."

Mr. Nix is in the market for a car because his 16-year-old son, also named Nathaniel, crashed the family`s Corolla. The younger Mr. Nix is pressing his father for an xB, an S.U.V. from Toyota`s new youth brand, Scion, that looks like a microwave oven on wheels.

Does the younger Mr. Nix like American cars?

"The `67 GT Cobra, the Boss 302 and the old Charger," he said, reeling off vintage Detroit muscle cars.

"What about the new ones?" his father asked.

"Um," his son considered for a moment. "Not really."

As G.M. and Ford lose their grip on American buyers, Michigan`s unemployment rate is now the highest in the nation.

"You can`t keep losing the market share like G.M.`s losing, you know," said Kenneth Shelton, a 49-year-old machine operator at G.M.`s Willow Run transmission plant in Ypsilanti. The factory, which once produced World War II bombers and covers the space of more than 83 football fields in this Detroit suburb, is down to 3,800 workers today, from about 12,000 two decades ago.

Mr. Shelton and his wife, Joy, met 20 years ago at the time clock. He was punching in, she was punching out. Back then, Willow Run was "like a city that never stopped," said Joy, 48, a quality inspector. "It was just bustling, always bustling, everybody just worked, worked, worked, worked, worked. It was nothing like it is now."

Now, her husband said: "They hit us every day in the papers. We read it. We read it. We pay attention.

"These kind of jobs, where could you find something like this anymore?"

A rising sense of frustration is also evident in executive suites. G.M.`s chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, who has declined interview requests in recent weeks, shook up his senior North American management last month and his company is increasingly on edge. Last week, G.M. pulled its advertising from The Los Angeles Times, the largest newspaper in one of G.M.`s weakest markets, after a columnist said Mr. Wagoner should be fired.

Ford`s own troubles came into view last week as the company sharply scaled back its earnings projections and abandoned the cornerstone profit goal of its three-year-old revival plan; its stock fell to a nearly two-year low.

If most on Wall Street do not think bankruptcy is on the horizon because the companies have adequate cash reserves, analysts also see no clear turnaround path. Rising gas prices are weighing on sales of Detroit staples like Ford Explorers and G.M.`s Chevrolet Suburbans. In its profit warning last week, Ford cited as a key factor "the prospect of higher and sustained gasoline prices." Some analysts worry that Toyota and Honda are far better positioned to weather gas prices because they have stronger passenger car offerings and are far ahead in developing fuel-efficient hybrid electric cars.

Rising interest rates shave profits from car loans. Overseas operations drain more than reward. And both companies are flirting with junk bond ratings, which would drive up borrowing costs by billions of dollars.

"Right now, we don`t know if we are going to be here another five years," said William Murphy, a 70-year-old lathe operator at G.M.`s Willow Run plant. G.M. recently made an investment in the plant, so it is not likely to disappear.

If it did, Mr. Murphy said his nearly four decades of seniority would come in handy. "I`ll be the one to shut the lights down."

Mr. Murphy, a large man in overalls hailed as Murph by co-workers, spoke while eating an Italian ice before his shift, sitting in his sister`s car. A Hyundai.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 15, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Bush Disarms, Unilaterally
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/opinion/15friedman.html?

One of the things that I can`t figure out about the Bush team is why an administration that is so focused on projecting U.S. military strength abroad has taken such little interest in America`s economic competitiveness at home - the underlying engine of our strength. At a time when the global economic playing field is being flattened - enabling young Indians and Chinese to collaborate and compete with Americans more than ever before - this administration is off on an ideological jag. It is trying to take apart the New Deal by privatizing Social Security, when what we really need most today is a New New Deal to make more Americans employable in 21st-century jobs.

We have a Treasury secretary from the railroad industry. We have an administration that won`t lift a finger to prevent the expensing of stock options, which is going to inhibit the ability of U.S. high-tech firms to attract talent - at a time when China encourages its start-ups to grant stock options to young innovators. And we have movie theaters in certain U.S. towns afraid to show science films because they are based on evolution and not creationism.

The Bush team is proposing cutting the Pentagon`s budget for basic science and technology research by 20 percent next year - after President Bush and the Republican Congress already slashed the 2005 budget of the National Science Foundation by $100 million.

When the National Innovation Initiative, a bipartisan study by the country`s leading technologists and industrialists about how to re-energize U.S. competitiveness, was unveiled last December, it was virtually ignored by the White House. Did you hear about it? Probably not, because the president preferred to focus all attention on privatizing Social Security.

It`s as if we have an industrial-age presidency, catering to a pre-industrial ideological base, in a post-industrial era.

Thomas Bleha, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer in Japan, has a fascinating piece in the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs that begins like this: "In the first three years of the Bush administration, the United States dropped from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage. Today, most U.S. homes can access only `basic` broadband, among the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world, and the United States has fallen even further behind in mobile-phone-based Internet access. The lag is arguably the result of the Bush administration`s failure to make a priority of developing these networks. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized state without an explicit national policy for promoting broadband."

Since it took over in 2001, the Bush team has made it clear that its priorities are tax cuts, missile defense and the war on terrorism - not keeping the U.S. at the forefront of Internet innovation. In the administration`s first three years, President Bush barely uttered the word "broadband," Mr. Bleha notes, but when America "dropped the Internet leadership baton, Japan picked it up. In 2001, Japan was well behind the United States in the broadband race. But thanks to top-level political leadership and ambitious goals, it soon began to move ahead.

"By May 2003, a higher percentage of homes in Japan than the United States had broadband. ...

"Today, nearly all Japanese have access to `high-speed` broadband, with an average connection time 16 times faster than in the United States - for only about $22 a month. ... And that is to say nothing of Internet access through mobile phones, an area in which Japan is even further ahead of the United States. It is now clear that Japan and its neighbors will lead the charge in high-speed broadband over the next several years."

South Korea, which has the world`s greatest percentage of broadband users, and urban China, which last year surpassed the U.S. in the number of broadband users, are keeping pace with Japan - not us. By investing heavily in these new technologies, Mr. Bleha notes, these nations will be the first to reap their benefits - from increased productivity to stronger platforms for technological innovation; new kinds of jobs, services and content; and rising standards of living.

Economics is not like war. It can be win-win. But you need to be at a certain level to be able to claim your share of a global pie that is both expanding and becoming more complex. Tax cuts can`t solve every problem. This administration - which often seems more interested in indulging creationism than spurring creativity - is doing a very poor job of preparing the country for that next level.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 15, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Medical Money Pit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/opinion/15krugman.html

A dozen years ago, everyone was talking about a health care crisis. But then the issue faded from view: a few years of good data led many people to conclude that H.M.O.`s and other innovations had ended the historic trend of rising medical costs.

But the pause in the growth of health care costs in the 1990`s proved temporary. Medical costs are once again rising rapidly, and our health care system is once again in crisis. So now is a good time to ask why other advanced countries manage to spend so much less than we do, while getting better results.

Before I get to the numbers, let me deal with the usual problem one encounters when trying to draw lessons from foreign experience: somebody is sure to bring up the supposed horrors of Britain`s government-run system, which historically had long waiting lists for elective surgery.

In fact, Britain`s system isn`t as bad as its reputation - especially for lower-paid workers, whose counterparts in the United States often have no health insurance at all. And the waiting lists have gotten shorter.

But in any case, Britain isn`t the country we want to look at, because its health care system is run on the cheap, with total spending per person only 40 percent as high as ours.

The countries that have something to teach us are the nations that don`t pinch pennies to the same extent - like France, Germany or Canada - but still spend far less than we do. (Yes, Canada also has waiting lists, but they`re much shorter than Britain`s - and Canadians overwhelmingly prefer their system to ours. France and Germany don`t have a waiting list problem.)

Let me rattle off some numbers.

In 2002, the latest year for which comparable data are available, the United States spent $5,267 on health care for each man, woman and child in the population. Of this, $2,364, or 45 percent, was government spending, mainly on Medicare and Medicaid. Canada spent $2,931 per person, of which $2,048 came from the government. France spent $2,736 per person, of which $2,080 was government spending.

Amazing, isn`t it? U.S. health care is so expensive that our government spends more on health care than the governments of other advanced countries, even though the private sector pays a far higher share of the bills than anywhere else.

What do we get for all that money? Not much.

Most Americans probably don`t know that we have substantially lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality figures than other advanced countries. It would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that this poor performance is entirely the result of a defective health care system; social factors, notably America`s high poverty rate, surely play a role. Still, it seems puzzling that we spend so much, with so little return.

A 2003 study published in Health Affairs (one of whose authors is my Princeton colleague Uwe Reinhardt) tried to resolve that puzzle by comparing a number of measures of health services across the advanced world. What the authors found was that the United States scores high on high-tech services - we have lots of M.R.I.`s - but on more prosaic measures, like the number of doctors` visits and number of days spent in hospitals, America is only average, or even below average. There`s also direct evidence that identical procedures cost far more in the U.S. than in other advanced countries.

The authors concluded that Americans spend far more on health care than their counterparts abroad - but they don`t actually receive more care. The title of their article? "It`s the Prices, Stupid."

Why is the price of U.S. health care so high? One answer is doctors` salaries: although average wages in France and the United States are similar, American doctors are paid much more than their French counterparts. Another answer is that America`s health care system drives a poor bargain with the pharmaceutical industry.

Above all, a large part of America`s health care spending goes into paperwork. A 2003 study in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that administrative costs took 31 cents out of every dollar the United States spent on health care, compared with only 17 cents in Canada.

In my next column in this series, I`ll explain why the most privatized health care system in the advanced world is also the most bloated and bureaucratic.

E-mail: [e-mail]

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/
Friday, April 15, 2005

Guerrilla War Leaves 24 Dead in Iraq

The Financial Times reports that guerrilla actions, including bombings and ambushes, left at least 24 persons dead on Thursday in Iraq. There were bombs in Baghdad, as well as shootings and assassinations elsewhere. Police were killed near Kirkuk and a bomb exploded in Basra, hurting two civilian passersby (the target was a police vehicle)

One official took comfort from the evidence that the suicide bombings in Baghdad mainly killed motorists and street sweepers, rather than more strategic personnel, leading to the conclusion that today`s suicide bombers are not as well-trained.

The aim of the bombers is to destabilize society by making everyone feel insecure. My Iraqi contacts say you still hear bombings and machine gun fire all night in Baghdad. Those bombs on Thursday added to the atmosphere of insecurity, making it less likely that the new Iraq can pull itself together. You don`t need a lot of training for that.

Patrick Cockburn reveals the insecurity that still plagues the northern city of Mosul. He says the current deputy governor can`t trust the police of Ninevah province, many of whom are actually working for the guerrillas. The police may have helped in the assassination of the previous governor! The Kurdish deputy governor says, "I tell my bodyguards not to trust the police and don`t tell them our movements."

The next time you hear Bush or Rumsfeld say that 140,000 Iraqi police and troops have been trained, remember what Khasro Goran said about the 14,000 in Ninevah province.

Al-Hayat reports today vice-president Ghazi al-Yawir`s complaints that Sunni Arabs are being discriminated against. He said that mere Baath party members not guilty of crimes should not be denied positions. He also blamed the Shiite leadership for not doing more to draw in the Sunni Arabs, and rejected the idea of reducing the number of the 31 cabinet posts set aside for the Sunni Arabs from 6 to 4.

Two Fallujah updates:

at the Associated Press and

at MSNBC.com

Eric`s critique of the Michael Ware piece on Iran is here.

posted by Juan @ [url4/15/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/guerrilla-war-leaves-24-dead-in-iraq.html[/url]

Secret Service Still Hasn`t Caught Bin Laden

Shouldn`t the Secret Service be out trying to find Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri?. The most prominent organized group that I know of trying to kill the president is at large, its leaders taunting us.
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So how are we using our Secret Service to best effect? The Chicago Sun-Times tells us:

"Organizers of a politically charged art exhibit at Columbia College`s Glass Curtain Gallery thought their show might draw controversy. But they didn`t expect two U.S. Secret Service agents would be among the show`s first visitors. The agents turned up Thursday evening, just before the public opening of "Axis of Evil, the Secret History of Sin," and took pictures of some of the art pieces -- including "Patriot Act," showing President Bush on a mock 37-cent stamp with a revolver pointed at his head."[urlSecret Service visits art show at Columbia]http://www.allhatnocattle.net/12axis.jpg[/url]


It`s art, guys.
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If they have a travel budget, I suggest they check out this Guernica painting in Madrid, too. It is widely rumored to be anti-war, to support the Basques (ETA has been involved in terrorism), and to have been painted by a Communist.

I think we can all sleep more safely tonight here in the Midwest, I`ll tell you that.

posted by Juan @ [url4/15/2005 06:05:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/secret-service-still-hasnt-caught-bin.html[/url]

Oil for Food Scandal taints (gasp!) Houston

We`ve had to put up for months with blowhards like Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota jumping up and down about the Iraq food for oil scandal at the United Nations. Coleman even called for the resignation of Kofi Annan, who hasn`t been shown to have behaved improperly himself. Of course, it was clear all along that if fully investigated, the scandal would touch all kinds of oilmen in the United States, as well.

Meet David B. Chalmers, of Bayoil, in Houston, Texas.

Let`s see if Norm Coleman calls for sanctions against US businessmen and petroleum companies tainted by the scandal.

posted by Juan @ [url4/15/2005 06:00:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/oil-for-food-scandal-taints-gasp.html[/url]

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Friday, April 15, 2005
War News for Friday, April 15, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi civilians wounded in roadside bomb ambush of US convoy in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi civilian killed, three wounded in bomb attack on US patrol in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed by mortar fire in al Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi detainee killed, 12 injured in prison riot at Camp Bucca.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis wounded by mortar fire in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi soldiers killed by roadside bomb near Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi policemen killed by car bomb near Mahawil.

The casualties not counted. “Iraqi families like the Yasseens fall between the cracks of the meager state support networks that exist in Iraq. The US military offers compensation, but only for damage or death caused by the military. Victims of car bombings and other violence don`t qualify. Most humanitarian organizations fled Iraq when the United Nations headquarters was attacked with a car bomb in August 2003. Zeinab`s sister Nisreen, 4 years old at the time, was uninjured. The day after the blast, she sat in a dirty pink shirt watching the adults pick through the rubble, surrounded by the few things the family had been able to salvage: Coffee pots, rolled-up mattresses, bits of clothing, and cups. Now Nisreen is an energetic 5-year-old, bounding around the small room that is her house. Her younger sister, Zeinab, is now 4 but looks half that age and seems to have lost the ability to speak, as well as walk, since the explosion, her mother says. Since the bombing, some of the neighbors have rebuilt their homes, and to everyone`s horror, the police station has reopened. They don`t see it as a source of security, but rather a fresh target for the insurgents.”

Mosul. “Anybody who believes Iraq has turned the corner and violence is diminishing should pay a visit to its northern capital, though they must be extremely careful when doing so. A suicide bomber detonated explosives in his car outside an army post in Mosul yesterday, creating a cloud of smoke and dust that hovered over the city. Across the country, insurgents opened a new offensive with at least 18 people being killed by suicide bombs in Baghdad.”

By the numbers. “In strictly numerical terms, Army Spc. Glenn J. Watkins, 42, of Tacoma, killed April 5 by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, was the 1,543rd U.S. service member to die in Iraq and the 100th with Washington state connections to die in the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. His death pushed to 40 the number of widows (and one widower) and to 60 the number of children left behind by state-connected personnel killed in the wars. As of this week, almost 1,550 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq. Counting the 150-plus dead of Afghanistan and the Philippines, where this state has lost nine fighters, more than 1,700 American military personnel have died in the Southwest Asia war zone during combat and noncombat incidents since October 2001.”

A sorry tale. “The Army first had just 235 armored humvees in Iraq. Planners did not expect a long, bloody occupation. Loren Thompson, a defense analyst, recalls an upbeat briefing on Iraq reconstruction with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the joint chiefs of staff: ‘The one thing missing was the enemy.’ As the invasion ended and the occupation began, humvees - smaller, more nimble than tanks or armored personnel carriers - got more use. Three weeks after President Bush`s May 1, 2003, ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech on an aircraft carrier, a bomb exploded on a road near Baghdad, hitting an unarmored humvee as it escorted a convoy. The blast wounded three troops and killed Pfc. Jeremiah Smith, 25, of Odessa, Mo., a father of two girls. It was one of the first of many attacks using crude, remotely detonated bombs - in military parlance, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Sorenson says, ‘No one, no one, predicted in the insurgency a potential’ to use this tactic so widely. From the supply side, officials said, the problem was that the armor "requirement" - what combat commanders asked for - went up in small jumps, over months, forcing them to chase a moving target. By the time Brownlee decided that the Army needed a total of 8,105 factory-armored humvees in Iraq, the insurgency was 15 months old. And on April 8, the Army said it needed more, pushing the total past 10,000.”

Commentary

Editorial: “George W. Bush will go down in the history books, for having led the country into war on false premises, jeopardized individual liberties, made America an international bully in the eyes of long-time allies, wrecked the federal budget, deserted conservative principles of governance, savaged the regulatory system, set back environmental progress and polarized the country even further. It`s hard to choose, but perhaps Mr. Bush`s most dangerous sin is his embrace of bully boy tactics in international relations. The Defense Department last month confirmed that it`s now official U.S. policy to threaten pre-emptive, unilateral strikes against nations thought to pose a threat.”

Editorial: “The Pentagon also hurts itself with a ‘don`t ask, don`t tell’ policy that forces good soldiers out of the military if they reveal their homosexuality. A government audit found that from 1994 to 2003, at least 9,488 soldiers were discharged because of sexual orientation, and the cost to recruit and train their replacements is more than $200 million. When it comes to homosexuality, the U.S. military is out of step with NATO and other allies. Britain reversed its policy several years ago and has begun recruiting gays actively. So does Israel. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, broke with her Republican leadership and is sponsoring a bill that would repeal the military`s ban on gays. ‘There`s no scientific evidence,’ she correctly says, ‘that sexual orientation has an effect on the ability to perform as a military officer or a buck private.’ This month, an Army sergeant wounded in Iraq received a Purple Heart, then disclosed his homosexuality. He faces discharge because of his honesty and despite his bravery. Beyond phoning ‘influencers,’ the Pentagon should call itself to task and end self-defeating policies that make an exit from Iraq even more difficult than it already is.”

Editorial: “Where is the president and his ‘culture of life?’ Has he forgotten there`s a war on against terror? Curiously, the Justice Department allowed Mr. Rudolph to plead guilty and avoid the death sentence that in other circumstances the feds have been quite energetic in pursuing. The official explanation was that a trial and a death sentence would have made a "martyr" of this man, who as a high-profile fugitive for five years eluded a giant manhunt and became something of a folk hero in rural Appalachia. But questions will go unanswered that a trial might have resolved. Did Mr. Rudolph think up the idea of becoming a ‘pro-life’ killer all by himself, or did others influence his thinking? He said in his statement he had no ties to the fascist Christian Identity movement. Is that really the case? Did he build, plant and detonate his bombs all by himself, or did he have assistance and support? It`s comforting to think Mr. Rudolph was a lone zealot, unless he wasn`t. Without a trial, we`ll never know. Maybe the prosecutors thought they couldn`t get him and so opted for an easy plea. But there are powerful people for whom the spectacle of an unrepentant murderer for the unborn, a clean-cut movie star handsome Christian terrorist, posed political problems. Better to defend life in the abstract, keep the focus on the enemy at the gates and keep skeletons like Eric Rudolph locked up in the closet.”

Analysis: “Saddam Hussein’s effigy was pulled down again in Baghdad’s Firdos Square last weekend. But unlike the made-for-TV event when United States troops first entered the Iraqi capital, the toppling of Hussein on the occupation’s second anniversary was different. Instead of being done by US Marines with a few dozen Iraqi bystanders, 300 000 Iraqis were on hand. They threw down effigies of US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as the old dictator, at a rally that did not celebrate liberation but called for the immediate departure of foreign troops. For most Iraqis, with the exception of the Kurds, Washington’s “liberation” never was. Wounded national pride was greater than relief at Hussein’s departure. Iraqis were soon angered by the failure to get power and water supplies repaired, the brutality of US army tactics, and the disappearance of their country’s precious oil revenues into inadequately supervised accounts, or handed to foreigners under contracts that produced no benefits for Iraqis. From last year’s disastrous attack on Fallujah to the huge increase in detentions without trial, the casualties go on rising. After an amnesty early last year, the numbers of “security detainees” have gone up again and reached a record 17 000. Last weekend’s vast protest shows that opposition is still growing, in spite of US and British government claims to have Iraqis’ best interests at heart. It was the biggest demonstration since foreign troops invaded.”

Analysis: “With the demobilisation of an already defunct army and police force, the ratio of security forces to civilians fell overnight from a 34 per 1000 under the ancient regime, to less than three per 1000 under the CPA. Security vacuum was glaring. Worst still, the country was awash with arms. Some 4.5 million pieces, varying from anti- air-craft missiles to mortars and assault rifles, were available to civilians as old army depots were turned into free shopping zones. Another destabilising social element was the rise in criminal violence. In addition tribal war lords and private militias exacerbated volatility. The political vacuum was also a crucial factor. The CPA was an occupying force with which the population could hardly think of cooperating. The absence of an Iraqi government was a source of bitterness and misgivings. The Governing Council (GC) of Iraqis (formed on 13 July 2003) had no powers, and was seen as mere appendix to the CPA. The GC`s very structure, based on community quotas, was a driver of conflict. No government, no intelligence, no police, no army. This was a recipe for the civil war that was not. Loss of sovereignty, however bitter, was one way or another less crucial in the eyes of various Iraqi players than the new distribution of power that empowered hitherto disenfranchised communities and groups (Shia, Kurds, or liberals and leftists), and marginalised the masters of yesterdays (the Baath lot). Bitterness expressed at national disempowerment was in essence resentment at this new redistribution of power.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Florida soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: New York soldier killed in Iraq.
# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:09 AM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 13, 2005


Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Tomgram:
Lambert on Moral Voters
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2318

Every spring, I spend many weeks at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California in Berkeley teaching young journalists. I essentially become an editor to a group of them for a semester. They are always immensely lively and invariably produce pieces that surprise me. Though I get paid for this, I should really pay someone for the essential pleasure of working with young writers.

Below, you`ll find the first of two pieces I`ll be posting at Tomdispatch that came out of my class. Lisa Lambert offers what to my mind is an original (and personal) vision of the President`s "moral" voters. Her piece will also appear this Sunday in the San Francisco Chronicle`s Insight section.
Tom

GodAssault
Morality as the Ultimate Game
By Lisa Lambert

Because certain trees are sprouting in the Middle East, the world will soon end. Because the European Union has grown to its current size, fiery death and plagues of locusts are about to descend on the planet. Because Israel established a homeland, non-believers will, in a short while, suffer agonizing horrors before being damned to an eternity of pain.

And now a word from our sponsor -- a real estate agent helping Christians find their dream homes.

This summer, I joined the rush hour in San Bernardino. Every day, descending the final hill from Los Angeles into the fastest growing region in California, I tuned into Christian radio station K-Wave. The station broadcast lessons on Christ-sanctioned financial planning as well as sermons on faith-rooted marriages. But its mission of missions was to map out, just the way the Weather Channel describes approaching storm fronts, the end of the world now bearing down upon us.

The deep voice of Pastor Chuck Smith filled my car each morning. Founder of Calvary Chapel, a "mega-church" with a publishing company, Bible colleges, and franchises in every state, Pastor Chuck inspired two followers to write the best-selling Left Behind novels about the Apocalypse. Soon obsessed with the station, I started wishing my Democratic friends in L.A. would join me in K-Wave`s freeway congregation.

Each evening I returned home to find them wringing their hands over the possibility that a born-again Christian president, who laced his speeches with secret signals to fellow worshippers and considered praying his most important action before starting an unjust war, might be re-elected -- and re-elected by religious nuts so stupid they believed Sesame Street`s Bert and Ernie were lovers.

As it happened, those "nuts" won the election for the president. Ill-prepared newscasters promptly relabeled them "moral voters," showing how little they understood about the new religion practiced in Calvary Chapel.

Democrats could, of course, have turned on K-Wave (or its equivalent), but even then they might not have grasped the most basic element of Calvary Chapel: It isn`t guided by the outside world`s concept of the Christian right`s stern and unforgiving morals code.

While Calvary Chapel encourages Christians to enjoy "fellowship" with God, the doctrine it preaches is guided not by any ordinary sense of morality but by a gruesome vision of the end of the world and a set of instructions for how to deal with it.

Listening to that doctrine each morning and evening, I felt the sensations American audiences first discovering Hong Kong action flicks must have known: a fascination with the exotic combined with awe at the extreme violence it displayed. Granted, my perspective is unusual. Unlike most of my Democratic friends, I was raised in a church that practiced New Thought Christianity just up the freeway from Pastor Chuck`s compound. It offered a new agey cocktail of faith, drawing heavily from Buddhism, Hinduism, and transcendentalism. Just the type of stuff Calvary Chapel abhors.

My childhood of crystals and sunshine made Calvary Chapel-style evangelism, with its emphasis on conversion and its belief in testifying to God`s power, something strange and deeply mysterious. I felt like an anthropologist investigating a new culture as I listened to its broadcasts, and what I found makes me refuse to picture the organization as an army of moral voters.

Faith, California-Casual Style

If my liberal friends had accompanied me to the Calvary Chapel branch in Livermore to meet other listeners they might have wondered if we were in a real church. The squat, one-room chapel, with its rows of chairs, resembled a conference room. I, though, recognized it immediately as California-casual-style worship. New Thought had had the same laid-back vibe at its gatherings.

Under a 1960`s suburban sun, spiritual wanderers established my childhood church. Around the same time Pastor Chuck began ministering to Jesus freaks and Republicans in Orange County. My church stagnated in the 1980`s. Its meditation garden now sits empty. Pastor Chuck`s congregation, on the other hand, grew until Calvary Chapel took up a campus as large as a mall and spread beyond the country`s borders.

My friends might have been surprised that as I sat in this chapel, where the outline of a dove on the back wall replaced a traditional altar, I wasn`t thinking about morality or stupidity. I was simply staring at the people around me who wore jeans, shushed babies, and tried not to kick over their purses on the floor. When the pastor asked everyone to greet each other, a woman buzzed up to urgently give me important bullet points from her life. One: She met her husband at church. Two: Her new baby was named Grace. I could escape the future of lonely desperation that she`d narrowly avoided, she implied, by finding a man here.

The Left Behind books serve as Calvary Chapel`s literary touchstone, even though they`re closer in quality to Star Wars paperbacks than anything penned by St. Augustine or St. Thomas More. In the series, certain people are physically sucked up to heaven, leaving those who don`t make the celestial cut to suffer through the last, grim days of life on Earth. The people in the chapel had the feel of those left behind not by God, but by our world. They weren`t losers, but they`d lost out.

Religious scholar Donald E. Miller, who studied Calvary Chapel for his book Reinventing American Protestantism, found its congregations to be dominated by blue-collar Americans. Only 20% of church members had a college degree. Over half of the pastors Miller surveyed had grown up, or spent parts of their lives, in single-parent homes; 70% had parents who abused drugs or alcohol. The numbers were similar for the congregants, almost a third of whom claimed to have been physically and/or sexually abused.

In my friends` world, such numbers would be as alien as the Rapture itself, but I suspect Pastor Chuck knows them intimately. His mission is to embrace those the world leaves behind and promise them a new chance in the after-life.

The dove on the chapel wall, I decided, wasn`t the typical symbol of peace found in many Christian art works. In the Old Testament, a dove lands on Noah`s Ark after the entire earth has been flooded, proving there`s land nearby and providing hope for a new life to all the creatures crammed onto the wooden boat. In the same way Calvary Chapel`s dove offered hope not of peace but of a change in fortune, at least for those who belong to the church.

Playing by God`s Rules

What liberals might have learned from visiting Livermore, listening to K-Wave, or reading Calvary Chapel-inspired web sites is that "morality," at least as they imagine it, is beside the point. In fact, Calvary Chapel-style Christianity is a complex system with intricate rules. Think of it as God`s game. Instead of X-Box`s MechAssault, this is GodAssault.

If you play the game correctly, you`ll receive that change in fortune. If not here, then in the after-life.

The guidebook to the game`s moves is the Bible; the key steps to winning are in the Book of Revelation. Conventional notions of "morality," in which people adapt standards of right and wrong to an ever-changing world, don`t hold here. Neither do the teachings from my childhood, which emphasized enlightenment and a sense of knowing God through your mind and heart.

In GodAssault, your conscience is not your guide.

The Bible is.

Like many evangelical forms of Protestantism, Calvary Chapel preaches that everything a Christian needs is written, word by holy word, in the Bible. In Miller`s surveys, everyone from Calvary Chapel`s pastors to its recent converts said they took the Bible literally. If you read the Book of Revelation as the physical, material truth, then you come to see God`s game as one played in a swirling, planet-devouring vortex of blood and violence.

Pastor Chuck`s main radio work involved describing this unstoppable Apocalypse, doling out a new chapter each morning. It begins as the Antichrist arrives on Earth -- some time after the Jews establish a Holy Land -- to annihilate a large percentage of the planet`s population. Then, Christ comes to judge the living and the dead, sending the bad guys to a just and unspeakably gory end.

Calvary Chapel`s Apocalypse, however, bears a resemblance to the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. Just as "D and D" players excel by learning complicated strategies and knowing arcane sub-rules of sub-rules, Calvary Chapel Christians win by following a set of instructions taken straight from the Bible. They must know the secret passwords, identify their enemies correctly, and understand what lies beneath the various layers of evil. False prophets will become popular in the end times, for example, and those who don`t want to be damned will recognize these poseurs and refuse to worship with them.

Whether heaven`s riches are 72 virgins or a beautiful set of angel wings, Calvary Chapel won`t say. Prizes aren`t important to the game, because winning is defined as not losing; not having to endure unthinkable tortures. And not losing rests on adhering to all of the rules.

My friends in L.A. wanted to know what this new "morality" meant in terms of American politics. Was there some way to maneuver on this new political landscape, dominated by religion, and reclaim "the moral voter"?

Leading Democrats were also looking to put new moral moves in their political playbook. At a Roe v. Wade commemoration Hillary Clinton announced that her once-firm stance on legal abortion had turned Jell-o soft, showing exactly what churches like Calvary Chapel mean to politicians. Clinton and other party leaders are now determined to win over Calvary Chapel-style evangelicals by taking stands they imagine those Christians will consider "moral." In the meantime, they hope to preserve their wider political philosophies in the shadows.

But take heed, oh keepers of the Democratic word, I say unto you: Lo, do not give into the temptation of moral appearances that will not bear fruit in the next elections. Change your view on abortion and they still won`t vote for you, Hillary, not if you don`t play the total version of GodAssault.

My aunt often complained that Eve, her cleaning lady, rambled on about God and the end of the world while dusting. Eve had dropped out of community college to marry a drug addict, divorced, and then married an alcoholic. She couldn`t stop having children or getting fired from part-time jobs.

I liked Eve. As she told me about how she struggled to afford milk for her kids and gas for her car, I realized that, in this world with its rules, Eve was on the losing team. But there was hope in Pastor Chuck`s board game of a religion.

I didn`t ask Eve if she attended a Calvary Chapel, but I did hear her repeat the game`s rules. And why shouldn`t she? If Eve followed the game`s demands, she would stop suffering one day. She would win. For all sorts of struggling souls the promise of eternal salvation, and victory over those left behind, is stronger than any weak pledge a politician could make.

Lisa Lambert, a student at UC Berkeley`s Graduate School of Journalism, rebelled against her upbringing in adolescence with the radical act of joining an Episcopalian church.

Copyright 2005 Lisa Lambert


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http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050502&s=klein
The Nation

Naomi Klein
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050502&s=klein

[from the May 2, 2005 issue]

Last summer, in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush Administration`s doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries "at the same time," each lasting "five to seven years."

Fittingly, a government devoted to perpetual pre-emptive deconstruction now has a standing office of perpetual pre-emptive reconstruction.

Gone are the days of waiting for wars to break out and then drawing up ad hoc plans to pick up the pieces. In close cooperation with the National Intelligence Council, Pascual`s office keeps "high risk" countries on a "watch list" and assembles rapid-response teams ready to engage in prewar planning and to "mobilize and deploy quickly" after a conflict has gone down. The teams are made up of private companies, nongovernmental organizations and members of think tanks--some, Pascual told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in October, will have "pre-completed" contracts to rebuild countries that are not yet broken. Doing this paperwork in advance could "cut off three to six months in your response time."

The plans Pascual`s teams have been drawing up in his little-known office in the State Department are about changing "the very social fabric of a nation," he told CSIS. The office`s mandate is not to rebuild any old states, you see, but to create "democratic and market-oriented" ones. So, for instance (and he was just pulling this example out of his hat, no doubt), his fast-acting reconstructors might help sell off "state-owned enterprises that created a nonviable economy." Sometimes rebuilding, he explained, means "tearing apart the old."

Few ideologues can resist the allure of a blank slate--that was colonialism`s seductive promise: "discovering" wide-open new lands where utopia seemed possible. But colonialism is dead, or so we are told; there are no new places to discover, no terra nullius (there never was), no more blank pages on which, as Mao once said, "the newest and most beautiful words can be written." There is, however, plenty of destruction--countries smashed to rubble, whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bush (on orders from God). And where there is destruction there is reconstruction, a chance to grab hold of "the terrible barrenness," as a UN official recently described the devastation in Aceh, and fill it with the most perfect, beautiful plans.

"We used to have vulgar colonialism," says Shalmali Guttal, a Bangalore-based researcher with Focus on the Global South. "Now we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call it `reconstruction.`"

It certainly seems that ever-larger portions of the globe are under active reconstruction: being rebuilt by a parallel government made up of a familiar cast of for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-NGOs, government and UN aid agencies and international financial institutions. And from the people living in these reconstruction sites--Iraq to Aceh, Afghanistan to Haiti--a similar chorus of complaints can be heard. The work is far too slow, if it is happening at all. Foreign consultants live high on cost-plus expense accounts and thousand- dollar-a-day salaries, while locals are shut out of much-needed jobs, training and decision-making. Expert "democracy builders" lecture governments on the importance of transparency and "good governance," yet most contractors and NGOs refuse to open their books to those same governments, let alone give them control over how their aid money is spent.

Three months after the tsunami hit Aceh, the New York Times ran a distressing story reporting that "almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding." The dispatch could easily have come from Iraq, where, as the Los Angeles Times just reported, all of Bechtel`s allegedly rebuilt water plants have started to break down, one more in an endless litany of reconstruction screw-ups. It could also have come from Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai recently blasted "corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable" foreign contractors for "squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid." Or from Sri Lanka, where 600,000 people who lost their homes in the tsunami are still languishing in temporary camps. One hundred days after the giant waves hit, Herman Kumara, head of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement in Negombo, Sri Lanka, sent out a desperate e-mail to colleagues around the world. "The funds received for the benefit of the victims are directed to the benefit of the privileged few, not to the real victims," he wrote. "Our voices are not heard and not allowed to be voiced."

But if the reconstruction industry is stunningly inept at rebuilding, that may be because rebuilding is not its primary purpose. According to Guttal, "It`s not reconstruction at all--it`s about reshaping everything." If anything, the stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask this deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. And on this front, the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently that the privatizations and land grabs are usually locked in before the local population knows what hit them. Kumara, in another e-mail, warns that Sri Lanka is now facing "a second tsunami of corporate globalization and militarization," potentially even more devastating than the first. "We see this as a plan of action amidst the tsunami crisis to hand over the sea and the coast to foreign corporations and tourism, with military assistance from the US Marines."

As Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz designed and oversaw a strikingly similar project in Iraq: The fires were still burning in Baghdad when US occupation officials rewrote the investment laws and announced that the country`s state-owned companies would be privatized. Some have pointed to this track record to argue that Wolfowitz is unfit to lead the World Bank; in fact, nothing could have prepared him better for his new job. In Iraq, Wolfowitz was just doing what the World Bank is already doing in virtually every war-torn and disaster-struck country in the world--albeit with fewer bureaucratic niceties and more ideological bravado.

"Post-conflict" countries now receive 20-25 percent of the World Bank`s total lending, up from 16 percent in 1998--itself an 800 percent increase since 1980, according to a Congressional Research Service study. Rapid response to wars and natural disasters has traditionally been the domain of United Nations agencies, which worked with NGOs to provide emergency aid, build temporary housing and the like. But now reconstruction work has been revealed as a tremendously lucrative industry, too important to be left to the do-gooders at the UN. So today it is the World Bank, already devoted to the principle of poverty-alleviation through profit-making, that leads the charge.

And there is no doubt that there are profits to be made in the reconstruction business. There are massive engineering and supplies contracts ($10 billion to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan alone); "democracy building" has exploded into a $2 billion industry; and times have never been better for public-sector consultants--the private firms that advise governments on selling off their assets, often running government services themselves as subcontractors. (Bearing Point, the favored of these firms in the United States, reported that the revenues for its "public services" division "had quadrupled in just five years," and the profits are huge: $342 million in 2002--a profit margin of 35 percent.)

But shattered countries are attractive to the World Bank for another reason: They take orders well. After a cataclysmic event, governments will usually do whatever it takes to get aid dollars--even if it means racking up huge debts and agreeing to sweeping policy reforms. And with the local population struggling to find shelter and food, political organizing against privatization can seem like an unimaginable luxury.

Even better from the bank`s perspective, many war-ravaged countries are in states of "limited sovereignty": They are considered too unstable and unskilled to manage the aid money pouring in, so it is often put in a trust fund managed by the World Bank. This is the case in East Timor, where the bank doles out money to the government as long as it shows it is spending responsibly. Apparently, this means slashing public-sector jobs (Timor`s government is half the size it was under Indonesian occupation) but lavishing aid money on foreign consultants the bank insists the government hire (researcher Ben Moxham writes, "In one government department, a single international consultant earns in one month the same as his twenty Timorese colleagues earn together in an entire year").

In Afghanistan, where the World Bank also administers the country`s aid through a trust fund, it has already managed to privatize healthcare by refusing to give funds to the Ministry of Health to build hospitals. Instead it funnels money directly to NGOs, which are running their own private health clinics on three-year contracts. It has also mandated "an increased role for the private sector" in the water system, telecommunications, oil, gas and mining and directed the government to "withdraw" from the electricity sector and leave it to "foreign private investors." These profound transformations of Afghan society were never debated or reported on, because few outside the bank know they took place: The changes were buried deep in a "technical annex" attached to a grant providing "emergency" aid to Afghanistan`s war-torn infrastructure--two years before the country had an elected government.

It has been much the same story in Haiti, following the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In exchange for a $61 million loan, the bank is requiring "public-private partnership and governance in the education and health sectors," according to bank documents--i.e., private companies running schools and hospitals. Roger Noriega, US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, has made it clear that the Bush Administration shares these goals. "We will also encourage the government of Haiti to move forward, at the appropriate time, with restructuring and privatization of some public sector enterprises," he told the American Enterprise Institute on April 14, 2004.

These are extraordinarily controversial plans in a country with a powerful socialist base, and the bank admits that this is precisely why it is pushing them now, with Haiti under what approaches military rule. "The Transitional Government provide a window of opportunity for implementing economic governance reforms...that may be hard for a future government to undo," the bank notes in its Economic Governance Reform Operation Project agreement. For Haitians, this is a particularly bitter irony: Many blame multilateral institutions, including the World Bank, for deepening the political crisis that led to Aristide`s ouster by withholding hundreds of millions in promised loans. At the time, the Inter-American Development Bank, under pressure from the State Department, claimed Haiti was insufficiently democratic to receive the money, pointing to minor irregularities in a legislative election. But now that Aristide is out, the World Bank is openly celebrating the perks of operating in a democracy-free zone.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been imposing shock therapy on countries in various states of shock for at least three decades, most notably after Latin America`s military coups and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet many observers say that today`s disaster capitalism really hit its stride with Hurricane Mitch. For a week in October 1998, Mitch parked itself over Central America, swallowing villages whole and killing more than 9,000. Already impoverished countries were desperate for reconstruction aid--and it came, but with strings attached. In the two months after Mitch struck, with the country still knee-deep in rubble, corpses and mud, the Honduran congress initiated what the Financial Times called "speed sell-offs after the storm." It passed laws allowing the privatization of airports, seaports and highways and fast-tracked plans to privatize the state telephone company, the national electric company and parts of the water sector. It overturned land-reform laws and made it easier for foreigners to buy and sell property. It was much the same in neighboring countries: In the same two months, Guatemala announced plans to sell off its phone system, and Nicaragua did likewise, along with its electric company and its petroleum sector.

All of the privatization plans were pushed aggressively by the usual suspects. According to the Wall Street Journal, "the World Bank and International Monetary Fund had thrown their weight behind the [telecom] sale, making it a condition for release of roughly $47 million in aid annually over three years and linking it to about $4.4 billion in foreign-debt relief for Nicaragua."

Now the bank is using the December 26 tsunami to push through its cookie-cutter policies. The most devastated countries have seen almost no debt relief, and most of the World Bank`s emergency aid has come in the form of loans, not grants. Rather than emphasizing the need to help the small fishing communities--more than 80 percent of the wave`s victims--the bank is pushing for expansion of the tourism sector and industrial fish farms. As for the damaged public infrastructure, like roads and schools, bank documents recognize that rebuilding them "may strain public finances" and suggest that governments consider privatization (yes, they have only one idea). "For certain investments," notes the bank`s tsunami-response plan, "it may be appropriate to utilize private financing."

As in other reconstruction sites, from Haiti to Iraq, tsunami relief has little to do with recovering what was lost. Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was--dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.

In January Condoleezza Rice sparked a small controversy by describing the tsunami as "a wonderful opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us." Many were horrified at the idea of treating a massive human tragedy as a chance to seek advantage. But, if anything, Rice was understating the case. A group calling itself Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters says that for "businessmen-politicians, the tsunami was the answer to their prayers, since it literally wiped these coastal areas clean of the communities which had previously stood in the way of their plans for resorts, hotels, casinos and shrimp farms. To them, all these coastal areas are now open land!"

Disaster, it seems, is the new terra nullius.

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washingtonpost.com
Preaching the Rule of Law in a Tribal Land
An Iraqi Governor`s Challenge: Making Democracy Work
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57533-2005Apr…

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 16, 2005; Page A01

BASRA, Iraq -- Mohammed Musabah arrives at work at a different hour every day. Security precautions, the new governor of Basra explained. The political parties in the city that oppose him, some little more than armed gangs, are determined to see him fail. As many as four out of five of his policemen are loyal to his opponents. And in a land blighted by corruption, he wants to be an honest politician.

"In the beginning, for sure, it was too much pressure," he admitted.

Musabah smiled, as is his habit. After a month on the job, he said, he`s learning to cope.

As Iraq negotiates the high drama of politics on a national stage, with a parliament preparing to tackle the fundamental questions of a future state -- the role of religion, federalism and women`s rights -- Musabah is the point man on the more mundane task of making government actually work. His success in Iraq`s second-largest city, scarred by three wars in 25 years and neglected for nearly as long, may go far in ensuring that institutionalized democracy becomes more than a promise in Iraq. His failure could suggest that Iraq`s problems are simply greater than his good intentions.

Across a day spent in his office, a tidy room with a fountain in the corner, plush leather furniture and air conditioners on each wall that never stop, Musabah articulated the principles that he envisioned as his legacy: transparency, credibility in the eyes of his constituency and the rule of law in a region of southern Iraq where the word of tribal sheiks and religious clerics holds sway.

With an occasional grimace, he would turn to the job at hand. There were the minor problems: demands for compensation for a clinic seized a decade ago. The intractable: a raging tribal dispute over a death at a wedding party, and disenchanted municipal workers who predict there will be less electricity this summer than last. And the ominous: adversaries who always seem to be plotting.

"There are a lot of difficulties, and we will not hide them from our people," Musabah said, sitting behind his desk.

But, he worried, his opponents "are waiting for me to make mistakes."
The Compromise Choice

At 43, Musabah, a rotund man with a gentle face, is a political novice. Before taking office, he was a businessman and the spokesman for a prominent Islamic group known as the Virtue Party, which fared well in the Jan. 30 local elections in southern Iraq. His party captured 12 of the 41 seats on Basra`s provincial council, coming in second behind a coalition of rival Islamic parties that won 20 seats. When that coalition couldn`t agree on a candidate for governor, Musabah became the compromise choice.

He fits the image of a technocrat. Two stacks of folders stand a foot high to the side of his desk. His office is bereft of religious symbolism, save for a gold plaque on his desk that reads, "In the name of God, the merciful and compassionate." With a budget of just $23,000 for a city of about 1.5 million, he has few staff. Two of his six brothers are unpaid aides.

In a country where power often translates into bombast, Musabah is quiet, earnest, almost shy. He has no business card, no e-mail. He listens more than he speaks during workdays that last 12 hours, and he punctuates his language with hospitable formalities. "God reward you" is his favorite. Often he says, "At your service" -- the words he delivered to his first guests, a delegation of local journalists.

"We`d like to be the tongue that gives voice to the people," declared Hatim Bajari, the head of the Journalists Union in Basra. "We should not hide anything. We will be the eyes watching over what is good and bad."

Musabah nodded, smiling. "We promised the people we would hide nothing from them," he answered.

Tea was brought in. (By day`s end, more than 100 cups would be served.) And in time, the journalists made their requests: money for a new headquarters and an office for a reporter in the provincial headquarters.

"It`s only been 25 days," Musabah answered. "Just give me a chance."
An Open Door

Of the seismic changes in Iraq since Saddam Hussein`s fall in 2003, one of the most remarkable is perhaps the people`s relationship to power. No longer remote, fortified behind layers of fear and intimidation, power has been demystified. The language in the 20-minute meeting was casual, without the sycophantic overtures once obligatory in even low-level meetings during Hussein`s rule.

"Our door is open anytime," Musabah told the journalists. "We need the media involved in all issues, large and small."

Another delegation followed from the Ministry of Irrigation. Its members had a complaint about holdovers from Hussein`s Baath Party still working as colleagues. They showed the governor a petition that they had also sent to the offices of Islamic parties in Basra, many of which operate shadowy, underground enforcement arms that intimidate, kidnap and sometimes execute perceived enemies.

"Don`t do this," the governor told them in a rare flash of anger. "It`s a mistake to go outside the law."

The men looked sheepish. "God willing," one answered.

In the streets of Basra and Baghdad, jokes are sometimes made about words that sound as though they were imported with the U.S. invasion -- "pluralism" and "transparency," for instance. Musabah seems to take them seriously.

"The rule of law will reign," he told the delegation, "not the rule of tribes."

In Musabah`s office, as in much of Iraq, authority remains an ambiguous concept. What is it based on, the question goes -- God, guns, money or traditions? Musabah has his answer, even while he says he understands his nation`s legacy of capricious power and realizes his administration lacks the institutional force needed to back up its authority.

"We will succeed if we support the law," he said after meeting the delegation. "We are a government of law, and that`s what I`ve promised everyone. No one can disobey the law, including me."

He repeated the words, as if to reassure himself: "We are a government of law."

Only a few minutes separated Musabah`s meetings on this day. In the intervals, he hurriedly scribbled on the stack of memos before him. When another group entered, he got up from his chair and greeted the visitors warmly.

"Welcome! Welcome!" he said to a delegation of Sabeans, an ancient religious sect found in parts of southern Iraq that is considered protected under Islamic law. "How is your situation? God willing, it`s good."

The Sabeans brought him a trunk-size bouquet of flowers and a copy of their holy book, the Treasure, which one of them kissed before handing it to Musabah. "I should visit you," Musabah told them, "you shouldn`t have to visit me." They smiled, exchanged more greetings, then got to their point: They feared they would be marginalized under Iraq`s new Islamic-oriented leaders.

"Our soil is the land of Iraq," said Haithem Rissan, the head of the delegation.

Because they usually share the same socially conservative goals, the Islamic parties that run Basra are often grouped together in a way that conceals divisions based on history and loyalties. Musabah`s Virtue Party, for example, is an offshoot of the movement led by the father of Moqtada Sadr, a young, stridently anti-American cleric whose militia twice fought U.S. forces last year. While Sadr caters to the street, the Virtue Party appeals to professionals and intellectuals.

The contest between the religious parties is fierce, far more intense than their struggle with secular groups. Musabah views the other Islamic parties as the biggest threat to his success, even if he refrains from lambasting them, as he did during the campaign.

"There are many other parties and movements trying to inflame the situation," he said on this day.

As in other cities in southern Iraq, the contest is usually fought within the security forces established during the past two years. Musabah estimates that 75 to 80 percent of Basra`s policemen are loyal not to him but to the rival Islamic parties. In his first month, he has already fired the two most powerful police officials, both disciples of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite party.

"We represent the law," he told a delegation of three police officers that came next in his string of meetings. "We are legal. We are elected."

They complained that other officers were loyal to parties; they worried that the tribes ignored their authority.

"Just tell them the governor is your tribe," Musabah said.

A delegation of tribesmen followed, wearing the black checkered head scarves and robes of village elders. On one side was the aggrieved brother of a man killed at a wedding party four months ago by stray gunfire. On the other were two tribal sheiks trying to get him to relent in his demand that 17 people from the groom`s family should move to another town as punishment.

Fists crashed on the arms of chairs. Fingers pointed. Shouts were interrupted by an occasional "Permit me to speak!" Sheik Ali Almerian, the short, wiry brother of the slain man, turned to the governor. "If you don`t solve the problem," he said in rough, rural Arabic, "there will be more bloodshed!" There were more pleas for the man to relent. "Never! There is no negotiation!"

Musabah sat at his desk, quiet. The quarrel went on for a half-hour before he made a suggestion: Invite all the parties to the governor`s office next week, and they will find a compromise.
A `Son of Basra`

To many in Basra, Musabah remains an unknown quantity. So far, those who have met him say he is a good listener, someone who is upright and kind. The complaints are those heard often about the new generation of religiously oriented leaders in Basra: He is inexperienced and not highly educated. (He has a two-year associate degree as a surveyor.) The vocal secular element in the city worries that his moderate veneer conceals a more draconian conservatism.

"The election was excellent, but the result was bad," said Saleh Najim, the dean of Basra University`s engineering college.

Musabah speaks little of religion. He said he no longer considered himself a member of the Virtue Party, but rather a "son of Basra." As for faith, he said, that was best left to others. "We will deal with everyone in the same spirit," he said. "Religious issues don`t have anything to do with government affairs. This is the purview of the clerics."

His day neared an end, as trays of tea kept arriving. He secured a weapons permit for a Catholic priest and dealt with contractors struggling with Basra`s collapsing sewage system. The foremen of a state-owned ironworks pleaded for money to restart their factory. A local cleric asked whether funds were available to rebuild a neighborhood mosque. Musabah`s secretary, Furat Salih, brought in a handwritten piece of paper that documented faltering electricity production in Basra, a report he receives daily.

A delegation of utility workers soon arrived. Its members were flustered and a little cynical. Hours-long blackouts are perhaps the biggest complaint among Basra residents, and the workers said they were at wit`s end. Their equipment was 25 years old. Solutions, they said, remained merely ink on paper.

"We`re suffering, and we`ll suffer especially this summer. We have no spare parts and no generators," said Maytham Wasfi, the assistant general director for power distribution in southern Iraq. "Electricity is just worn out, especially in the south."

Musabah winced, then tried to reassure them.

"We`re going to be very frank with the masses," he said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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The Independent
Our presidents and prime ministers are poseurs. Where are the Great Men of today?
Saturday, 16th April 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=629…


Bush may think he is Churchill, but he cannot really compare himself to his dad, let alone to our Winston

Before Egyptian President Anwar Sadat set off for his journey to Jerusalem in 1977, he announced to the world that he did not intend to live "among the pygmies". This was tough on pygmies but there was no doubt what it revealed about Sadat. He thought he was a Great Man. History suggests he was wrong. His 1978 Camp David agreement with Menachem Begin of Israel brought the Sinai back under Egyptian control, but it locked Sadat’s country into a cold peace and near-bankrupt isolation. He was finally called "Pharaoh", a description Sadat might have appreciated had it not been shouted by his murderers as they stormed his military reviewing stand in 1981.

The Middle East, of course, is awash with kings and dictators who are called - or like to imagine themselves - Great Men. Saddam Hussein thought he was Stalin - evil, unfortunately, is also for some a quality of greatness - while George Bush Senior thought Saddam was Hitler. Eden claimed that Nasser, when he nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, was the Mussolini of the Nile (though Mussolini was not Great, he thought he was). Yasser Arafat claimed that Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan, when he died, was Saladin, the warrior who drove the Crusaders out of Palestine. The truth was that the Israelis had driven the Hashemites from Palestine. But Hussein was on "our" side and the Plucky Little King, when he died of cancer in 1999, was immortalised by President Clinton who said he was "already in heaven", a feat that went unequalled until Pope John Paul II made it to the same location before his funeral this month.

I listened to much of the tosh uttered about this hopelessly right-wing pontiff when he was dying, and read a good deal of the vitriol that was splashed on him a few days later. I agree with much of the latter. But he was the one prominent world figure - being of "world" importance is not necessarily a quality for greatness, but it helps - who stood up against President Bush’s insane invasion of Iraq. With absolute resolution, he condemned and re-condemned the illegality of the assault on Iraq in a way that no other prominent churchman did. Good on yer, Pope, I remember saying at the time - and it would be churlish of me to forget this now. But a Great Man?

In truth, our world seems full of Little Men. Not just Sadat’s "pygmies". Gaddafi may be a "statesman" in the eyes of our Trot of a foreign secretary - this was just before the Libyan dictator was found to be plotting the assassination of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia - but anyone who can seriously suggest that a joint Israeli-Palestinian state might be called "Israeltine" is clearly a candidate for the men in white coats. Indeed, it raises the question: are there any Great Men in the Middle East?

And, are there any Great Men in the world today? Where - this is a question I’ve been asked by several readers recently - are the Churchills, the Roosevelts, the Trumans, the Eisenhowers, the Titos, the Lloyd Georges, the Woodrow Wilsons, the de Gaulles and Clemenceaus?

Our present band of poseur presidents and prime ministers cannot come close. Bush may think he is Churchill - remember all that condemnation of Chamberlain’s 1938 appeasement we had to suffer before we invaded Iraq? - but he cannot really compare himself to his dad, let alone our Winston. Bush Junior looks like a nerd while his friends - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest - actually look disreputable. Chirac would like to be a Great Man but his problem is that he can be mocked - see France’s equivalent of Spitting Image. Blair has a worse impediment. He has become a mockery of himself, slowly assuming the role of his clergyman namesake in Private Eye - to the point where the latter simply became no longer funny. Blair’s self-righteousness and self-regard would have earned him my Dad’s ultimate put-down of all pretentious men: that he was a twerp. And my Dad, I should add, kept Churchill’s portrait over the dining room fireplace.

Sacrifice obviously has something to do with it. To get bumped off for your good deeds - preferably "making peace", although many of those at work on the "peace" project seem to have spent a lot of time making war - is clearly a possible path to Greatness. Thus Sadat does have a chance. So does Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. And so, through sickness, King Hussein and - in more theatrical form - the last Pope, although my Mum died of the same illness with much less drama and pomp. Those who successfully fight their countries’ occupiers get a look in; de Gaulle again, Tito again, maybe Ho Chi Minh but not, apparently, the leaders of the Algerian FLN and most definitely not the lads from the Lebanese Hizbollah. And we all know how Arafat went from being Superterrorist to Superstatesman and back to Super-terrorist again.

In the Middle East, I do have a soft spot for President Khatami of Iran. A truly decent, philosophical, morally good man, he was crushed by the political power of his clerical enemies set up by Ayatollah Khomeini. Khatami’s "civil society" never materialised; had it blossomed, he might have been a Great Man. Instead, his life seems to be a tragedy of withered hope. I mention Khomeini and I fear we have to put him in the list. He lived the poverty of Gandhi, overthrew a vicious dictatorship and changed the history of the Middle East. That his country is now a necrocracy - government ruled by and for the dead - does not, sadly, change this.

Yet this raises another dark question? Why do we stop only a generation or two ago? Why stop at the First World War? Where now, we might ask, are the Duke of Wellingtons and the Napoleons, the Queen Elizabeths, the Richard the Lionhearts, and yes, the Saladins and the Caesars and the Genghis Khans?

Oddly, the list of Great Men doesn’t usually include Gandhi, whom I would think an obvious candidate for all the right reasons. He was palpably a good man, a peaceful man, and freed his country from imperial rule and was assassinated.

Nelson Mandela would be among my candidates for all the obvious reasons (his objections to Bush not being the least of them). Nurse Edith Cavell - "patriotism is not enough" - who was shot by the Germans in the First World War, and Margaret Hassan, the supremely brave and selfless charity worker butchered in Iraq, must be in my list - proving, of course, that we should also ask: where are the Great Women of our age? Rachel Corrie, I’d say, the American girl who was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer as she stood in its path to protect Palestinian homes in Gaza. And how about Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower?

And yes, all the humble folk - little people, if you like - who did what they did, whatever the cost, not because they sought Greatness, but because they believed it was the right thing to do.


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Seit einigen Wochen schwirrt eine Geschichte durch die Medien über einen Anschlag mit Giftsubstanzen, der vor drei Jahren in GB verhindert wurde.
Da gab es vor einigen Wochen schon Berichte, dass die ganze Geschichte eine Erfindung von wem auch immer gewesen wäre.
Darüber gab es auch in der britischen Zeitungen Berichte.
Deshalb wunderte ich mich, als gestern in der bis vor drei Jahren noch ernstzunehmenden Zeitung `Die Zeit` diesen Bericht fand [urlDicht vor dem Desaster]http://www.zeit.de/2005/16/london[/url](Ein in London verurteilter Algerier war Teil eines terroristischen Komplottes, quer durch Europa mittels koordinierter Giftattacken Panik und Furcht zu verbreiten).
Ich hatte gestern schon nach weiteren Artikeln über diese Verschwörung gesucht.
Heute hat der Guardian mehrer Artikel zu dieser Gerichtsverhandelung und über den Umgang der Medien mit Fakten.

Home Office says sorry to suspects for ricin blunder
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1461271,00…

Audrey Gillan
Saturday April 16, 2005

Guardian
The Home Office has been forced to apologise to 10 men placed under controversial anti-terrorist control orders after it linked them to the ricin plot in London, the Guardian has discovered.

In an embarrassing letter to the men, the government claims that it made a "clerical error" when it said the grounds for emergency restriction imposed on each of the alleged international terrorists was that they "belonged to and have provided support for a network of north African extremists directly involved in terrorist planning in the UK, including the use of toxic chemicals".

Last Wednesday, Kamel Bourgass, an Algerian who stabbed a policeman to death and planned poison attacks across Britain, was jailed for 17 years. But in a blow to the police and security services, four co-defendants were acquitted and a second trial was abandoned. Defence lawyers said the case was a massive conspiracy tapestry woven by the prosecution and that it had been used by the government to justify the war in Iraq and detention without trial in the UK.

The fact that the control orders attempted to connect the 10 men - who were detained without charge and trial for more than two years before being released under stringent conditions - to the ricin plot, will cast further doubt on the validity of the secret evidence the government claims it has on them.

Last night a Home Office spokesman said: "Basically there was a clerical error in the initial order in that the same basis for issue was given in all of the orders. This was noticed shortly afterwards and acted on immediately. It did not affect the validity of the order.

"The home secretary made the decision to issue the control orders on the basis of information given to him by the security services. The clerical error did not change the validity of the order in any way."

Control orders were rushed through parliament last month amid stormy debates during which the home secretary, Charles Clarke, promised that they would be scrutinised by a judge before they were issued. But the existing 10 orders against the former Belmarsh detainees were issued under an emergency clause which allowed him to impose them before detention without trial powers expired.

Last night the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, said: "If ever there was a case for making sure defendants can hear the allegations against them then this must be it. While this may have been a clerical error, it raises the appalling possibility that ministers are wielding these powers without paying full attention to the detail."

Mark Neale, the director general of the Home Office`s security, international and organised crime unit, wrote to each of the men to change the terms of the control order through which they are held under partial house arrest.

The Guardian has seen the letter sent to Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a Palestinian refugee who was released last month from Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital and is subject to a control order. The other detainees include the Islamist preacher Abu Qatada and eight who can not be named.

The letter to Mr Abu Rideh tells him that "the basis for the decision to make the control order" is that he is an active supporter of international terrorist groups with links to Osama bin Laden, including two Algerian groups, the Armed Islamic Group and the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, as well as Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Mr Abu Rideh is a stateless Palestinian who, his lawyer says, has never been to Algeria.

The letter continues: "Your activities on their behalf include the raising and distribution of funds, the procurement of false documents and helping to facilitate the movement of jihad volunteers to training camps in Afghanistan. You are closely involved with senior extremists and associates of Bin Laden both in the UK and overseas."

In the original control order, he was accused of being involved in the ricin plot as well as being "a key UK-based contact and provider of financial and logistical support to extreme Islamists in the UK and overseas, belonging to networks linked to al-Qaida. Your contacts are senior figures and cross a range in international terrorist networks. The type of support which you offered significantly increases the capabilities of these networks, without which they would be unable to function as effectively. These networks pose a direct threat to the UK." This has also been removed from his order.

Mr Abu Rideh`s solicitor, Nicky Shiner, said: "I couldn`t believe an organisation such as the Home Office could make that mistake. It`s obviously someone sitting there doing a cut and paste job."

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, which campaigns against the orders, said: "Clerical error or false accusation - how are we ever to know in this world where fair trials are now replaced with secret intelligence and endless suspicion?"

The credibility of the Algerian supergrass at the centre of claims that al-Qaida was linked to the plot to attack Britain with ricin was last night undermined.

Details of the testimony given by Mohammed Meguerba first to Algerian, then British police and intelligence, have been learned by the Guardian. They show him lying to British police about his involvement in the plot, and other inconsistencies in his account.

He claimed that he and Bourgass had learned to make poisons in an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan in 2002, after the US had invaded and similar camps had been bombed.

Meguerba is the only source for the continuing police belief that the London-based terror gang produced ricin, despite scientific tests showing it did not.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Hier noch weitere Berichte über diese Verschwörung:
[urlDoubts grow over al-Qaida link in ricin plot]http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1461030,00.html[/url]

Auch noch einen Kommentar zu den Vorgängen:
[urlPresumption of guilt]http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1461275,00.html[/url]
Politicians and journalists are corroding the foundations of justice

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"I don`t know about you, but the hug between the mom from Pflugerville, Texas whose son died on the battlefield and the woman whose dad had been -- Saddam Hussein had ordered her dad`s assassination, human rights activist inside of Iraq, who voted and flew over to represent her country in Laura`s box."
-- George W. Bush

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Latest Fatality: Apr 14, 2005

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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April 17, 2005
Arms Equipment Plundered in 2003 Is Surfacing in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/international/middleeast/1…

KIRKUK, Iraq, April 16 - Equipment plundered from dozens of sites in Saddam Hussein`s vast complex for manufacturing weapons is beginning to surface in open markets in Iraq`s major cities and at border crossings.

Looters stormed the sites two years ago when Mr. Hussein`s government fell, and the fate of much of the equipment has remained a mystery.

But on a recent day, resting in great chunks on a weedy lot in front of an Iraqi Border Patrol warehouse in Munthriya, on the Iranian border, were pieces of large machine tools that investigators say formed the heart of a factory that made artillery shells near Baghdad. Military equipment, including parts for obscure armaments used by Mr. Hussein`s army, is also turning up in Baghdad and Mosul in the north, they say.

For more than a year, large quantities scrap metal from some of the sites have routinely been filling the scrap yards of Iraq and neighboring countries like Jordan. But with this new emergence of a huge panoply of intact factory, machine and vehicle parts, it appears that some looters may have held back the troves they stole two years ago, waiting for prices to rise.

"Spare parts?" said Staff Sgt. William Larock, an American reservist in a division out of Rochester, N.Y., who is stationed near Munthriya and is coordinating repairs of some of Mr. Hussein`s old troop carriers to be used for the new Iraqi Army. "A lot of them come from the market in Baghdad."

Sergeant Larock said that some of his repairs to the vehicles, which Mr. Hussein bought from a manufacturer in Brazil, were being delayed because the asking price on the highly specialized wheels - clearly stolen long ago from those same vehicles - was too high. "That`s why these things are sitting on blocks," he said with a faint smile.

Interviews with people who identified themselves as arms dealers or members of the resistance in Baghdad, Falluja and other Iraqi cities indicate that a parallel black market operates in the explosives looted from some of the same sites. That market remains clandestine, but the thriving open market points to its likely pervasiveness, scale and sophistication.

In fact, sketchy descriptions by members of the Iraqi resistance suggest that the arms market is also a highly developed enterprise with brokers, buyers and looters who have stockpiled their products, including artillery shells, mortar rounds and Kalashnikov rifles. One former Iraqi army officer who said that he had joined the mujahedeen said that in Sadr City, for example, a few trusted brokers would take prospective buyers to weapons caches that ranged in size from a few rounds buried in a garden to whole rooms of ordnance. If the broker and the buyers agreed on a price, the buyers would arrive a day or two later with a vehicle to drive their purchases away. The broker and the stockpilers would have worked out their respective cuts in advance.

Witnesses described looters of varying degrees of sophistication, from local people who stormed the sites in search of precious metals after Mr. Hussein`s security forces fled to highly organized operations that arrived with cranes and semitrailer trucks. some of the most organized groups arrived earliest and drove away with largely intact equipment.

When it comes to buying run-of-the-mill equipment and spare parts that were obviously looted in the past, the American military appears to have adopted some version of a don`t-ask, don`t-tell policy concerning where the materials originated. The materials, after all, are now being sold openly in street markets. So the Americans appear resigned to buying the equipment back rather than seizing it.

But the pieces of the artillery factory were headed to Iran when they were seized a few months ago by Iraqi border guards. They appeared to have been cut apart just so; the dismemberment allowed the material to meet the official definition of scrap, but did no damage that would prevent the pieces from being reassembled.

"They cut in places that were not important," said Brig. Gen. Nazim Shariff Muhammad, leader of the Iraqi Border Guard in Diyala Province, standing with his right foot perched on part of the machinery. "So they let us think it was going to be used as scrap metal."

Much more valuable machinery also vanished from some of the sites in the weeks after the invasion: so-called dual-use equipment, which could be used in civilian manufacturing and in building parts for nuclear weapons. Witness accounts have indicated that much of it was carried off in systematic looting in the six to eight weeks after Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. That equipment, which investigators say was more likely coveted for its monetary value rather than its military value, disappeared without any public trace. If an entire artillery factory could come this close to crossing the border, some military specialists say, then the dual-use equipment had a chance of getting out as well.

From Baghdad`s main roads, Munthriya is the nearest border crossing, making it a natural way station for anything transported, legitimately or not, from the area around the capital.

This part of the Iraqi frontier, about 90 miles northeast of Baghdad and just south of Kurdistan, is a place out of time. For reasons that seem to be lost in the mists of history, many of the border outposts of Iraq and Iran look like miniature castles, complete with crenelated walls and cylindrical watchtowers at the corners. The outposts face each other across a no man`s land of grassy hills that are still heavily mined, a legacy of the Iran-Iraq war. In the hazy distance, the Iranian mountains rise. "They are watching us," said Warrant Officer Aso Ahmed Showkat at the border post called Yassin Castle, pointing to one of the Iranian outposts.

In the weeks after Baghdad fell, the roads in this part of Iraq were choked with trucks carrying scrap metal, looted generators, cars, chopped-up tanks and other equipment, many witnesses said. Mukhtar Ahmed, who owns a tea shop in Bashmakh, north of Munthriya, estimated that as many as 300 trucks a day passed his shop at the height of the activity.

Lt. Col. Ali Muhammad Darweesh Al Kakay, who came south in that period with a Kurdish pesh merga force and is now a border official, said, "Everything, you can smuggle at that time."

Since the border patrol began mobilizing in June 2003, General Nazim said, the border had been secure, and only scrap dealers with government permits had been allowed to transport materials into Iran through the Munthriya crossing. Specific rules for what constituted scrap had been set up. A tank, for example, had to be cut into at least eight pieces, or it was judged that someone could put it back together.

In General Nazim`s view, the episode of the artillery factory is a case in point. His border guards told him that there were eight or nine large trucks filled with odd-looking scrap. "But the materials inside the trucks were not scrap," he said. "I knew this was something very strange."

Engineers identified the equipment as a set of huge machine tools for making shells, and pinpointed where it had all come from: a military site called Al Walid, near Baghdad.

Now somewhat rusted from exposure, the material sits in front of the border police headquarters, and in a fitting twist, some of its more precious components have been looted a second time.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said the story of the artillery factory was not necessarily reassuring.

"This is just the stuff that got caught," Mr. Pike said when a reporter contacted him from Forward Operating Base Cobra, an American Army base near the border. "The more interesting stuff would have gone out first," he said.

Warzer Jaff contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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[urldNeXT is a next generation public affairs]http://www.dnext.com/#[/url] news & opinion web site - democracy in 60 seconds or less. At a time of ever-expanding, text-driven political sites, dNeXT.com was launched in 2005, as the world`s first portal to short, intriguing and entertaining "viditorials" (video editorials). The primary content on dNeXT.com consists of issue-focused, opinion & parody content created by both staff and outside contributors.

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Debtors of the World, Unite!
by Yoshie Furuhashi
16th April 2005
http://www.selvesandothers.org/article9438.html

THE "bankruptcy reform" bill "passed the House on a 302-126 vote on Thursday, a month after the Senate voted 74-25" (Marcy Gordon/Associated Press, "Congress Passes Bankruptcy Reform Bill," The Guardian 15 Apr. 2005).

Techpolitics reports that not only did 73 House Democrats vote for the bill but those who voted for it "included 10 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, 13 members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, 2 Progressive Caucus members and all but 3 Blue Dogs" ("Bankruptcy Bill Vote: 109th Congress, 1st Session," April 14, 2005). Be sure to look at Techpolitics’ table of the bankruptcy vote, which sorts the data by "caucus, vote, party and Representative as well as by the median household income for the congressional district in the 2000 census" ("Bankruptcy Bill Vote: 109th Congress, 1st Session," April 14, 2005).

The most important vote, however, was taken on March 8, 2005, on the "Motion to Invoke Cloture on Bill S. 256," which passed 69-31. That was "the only vote that opponents of the bill had a chance of winning" in the words of Paul Krugman ("The $600 Billion Man," New York Times 15 Mar. 2005). Remember the 14 Democratic Senators who voted Yea, to cut off the debate on the bankruptcy bill and make it impossible to filibuster it:

Biden (D-DE)
Byrd (D-WV)
Carper (D-DE)
Conrad (D-ND)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)

Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Salazar (D-CO)
Stabenow (D-MI)

("U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 109th Congress - 1st Session: On the Cloture Motion [Motion To Invoke Cloture On Bill S. 256]," 8 Mar. 2005)


This is a bill that finance and credit companies have long sought for. Observe how they radically increased their bribes over the last several years:
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Source: Opensecrets.org, "Finance/Credit Companies: Long-Term Contribution Trends"


How the finance and credit industry bought the "bankruptcy reform" is one of the clearest proofs that America is a plutocracy, not a democracy.

While it is important to attempt to replace the Democratic Senators and Representatives who voted for debt slavery by men and women who are actually committed to upholding the interests of the heavily indebted US working class, electoral politics alone will not break open the virtual debtors’ prison that the "bankruptcy reform" will soon create. Money wins elections, more than 90% of the time: "In 95 percent of House races and 91 percent of Senate races . . . , the candidate who spent the most money won, according to a post-election analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. . . . The biggest spender was victorious in 415 of 435 decided House races and 31 of 34 decided Senate races. On Election Day 2002, top spenders won 95 percent of House races and 76 percent of Senate races" (Opensecret.org, "2004 Election Outcome: Money Wins," 3 Nov, 2004).

It is time for the American wing of the global justice movement, which has been struggling to force the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to drop the debt under which peasants and workers of the global South groan, to take on the finance and credit industry that oppresses US workers by usury.
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Source: Patrick McGeehan, "The Plastic Trap: Soaring Interest Compounds Credit Card Pain for Millions" (New York Times 21 Nov. 2004)


Proclaim liberty to the captives, and open the prison to them that are bound (Isa. 61:1-2) — at home and abroad. Why not begin this weekend, when global justice activists gather in Washington D.C. to protest the 2005 Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund?

Unless and until US activists of the global justice movement begin to connect the debt burden on US workers with that on workers and peasants in poor nations, the movement will never grow beyond usual suspects. Charity, an exercise in altruism, need not begin at home, but class struggle that has a winning chance surely does.

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April 12, 2005
Sinking Globalization
By NIALL FERGUSON

From the March/April 2005 issue ofForeign Affairs.

Niall Ferguson is Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, University of Oxford. Copyright (c)2005 by Niall Ferguson.

TORPEDOED

Ninety years ago this May, the German submarine U-20 sank the Cunard liner Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. Nearly 1,200 people, including 128 Americans, lost their lives. Usually remembered for the damage it did to the image of imperial Germany in the United States, the sinking of the Lusitania also symbolized the end of the first age of globalization.

From around 1870 until World War I, the world economy thrived in ways that look familiar today. The mobility of commodities, capital, and labor reached record levels; the sea-lanes and telegraphs across the Atlantic had never been busier, as capital and migrants traveled west and raw materials and manufactures traveled east. In relation to output, exports of both merchandise and capital reached volumes not seen again until the 1980s. Total emigration from Europe between 1880 and 1910 was in excess of 25 million. People spoke euphorically of "the annihilation of distance."

Then, between 1914 and 1918, a horrendous war stopped all of this, sinking globalization. Nearly 13 million tons of shipping were sent to the bottom of the ocean by German submarine attacks. International trade, investment, and migration all collapsed. Moreover, the attempt to resuscitate the world economy after the war`s end failed. The global economy effectively disintegrated with the onset of the Great Depression and, after that, with an even bigger world war, in which astonishingly high proportions of production went toward perpetrating destruction.

It may seem excessively pessimistic to worry that this scenario could somehow repeat itself--that our age of globalization could collapse just as our grandparents` did. But it is worth bearing in mind that, despite numerous warnings issued in the early twentieth century about the catastrophic consequences of a war among the European great powers, many people--not least investors, a generally well-informed class--were taken completely by surprise by the outbreak of World War I. The possibility is as real today as it was in 1915 that globalization, like the Lusitania, could be sunk.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

The last age of globalization resembled the current one in numerous ways. It was characterized by relatively free trade, limited restrictions on migration, and hardly any regulation of capital flows. Inflation was low. A wave of technological innovation was revolutionizing the communications and energy sectors; the world first discovered the joys of the telephone, the radio, the internal combustion engine, and paved roads. The U.S. economy was the biggest in the world, and the development of its massive internal market had become the principal source of business innovation. China was opening up, raising all kinds of expectations in the West, and Russia was growing rapidly.

World War I wrecked all of this. Global markets were disrupted and disconnected, first by economic warfare, then by postwar protectionism. Prices went haywire: a number of major economies (Germany`s among them) suffered from both hyperinflation and steep deflation in the space of a decade. The technological advances of the 1900s petered out: innovation hit a plateau, and stagnating consumption discouraged the development of even existing technologies such as the automobile. After faltering during the war, overheating in the 1920s, and languishing throughout the 1930s in the doldrums of depression, the U.S. economy ceased to be the most dynamic in the world. China succumbed to civil war and foreign invasion, defaulting on its debts and disappointing optimists in the West. Russia suffered revolution, civil war, tyranny, and foreign invasion. Both these giants responded to the crisis by donning the constricting armor of state socialism. They were not alone. By the end of the 1940s, most states in the world, including those that retained political freedoms, had imposed restrictions on trade, migration, and investment as a matter of course. Some achieved autarky, the ideal of a deglobalized society. Consciously or unconsciously, all governments applied in peacetime the economic restrictions that had first been imposed between 1914 and 1918.

The end of globalization after 1914 was not unforeseeable. There was no shortage of voices prophesying Armageddon in the prewar decades. Many popular writers earned a living by predicting a cataclysmic European war. Solemn Marxists had long foretold the collapse of capitalism and imperialism. And Social Darwinists had looked forward eagerly to a conflagration that would weed out the weak and fortify the strong.

Yet most investors were completely caught off guard when the crisis came. Not until the last week of July 1914 was there a desperate dash for liquidity; it happened so suddenly and on such a large scale that the world`s major stock markets, New York`s included, closed down for the rest of the year. As The Economist put it at the time, investors and financial institutions "saw in a flash the meaning of war." The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by about 25 percent between January 1910 and December 1913 and remained flat through the first half of 1914. European bond markets, which had held up throughout the diplomatic crises of the 1900s, crashed only at the 11th hour, as the lights went out all over Europe.

Some economic historians detect the origins of the deglobalization that followed World War I in the prewar decades. They point, variously, to rising tariffs and restrictions on migration, a slight uptick in inflation starting around 1896, and the chronic vulnerability of the U.S. economy to banking crises. To this list, it might be added that the risk of further Russian and Chinese revolutions should have been fairly apparent after those of 1905 and 1911, respectively.

The trouble is that none of these problems can be said to have caused the great conflagration that was World War I. To be sure, the prewar world was marked by all kinds of economic rivalries--not least between British and German manufacturers--but these did not suffice to cause a disaster. On the contrary, businessmen on both sides agreed that a major war would be an economic calamity. The point seemed so obvious that war came to be seen by some optimistic commentators as all but impossible--a "great illusion," in the famous phrase of the author Norman Angell. Even when the war broke out, many people optimistically clung to the illusion that it would soon be over. Economist John Maynard Keynes said that it "could not last more than a year."

With the benefit of hindsight, however, five factors can be seen to have precipitated the global explosion of 1914-18. The first cause was imperial overstretch. By 1914, the British Empire was showing signs of being a "weary Titan," in the words of the poet Matthew Arnold. It lacked the will to build up an army capable of deterring Germany from staging a rival bid for European hegemony (if not world power). As the world`s policeman, distracted by old and new commitments in Asia and Africa, the United Kingdom`s beat had simply become too big.

Great-power rivalry was another principal cause of the catastrophe. The problem was not so much Anglo-German rivalry at sea as it was Russo-German rivalry on land. Fear of a Russian arms buildup convinced the German general staff to fight in 1914 rather than risk waiting any longer.

The third fatal factor was an unstable alliance system. Alliances existed in abundance, but they were shaky. The Germans did not trust the Austrians to stand by them in a crisis, and the Russians worried that the French might lose their nerve. The United Kingdom`s actions were impossible to predict because its ententes with France and Russia made no explicit provisions for the eventuality of war in Europe. The associated insecurities encouraged risk-taking diplomacy. In 1908, for example, Austria-Hungary brusquely annexed Bosnia. Three years later, the German government sent the gunboat Panther to Agadir to challenge French claims to predominance in Morocco.

The presence of a rogue regime sponsoring terror was a fourth source of instability. The chain of events leading to war, as every schoolchild used to know, began with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip. There were shady links between the assassin`s organization and the Serbian government, which had itself come to power not long before in a bloody palace coup.

Finally, the rise of a revolutionary terrorist organization hostile to capitalism turned an international crisis into a backlash against the global free market. The Bolsheviks, who emerged from the 1903 split in the Russian Social Democratic Party, had already established their credentials as a fanatical organization committed to using violence to bring about world revolution. By straining the tsarist system to the breaking point, the war gave Lenin and his confederates their opportunity. They seized it and used the most ruthless terrorist tactics to win the ensuing civil war.

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

There are obvious economic parallels between the first age of globalization and the current one. Today, as in the period before 1914, protectionism periodically challenges the free-trade orthodoxy. By the standards of the pre-1914 United Kingdom, in fact, the major economies are already shamelessly protectionist when it comes to agriculture. Then, the United Kingdom imposed no tariffs on imported agricultural goods, whereas now the United States, the European Union, and Japan all use tariffs and subsidies to protect their farmers from foreign competition.

Today, no one can be sure how stable the international monetary system is, but one thing is certain: it is no more stable than the system that preceded World War I. Although gold is no longer the basis of the monetary system, there are pegged exchange rates, just as there were in 1914. In Europe, there is a monetary union--essentially a deutsche mark zone. In eastern Asia, there is a dollar standard. Both systems, however, are based on fiat currencies. Unlike before 1914, the core central banks in New York and Frankfurt determine the volume of currency produced, and they do so on the basis of an opaque mixture of rules and discretion.

Today, technological innovation shows no sign of slackening. From nanocomputers the size of a pinhead to scramjets that can cross the Atlantic in an hour, there seems no limit to human ingenuity, given sufficient funding of research and development. That is the good news. The bad news is that now technology also helps the enemies of globalization. Before 1914, terrorists had to pursue their bloody trade with Browning revolvers and primitive bombs. These days, an entire city could be obliterated with a single nuclear device.

Today, as before 1914, the U.S. economy is the world`s biggest, but it is now much more important as a market for the rest of the world than it was then. Although the United States may enjoy great influence as the "consumer of first resort," this role depends on the willingness of foreigners to fund a widening current account deficit. A rising proportion of Americans may consider themselves to have been "saved" in the Evangelical sense, but they are less good at saving in the economic sense. The personal savings rate among Americans stood at just 0.2 percent of disposable personal income in September 2004, compared with 7.7 percent less than 15 years ago. Whether to finance domestic investment (in the late 1990s) or government borrowing (after 2000), the United States has come to rely increasingly on foreign lending. As the current account deficit has widened (it is now approaching 6 percent of GDP), U.S. net overseas liabilities have risen steeply to around 25 percent of GDP. Half of the publicly held federal debt is now in foreign hands; at the end of August 2004, the combined U.S. Treasury holdings of China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan were $1.1 trillion, up by 22 percent from the end of 2003. A large proportion of this increase is a result of immense purchases by eastern Asian monetary authorities, designed to prevent their currencies from appreciating relative to the dollar.

This deficit is the biggest difference between globalization past and globalization present. A hundred years ago, the global hegemon--the United Kingdom--was a net exporter of capital, channeling a high proportion of its savings overseas to finance the construction of infrastructure such as railways and ports in the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and Africa. Today, its successor as an Anglophone empire plays the diametrically opposite role--as the world`s debtor rather than the world`s creditor, absorbing around three-quarters of the rest of the world`s surplus savings.

Does this departure matter? Some claim it does not--that it just reflects the rest of the world`s desire to have a piece of the U.S. economic action, whether as owners of low-risk securities or sellers of underpriced exports. This is how Harvard economist Richard Cooper sees it. Assuming that the U.S. economy has a trend rate of growth of 5 percent a year, he argues that a sustained current account deficit of $500 billion per year would translate into external liabilities of 46 percent of GDP after 15 years, but that then U.S. foreign debt would "decline indefinitely."

Well, maybe. But what if those assumptions are wrong? According to the hsbc Group, the current account deficit could reach 8 percent of GDP by the end of the decade. That could push the United States` net external liabilities as high as 90 percent of GDP. When the United Kingdom accumulated net foreign debts of less than half this percentage, it was fighting World War II. In the war`s aftermath, the resulting "sterling balances" owned by the rest of the world were one of the reasons the pound declined and lost its reserve currency status.

A sharp depreciation of the dollar relative to Asian currencies might not worry the majority of Americans, whose liabilities are all dollar-denominated. But its effect on Asia would be profound. Asian holders of dollar assets would suffer heavy capital losses in terms of their own currencies, and Asian exporters would lose some of their competitive advantage in the U.S. market. According to Michael Mussa of the Institute for International Economics, lowering the U.S. deficit to 2 percent of GDP over the next few years would require a further 20 percent decline in the dollar. The economists Maurice Obstfeld and Kenneth Rogoff estimate that the fall could be as much as 40 percent. And the University of California at Berkeley`s Brad de Long has pointed out that,

(i)f the private market--which knows that with high probability the dollar is going down someday--decides that that someday has come and that the dollar is going down now, then all the Asian central banks in the world cannot stop it [emphasis in original].

That day may be fast approaching. In the words of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan last November, "the desire of investors to add dollar claims to their portfolios" must have a limit; a "continued financing even of today`s current account deficits ... doubtless will, at some future point, increase shares of dollar claims in investor portfolios to levels that imply an unacceptable amount of concentration risk."

The domestic effects of a dollar crash would be felt most sharply by the growing numbers of Americans with large mortgage debts who would suddenly face a rise in interest rates. The growth in the share of variable-rate mortgages in the volume of total household debt is seen by some as a sign that the U.S. mortgage market is growing more sophisticated. But it also increases the sensitivity of many American families to rises in the rates. The federal government has a pretty large variable-rate debt, too, given the very short maturities of a large proportion of federal bonds and notes. That fact means that higher rates could quickly affect the deficit itself, creating a dangerous feedback loop. And, of course, higher rates would be likely to lower growth and hence reduce tax revenues. In short, today`s international fiat-money system is significantly, and dangerously, crisis-prone.

Another cause for concern is the fragility of China`s financial system. This Asian miracle is unlikely to avoid the kind of crisis that marked the Asian miracles of the past. To get a sense of the dangers, consider China`s Soviet-style domestic banking system and its puny domestic stock market: how can such rapid growth in manufacturing possibly be sustained with such inadequate financial institutions?

Pre-1914 globalization was remarkably susceptible to the international transmission of crises--what economists call "contagion." So is globalization nowadays. As Andrew Large of the Bank of England pointed out last November, the "search for yield" in an environment of low interest rates is encouraging investors, banks, and hedge funds to converge on similar trading strategies, raising "the prospect of one-way markets developing and market liquidity evaporating in response to a shock."

GHOSTS FROM THE PAST

As the economic parallels with 1914 suggest, today`s globalization shows at least some signs of reversibility. The risks increase when one considers the present political situation, which has the same five flaws as the pre-1914 international order: imperial overstretch, great-power rivalry, an unstable alliance system, rogue regimes sponsoring terror, and the rise of a revolutionary terrorist organization hostile to capitalism.

The United States--an empire in all but name--is manifestly overstretched. Not only is its current account deficit large and growing larger, but the fiscal deficit that lurks behind it also is set to surge as the baby boomers retire and start to claim Social Security and Medicare benefits. The Congressional Budget Office (cbo) projects that over the next four decades, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare spending will rise to consume at least an additional 12 percent of GDP per year. The cbo also estimates that the transition costs of President George W. Bush`s planned Social Security reform, if enacted, could create a budget shortfall of up to two percent of GDP a year for ten years. Add that to the fiscal consequences of making the president`s first-term tax cuts permanent, and it becomes hard to imagine how the country will manage to stem the rising tide of red ink.

The U.S. empire also suffers from a personnel deficit: 500,000 troops is the maximum number that Washington can deploy overseas, and this number is simply not sufficient to win all the small wars the United States currently has (or might have) to wage. Of the 137,000 American troops currently in Iraq, 43 percent are drawn from the reserves or the National Guard. Even just to maintain the U.S. presence in Iraq, the Army is extending tours of duty and retaining personnel due to be discharged. Such measures seem certain to hurt re-enlistment rates.

Above all, the U.S. empire suffers from an attention deficit. Iraq is not a very big war. As one Marine told his parents in a letter home,

compared to the wars of the past, this is nothing. We`re not standing on line in the open--facing German machine guns like the Marines at Belleau Wood or trying to wade ashore in chest-deep water at Tarawa. We`re not facing hordes of screaming men at the frozen Chosun Reservoir in Korea or the clever ambushes of Vietcong. We deal with potshots and I.E.D.`s [improvised explosive devices].

He was right; the Iraq war is more like the colonial warfare the British waged 100 years ago. It is dangerous--the author of that letter was killed three weeks after he wrote it--but it is not Vietnam or Korea, much less the Pacific theater in World War II. Yet the Iraq war has become very unpopular very quickly, after relatively few casualties. According to several polls, fewer than half of American voters now support it. And virtually no one seems to want to face the fact that the U.S. presence in Iraq--and the low-intensity conflict that goes with imperial policing--may have to endure for ten years or more if that country is to stand any chance of economic and political stabilization.

Then there is the second problem: great-power rivalry. It is true that the Chinese have no obvious incentive to pick a fight with the United States. But China`s ambitions with respect to Taiwan are not about to disappear just because Beijing owns a stack of U.S. Treasury bonds. On the contrary, in the event of an economic crisis, China might be sorely tempted to play the nationalist card by threatening to take over its errant province. Would the United States really be willing to fight China over Taiwan, as it has pledged in the past to do? And what would happen if the Chinese authorities flexed their new financial muscles by dumping U.S. bonds on the world market? To the historian, Taiwan looks somewhat like the Belgium of old: a seemingly inconsequential country over which empires end up fighting to the death. And one should not forget Asia`s most dangerous rogue regime, North Korea, which is a little like pre-1914 Serbia with nuclear weapons.

As for Europe, one must not underestimate the extent to which the recent diplomatic "widening of the Atlantic" reflects profound changes in Europe, rather than an alteration in U.S. foreign policy. The combination of economic sclerosis and social senescence means that Europe is bound to stagnate, if not decline. Meanwhile, Muslim immigration and the prospect of Turkey`s accession to the European Union are changing the very character of Europe. And the division between Americans and Europeans on Middle Eastern questions is only going to get wider--for example, if the United States dismisses the European attempt to contain Iran`s nuclear ambitions by diplomatic means and presses instead for military countermeasures.

These rivalries are one reason the world today also has an unstable alliance system (problem number three). Nato`s purpose is no longer clear. Is it just an irrelevant club for the winners of the Cold War, which former Soviet satellites are encouraged to join for primarily symbolic reasons? Have divisions over Iraq rendered it obsolete? To say the least, "coalitions of the willing" are a poor substitute.

None of these problems would necessarily be fatal were it not for the fourth and fifth parallels between 1914 and today: the existence of rogue regimes sponsoring terror--Iran and Syria top the list--and of revolutionary terrorist organizations. It is a big mistake to think of al Qaeda as "Islamo-fascist" (as the journalist Christopher Hitchens and many others called the group after the September 11, 2001, attacks). Al Qaeda`s members are much more like "Islamo-Bolshevists," committed to revolution and a reordering of the world along anti-capitalist lines.

Like the Bolsheviks in 1914, these Islamist extremists are part of an underground sect, struggling to land more than the occasional big punch on the enemy. But what if they were to get control of a wealthy state, the way Lenin, Trotsky, and company did in 1917? How would the world look if there were an October Revolution in Saudi Arabia? True, some recent survey data suggest that ordinary Saudis are relatively moderate people by the standards of the Arab world. And high oil prices mean more shopping and fewer disgruntled youths. On the other hand, after what happened in Tehran in 1979, no one can rule out a second Islamist revolution. The Saudi royal family does not look like the kind of regime that will still be in business ten years from now. The only monarchies that survive in modern times are those that give power away.

But is Osama bin Laden really a modern-day Lenin? The comparison is less far-fetched than it seems ("Hereditary Nobleman Vladimir Ulyanov" also came from a wealthy family). In a proclamation to the world before the recent U.S. presidential election, bin Laden declared that his "policy [was] bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." As he explained, "al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the [September 11 attacks], while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost--according to the lowest estimate--more than $500 billion. Meaning that every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah." Bin Laden went on to talk about the U.S. "economic deficit ... estimated to total more than a trillion dollars" and to make a somewhat uncharacteristic joke:

[T]hose who say that al Qaeda has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise, because when one scrutinizes the results, one cannot say that al Qaeda is the sole factor in achieving those spectacular gains. Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations--whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction--has helped al Qaeda to achieve these enormous results.

Two things are noteworthy about bin Laden`s quip: one, the classically Marxist assertion that the war in Iraq was motivated by capitalist economic interests; and two, the rather shrewd--and unfortunately accurate--argument that bin Laden has been getting help in "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy" from the Bush administration`s fiscal policy.

APOCALYPSE WHEN?

A doomsday scenario is plausible. But is it probable? The difficult thing--indeed the nearly impossible thing--is to predict a cataclysm. Doing so was the challenge investors faced in the first age of globalization. They knew there could be a world war. They knew such a war would have devastating financial consequences (although few anticipated how destructive it would be). But they had no way of knowing when exactly it would happen.

The same problem exists today. We all know that another, bigger September 11 is quite likely; it is, indeed, bin Laden`s stated objective. We all know--or should know--that a crisis over Taiwan would send huge shockwaves through the international system; it could even lead to a great-power war. We all know that revolutionary regime change in Saudi Arabia would shake the world even more than the 1917 Bolshevik coup in Russia. We all know that the detonation of a nuclear device in London would dwarf the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as an act of terrorism.

But what exactly can we do about such contingencies, if, as with the Asian tsunami, we cannot say even approximately when they might occur? The opportunity cost of liquidating our portfolios and inhabiting a subterranean bunker looks too high, even if Armageddon could come tomorrow. In that sense, we seem no better prepared for the worst-case scenario than were the beneficiaries of the last age of globalization, 90 years ago. Like the passengers who boarded the Lusitania, all we know is that we may conceivably sink. Still we sail.

Copyright 2005

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[urlUS-Wahlkampffinanzierung]http://opensecrets.org/index.asp[/url]

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Es gibt immer mehr Berichte, dass die Bush-Regierung die USA mir seiner Politik die USA in die Steinzeit zurückbombt.
`The Council on Foreign Relations` ist ganz gewiß kein liberales Institut. Siehe auch #27803.
Das Weitere habe ich bei der Durchsicht der Quellen gefunden.
Bei dem Vergleich der lebenswerten Städten kann ich nach meinen Kenntnissen die Auswahl für die USA bestätigen, dass San Francisco die einzige lebenswerte Stadt der USA ist.
Man hält auch viel darauf, dass man die europäischte Stadt der USA ist. Auf jeden Fall ist sie die schönste zusammen mit Seattle.


[urlDown to the Wire]http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050501faessay84311/thomas-bleha/down-to-the-wire.html[/url]
Summary: Once a leader in Internet innovation, the United States has fallen far behind Japan and other Asian states in deploying broadband and the latest mobile-phone technology. This lag will cost it dearly. By outdoing the United States, Japan and its neighbors are positioning themselves to be the first states to reap the benefits of the broadband era: economic growth, increased productivity, and a better quality of life.

[url2005 International Geographic Salary Differential Report]http://www.mercerhr.com/knowledgecenter/reportsummary.jhtml/dynamic/idContent/1174970[/url]

According to Mercer`s 2005 International Geographic Salary Differential Report, the United States has dropped out of the 10 highest paying countries. In fact, due to the US dollar depreciation, the United States ranks 20th overall in Gross pay. Switzerland remains the top paying country in this survey, followed closely by Germany and Denmark. On a Gross pay basis, nine out of the top 10 countries are in Western Europe, and one is in Asia.

A complete list of the top 10 highest paying countries in gross terms for all positions is as follows:

Switzerland
Germany
Denmark
Japan
Norway
Austria
Belgium
Ireland
Netherlands
United Kingdom

Mehr Tabellen auf der Seite:

In summary, we found that:
*
As in years past Switzerland is the top paying country across all six position levels evaluated.
*
Japan provides top salaries for lower-level positions but falls to 8th position in the rankings for Upper Middle Management pay.
*
Norway, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, top paying countries for laborer positions, do not appear among the top 10 highest Gross paying countries for Upper Middle Management positions, falling to 12th, 17th, 11th and 15th position respectively.
*
Conversely, Austria, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Chile pay more than most countries for Upper Middle Management positions, but fall to 13th, 12th, 21st and 27th position respectively in the rankings for General Laborers.
*
Due in part to the depreciation of the dollar, the United States does not appear among the top paying countries for any position level, ranking 20th overall for Gross pay.
Highest Net pay rankings

Seven of the top paying countries on a Gross pay basis also have very high personal tax and social security rates (i.e. Austria, Germany, and Norway). The results show, however, that these countries rank as top paying countries on a Net pay basis as well when all six position levels are compared.

Across All top pay (Gross and Net), we find that:
* Employees in Switzerland, Japan and Germany are the best paid across all position levels on both a before and after tax basis.
* Low level positions in Norway, Australia and Canada are relatively highly paid, but compensation for upper level positions in these countries remains only moderately competitive.
* Conversely, upper level positions in Hong Kong and Austria receive top pay, but pay at lower level positions is not highly competitive.

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[urlWorldwide 2004 Quality of Life City Rankings]http://www.finfacts.ie/qualityoflife.htm[/url]
Mercer Human Resource Consulting, one of the world’s leading consulting organisations, helps employers create measurable business results through their people. With more than 13,000 employees serving clients from some 150 cities in 40 countries worldwide, the company is part of Mercer Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., which lists its stock (ticker symbol: MMC) on the New York, Chicago, Pacific, and London stock exchanges.
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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/
Sunday, April 17, 2005

17 Killed in Iraq, including 2 US Troops

The guerrilla war rolled along on Saturday, claiming at least 17 victims dead and more wounded.

Guerrillas detonated a bomb in the eastern city of Baquba, killing 7 persons, including police, and wounding 5. Guerrillas assassinated a policeman in southern Baghdad. Police were also killed in violent incidents in Kirkuk, Tuz, and Baiji. A bomb near Samarra killed one Iraqi soldier and wounded another, and injured 4 civilians.

2 US troops were killed, one in north Baghdad and the other in Tikrit.

Iraqi troops assembled at Mada`in in preparation for an attempt to rescue some 100 Shiite hostages held by Sunni Arab militants.

Patrick Cockburn dismantles claims by the Pentagon brass that Iraq`s guerrilla insurgencey is on the decline.

The Los Angeles Times points out that the new Iraqi government is likely to show greater independence from Washington.

I`d say that the chances the US will get a green light to do another Fallujah-type operations are slim to none. PM Ibrahim Jaafari opposed the spring, 2004, Fallujah campaign.

Iraqi female politicians are pressing Jaafari to appoint more women to head ministries.

posted by Juan @ [url4/17/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/17-killed-in-iraq-including-2-us.html[/url]

News Roundup

Bush and his agendas (social security privatization, the Iraq War) continue to slide in the polls. Americans turn out to want a timetable for withdrawal of US troops just as much as Iraq`s Sunni Arabs do! (69 percent want a clear goal and don`t think Bush has articulated one.)

posted by Juan @ [url4/17/2005 06:14:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/news-roundup-bush-and-his-agendas.html[/url]

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Latest Fatality: Apr 16, 2005
Apr.05: 19

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Sunday, April 17, 2005
War News for Sunday, April 17, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: American aid worker killed in suicide car bomb attack on the road to Baghdad airport.

RIP: Marla, let your memory never be forgotten.
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Bring `em on: Three US soldiers killed and seven injured in mortar attack on military position in Ramadi.

Bring `em on: Roadside bomb kills three Iraqis that was targeting a US convoy in Al-Barjiya.

Bring `em on: The sign of civil war to come could now be playing out in the small town of Madain.

Bring `em on: Seven people - including at least two police officers - killed in a bomb attack on a restaurant in the Iraqi city of Baquba.

Bring `em on: Three members of Iraqi security killed in drive-by shootings in Kirkuk.

Man of Straw

Pandering to the UK electorate ahead of the May General Election; Jack Straw says that he expected British troops to leave Iraq within the next two years.

Please Jack; British troops might as well be at home because Basra is controlled by Islamic militias. Meanwhile the Labour electorate have banked upon Tony being honourable and stepping down after Labour win the election.

Get stuffed Jack Straw and when was your dear leader ever worthy of due respect?; and I hope this honourable man beats you in your Blackburn constituency for all your past deeds.
# posted by Friendly Fire : 3:38 PM
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Annan says US and UK allowed Iraqi oil scam

Western allies deny turning blind eye to smuggling by Saddam
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1461176,00.html

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday April 16, 2005

Guardian
Britain and America reacted angrily yesterday to accusations by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, that they were partly to blame for the oil-for-food scandal because for years they had overlooked the illegal trade in Iraqi crude.

Mr Annan, under fire for his son`s role in the worst corruption scandal in the UN`s history, made his comment on Thursday, hours after a British oil trader and his US and Bulgarian associates were indicted for paying millions of dollars in bribes to Saddam Hussein`s regime to acquire Iraqi oil.

He pointed out that the Iraqi regime profited far more from illicit shipments of oil through Turkey and Jordan which, he said, took place with the almost certain knowledge of Britain and the US - the only countries with the resources to stop the sanctions-busters.

"The bulk of the money that Saddam made came out of smuggling outside the oil-for-food programme, and it was on the American and British watch," he told reporters.

"Possibly they were the ones who knew exactly what was going on, and that the countries themselves decided to close their eyes to smuggling to Turkey and Jordan because they were allies."

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said Britain had helped maintain the international embargo on Saddam`s regime and had intercepted shipments in the Gulf.

"The United Kingdom was consistently in the lead in seeking to enforce sanctions against Iraq," his statement said.

"The fact that the smuggling of oil was most likely to take place to Turkey and Jordan simply reflects the geography of the area. Jordan and Turkey have land borders with Iraq. Jordan and Turkey were primarily responsible for preventing smuggling across their borders."

But the Liberal Democrats said the government had questions to answer.

"It was no secret that smuggling was taking place and that both Turkey and Jordan were beneficiaries," its foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell, said.

"Both the British and American governments have got questions to answer. What did they know and when did they know it?"

A US spokesman, Richard Grenell, denied that Washington had known of the smuggling and said there was a difference between illicit trading and a public "waiver" granted to some countries "before the oil-for-food programme even began".

The allegation has been around for years that Washington - which had ships in the Gulf to intercept smugglers - looked the other way while Jordan and Turkey profited from smuggled oil.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr went to Congress for waivers to allow Jordan and Turkey to continue receiving US aid despite evidence of sanctions-busting.

It is also widely acknowledged that the Iraqi regime earned far more from sanctions-busting - up to $11bn (£5.8bn) - than from bribes from oil companies working under the oil-for-food programme, which earned Saddam`s officials an estimated $2bn to $4bn.

Mr Annan`s comments were seen as evidence of his growing frustration at Washington, where the Republicans have used the scandal to attack the UN.

It has laboured under the scandal for more than a year, and Mr Annan`s personal integrity was scrutinised by the independent investigation conducted by the former US reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

The committee is to publish its conclusions this summer, and they could lead to criminal prosecutions for bribery and sanctions-busting in several countries.

Its interim reports have accused the director of the oil-for-food programme, Benon Sevan, of ethical misdeeds, and raised questions about Mr Annan`s son Kojo.

· France marked the 100th day in captivity in Iraq of the kidnapped journalist Florence Aubenas and her guide Hussein Hanoun by TV channels keeping pictures of the pair on their screens throughout yesterday, and town halls publishing messages of support.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Iraqi Leaders Flexing Muscles
U.S. officials may have limited influence on the direction of the new government, including its stance toward American troops.
By Paul Richter and Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff Writers
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-usiraq17a…

April 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — For the last two years, U.S. authorities have had firm control of the mission in Iraq. They have set rules for military operations and worked with Iraqi leaders blessed by Washington. But the arrival of an elected government this month will take the partnership in new directions that the Americans may find difficult to control.

The ambitious new Iraqi leaders have their own ideas and, with elections ahead, are sensitive to grass-roots pressure. And with the Americans increasingly reluctant to be seen running the country, the Iraqis have taken the initiative in the relationship.

No top Iraqi leader has pushed the Americans to leave the country or challenged basic terms of the relationship, including the status of U.S. forces in Iraq. But in the months ahead, as they write a constitution, Iraqis will start rethinking the fundamental ways in which they deal with the Americans, U.S. officials say.

"They`re molding and shaping their government," said a Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "So far, we`re not hearing a lot of demands for change. But we know these questions are coming."

The most sensitive questions ahead are those concerning the U.S. military. When the new Iraqi administration takes over, the United States will be in the unusual position of providing an army for a country that another government controls.

U.S. military officials say there has been no indication that the transitional government wants to negotiate the basic accord — called a status of forces agreement — under which U.S. troops will operate. Some military officials predict that the Iraqis will be preoccupied with writing a new constitution and that the military treaty will be left for the permanent government. Under transitional law, the permanent leaders are to be elected no later than Dec. 15 and to assume office by Dec. 31.

Pentagon officials and U.S. commanders don`t want such an agreement at this point, arguing that it could dangerously restrict them as they battle a lethal insurgency.

But without such a written pact, rules governing U.S. troops` activities will remain subject to informal agreements that Iraqi leaders can seek to change.

Iraqis could ask for new rules on the treatment of insurgents and tighter controls on foreign troops at checkpoints and on foreign security contractors, who now enjoy a status much like coalition troops in the way they carry and use weapons.

One signal that Iraqis might seek a new approach on some issues came last week, when new Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he wanted to offer insurgents a broad amnesty and left open the possibility that this could include Iraqis who had attacked coalition troops.

On Friday, a prominent Sunni Muslim cleric urged Talabani, a Kurd, to follow through on the amnesty pledge. In his weekly sermon, Sheik Ahmad Abdul-Ghafoor Samarrai, a cleric in the influential Muslim Scholars Assn., said Talabani should free all Iraqi detainees and refuse to "obey and kneel to pressure" from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Among other issues, Shiite Muslim leaders also may pressure the U.S. military not to train former Baath Party members, who many Shiites believe secretly support the insurgents. At the same time, American officials are groping for ways to keep Sunnis involved in the new administration and avoid angering and alienating a large segment of the population.

Michael Rubin, a former political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority, the temporary U.S.-led governing body, said he believed that Iraqis would clamor for changes on several security issues. A fight over the U.S. training of former Baathists "could bring on the first Iraqi sovereignty crisis," said Rubin, now a scholar at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute.

Rubin predicted that U.S. officials would find it difficult to manage these issues, in part because of their desire to stay at arm`s length from Iraqi government decision-making.

President Bush has made it clear that he wants Iraqi democracy to take its course, and U.S. officials don`t want to undermine the government`s legitimacy by making it appear that the Americans are still pulling the strings. Yet there are strong temptations to step in.

Such as when Talabani made his amnesty comments. The Bush administration felt strongly that "people who`ve committed violence against coalition troops shouldn`t just get a pass," said a U.S. official, who declined to be identified. But "we didn`t want to go out and take issue with it publicly. We don`t want to cause problems for him with the local population."

In recent weeks, as newly elected representatives argued over formation of the government, various Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni Arab leaders privately asked the Americans to intervene with the other groups to force a solution. U.S. officials declined, temporarily throwing the negotiations into even greater turmoil.

On several occasions, however, the Americans have spoken up.

As U.S. concern mounted that a purge of Baathists would slow the establishment of an Iraqi army, Rumsfeld warned last week that "anything that would delay [a functioning army] or disrupt that as a result of turbulence, or lack of confidence, or corruption in government, would be unfortunate."

Dealing with the new government will be tricky for the Americans in part because of its complexity. Under interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, U.S. officials were able to deal with an American favorite who had broad control over the government. Now, with the arrival of new executive branch officials and an elected legislature, there will be several power centers.

The new leadership is trying to bring influential tribal and political leaders into the government, hoping to build its support base. So far, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari has appointed 31 ministers.

It is expected that some of these officials will not hesitate to criticize Iraqi leaders or the Americans. There is speculation, for instance, that a deputy prime minister post could go to Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial former exile and Pentagon ally who, in trying to build political support, recently criticized the U.S. mission in Iraq, American officials say.

The diversity in the government could create headaches in Washington if religious and ethnic sensitivities cause clashes within the leadership over anti-insurgency efforts, U.S. officials say.

One senior U.S. defense official speculated that tensions might flare over military operations in Sunni-dominated central Iraq.

"What if you have a Sunni in charge of the Ministry of Defense, and we say we want to go back into Fallouja, and he doesn`t want us to?" the official asked. "Will Jafari be able to run roughshod over him?"

Another potential issue is the status of U.S. bases in Iraq. The Pentagon has made no formal request to establish permanent installations here — partly for political reasons, officials acknowledge. It is unclear whether Iraqi politicians who will be elected to a permanent government next year will support a long-term U.S. presence.

"It would be silly for us to come out and say we want permanent bases, and then have somebody get elected on a platform of no U.S. bases," a second senior defense official said. "That could happen."

At the same time, many inside the Pentagon believe that any permanent U.S. foothold in Iraq would only fuel anti-American sentiment and foster suspicion that the U.S. invaded Iraq to gain control of its oil reserves.

And, with U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf states of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as in Central Asian countries such as Afghanistan, many believe that there is little strategic need for such facilities here.

Yet for the most part, Pentagon officials profess confidence that they will have a generally smooth relationship on security matters with the new government. "So far, we`re not concerned," the first defense official said. "But we don`t yet have reason to be concerned."

Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin in Vienna contributed to this report.


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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April 17, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Get Tom DeLay to the Church on Time
By FRANK RICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/opinion/17rich.html?hp

A scandal is like any other melodrama: It can`t be a crowd pleaser unless the audience can follow the plot. That`s why Monica Lewinsky trumped Whitewater, and that`s why of all the story lines ensnaring Tom DeLay, the one with legs is the one with the craps tables. It`s not just easy to follow, but it also has a combustive cultural element that makes it as representative of its political era as Monicagate was of the Clinton years. As the lies and subterfuge of the go-go 1990`s coalesced around sex, so the scandal of our new "moral values" decade comes cloaked in religion. The hair shirt is the new thong.

This time the plot begins with money. Two K Street fixers, a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff and a flack named Michael Scanlon, managed to snooker six American Indian tribes into handing over $82 million in exchange for furthering their casino interests. According to The Washington Post, some of their tribal takings, cycled through a nonprofit center for "public policy research," helped send Mr. DeLay golfing in Scotland. The pious congressman, a gambling foe, says he had no idea of his trip`s sinful provenance. Never mind that Mr. DeLay was joined abroad by Mr. Abramoff, whom he has described as one of his "closest and dearest friends," or that Mr. Scanlon had once been his spokesman. Mr. DeLay was as innocent of the goings-on around him as a piano player in a brothel.

Beltway cronyism, dubious junkets, loophole-laden denials are all, of course, time-honored Washington fare. The few on the right backing away from Mr. DeLay, from The Wall Street Journal`s editorial page to Newt Gingrich, make a point of reminding us of that. As they see it, more in sorrow than in anger, the Gingrich revolutionaries who vowed to end the corruption practiced by Congressional Democrats have now been infected by the same Washington virus as their opponents. That`s true, but this critique of Mr. DeLay and company by their own camp all too conveniently sidesteps the distinguishing feature of this scandal. Democratic malefactors like Jim Wright and L.B.J.`s old fixer Bobby Baker didn`t wear the Bible on their sleeves.

In the DeLay story almost every player has ostentatious religious trappings, starting with the House majority leader himself. His efforts to play God with Terri Schiavo were preceded by crusades like blaming the teaching of evolution for school shootings and raising money for the Traditional Values Coalition`s campaign to save America from the "war on Christianity." Mr. DeLay`s chief of staff was his pastor, and, according to Time magazine, organized daily prayer sessions in their office. Today this holy man, Ed Buckham, is a lobbyist implicated in another DeLay junket to South Korea.

But it`s not merely Christian denominations that figure in the religious plumage of this crowd. Mr. Abramoff, who is now being investigated by nearly as many federal agencies as there are nights of Passover, is an Orthodox Jew who in his salad days wore a yarmulke to press interviews. In Washington, he opened not one but two kosher restaurants (I hear the deli was passable by D.C. standards) and started a yeshiva. His uncompromising piety drove him to condemn the one Orthodox Jew in the Senate, Joe Lieberman, for securing "the tortuous death of millions" by supporting abortion rights. Mr. Abramoff`s own moral constellation can be found in e-mail messages in which he referred to his Indian clients as "idiots" and "monkeys" even as he squeezed them for every last million. A previous client was Zaire`s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, who, unlike Senator Lieberman, actually was a practitioner of torture and mass murder.

Another Abramoff crony is the political operative Ralph Reed, whom Mr. Abramoff hired for his College Republicans operation in the early 1980`s. Mr. Reed, who has called gambling "a cancer on the body politic" and is running for lieutenant governor in Georgia, is now busily explaining that he, like Mr. DeLay, had no idea that some of his consulting firm`s Abramoff-Scanlon paydays ($4.2 million worth) were indirect transfers of casino dough. Mr. Reed, of course, is best known for his stint as the public altar boy`s face of Pat Robertson`s political machine, the Christian Coalition.

It was at a Christian Coalition convention in Washington in 1994 that I first encountered yet another religious figure who pops up in this tale, the South African-born Rabbi Daniel Lapin. He was regaling the crowd with scriptural passages proving that high taxes are "immoral." Now the show rabbi of the Christian right, Rabbi Lapin has moved on to bigger broadcast pulpits. When he`s not preaching the virtues of "The Passion of the Christ," he is chastising "Meet the Fockers" for promoting "vile notions of Jews" that "are not too different from those used by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels." He apparently didn`t like the idea that Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman played characters who enjoy sex.

Rabbi Lapin, according to Slate, is the networker who jump-started the mutually beneficial business relationship of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay by introducing them in the early 90`s. That was some mitzvah. As Marshall Wittmann, a former Christian Coalition lobbyist who later jumped to the Democratic Leadership Council, told me recently, "We now see the meaning of Judeo-Christian values."

The values alleged so far in this scandal - greed, hypocrisy, favor-selling, dissembling - belong to no creed except the ruthless pursuit of power. They are not exclusive to either political party. But the religious trappings add a note that distinguishes these Beltway creeps from those who have come before: a supreme righteousness that often spirals into anger and fire-and-brimstone zealotry that can do far more damage to America than ill-begotten golf junkets.

It`s not for nothing that Mr. DeLay`s nickname is the Hammer. Or that early in his Christian Coalition career, Ralph Reed famously told a Knight-Ridder reporter that he wanted to see his opponents in a "body bag." The current manifestation of this brand of religious politics can be found in the far right`s anti-judiciary campaign, of which Mr. DeLay is the patron saint. As he flew off to the pope`s funeral in Rome, the congressman left behind a rabble-rousing video for a Washington conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" staged by a new outfit called The Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. Another speaker, a lawyer named Edwin Vieira, twice invoked a Stalin dictum whose unexpurgated version goes, "Death solves all problems; no man, no problem." The reporter who covered the event for The Washington Post, Dana Milbank, suggested in print that one prime target of the vitriol, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, might want to get "a few more bodyguards." It wasn`t necessarily a joke.

You can see why Dick Cheney and President Bush in rapid succession distanced themselves from Mr. DeLay`s threats of retribution against judges who presided in the Schiavo case. If an Eric Rudolph murders a judge in close chronological proximity to that kind of rhetoric, they`ve got a political Armageddon on their hands. Mr. DeLay got the message, sort of. At his Wednesday news conference, he tried to dial back some of his words, if only as a way of changing the subject from Indians and his own potential outings in a court of law. Unlike Bill Frist, he has yet to sign on to next Sunday`s national Christian right telecast bashing what its organizer, the Family Research Council, calls "out-of-control courts."

Many believe that Mr. DeLay`s legal fate is tied to that of Mr. Abramoff, whom the congressman has now downsized into one of "hundreds of relationships I have in Washington, D.C." Mr. Abramoff, intriguingly enough, hasn`t always been a creature of the capital. He was raised in Beverly Hills, the town that is supposed to be anathema to every value that Republican theocrats stand for. And he returned there for a time in the late 1980`s, when he produced an anti-Communist action film called "Red Scorpion." Once it was reported that extras and military equipment had been supplied by South Africa`s racist government, Arthur Ashe`s Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid condemned the film, and no major studio would touch it. But it opened nationwide nonetheless, to few customers and many protesters.

In 1992 Mr. Abramoff, eager to prove that he was unlike secular show-business Democrats, told The Hollywood Reporter that he was starting a Committee for Traditional Jewish Values in Entertainment to emulate Christian anti-indecency campaigns. (He didn`t.) But "Red Scorpion," on which Mr. Abramoff shares the writing credit, has many more four-letter words than "Meet the Fockers," as well as violence, bloodied beefcake (Dolph Lundgren`s) and crucifixion imagery anticipating "The Passion of the Christ."

Though Mr. Abramoff has closed his yeshiva and is now being sued for back wages by its former employees, his cinematic creation survives on DVD. "Red Scorpion" is seriously Godawful, but, unlike the Ten Commandments displayed in Tom DeLay`s office, it may yet endure as a permanent monument to what these people are about.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 18, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Whiff of Stagflation
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/opinion/18krugman.html?hp

In the 1970`s soaring prices of oil and other commodities led to stagflation - a combination of high inflation and high unemployment, which left no good policy options. If the Fed cut interest rates to create jobs, it risked causing an inflationary spiral; if it raised interest rates to bring inflation down, it would further increase unemployment.

Can it happen again?

Last week fears of a return to stagflation sent stock prices to a five-month low. What few seem to have noticed, however, is that a mild form of stagflation - rising inflation in an economy still well short of full employment - has already arrived.

True, measured unemployment isn`t bad by historical standards, and inflation is in the low single digits. But inflation is creeping up, and it`s doing so despite a labor market that is in worse shape than the official unemployment rate suggests.

Let`s start with the jobs picture. The official unemployment rate is 5.2 percent - roughly equal to the average for the Clinton years.

But unemployment statistics only count those who are actively looking for jobs. Every other indicator shows a situation much less favorable to workers than that of the 1990`s. A lower fraction of the adult population is employed; the average duration of unemployment - a rough indicator of how long it takes laid-off workers to find new jobs - is much higher than it was in the 1990`s.

Above all, the weak job market leaves workers with no bargaining power, so they aren`t getting ahead: wage increases have been minimal, and haven`t kept up with inflation.

Underlying these disappointing numbers is sluggish job creation. Private-sector employment is still lower than it was before the 2001 recession.

Things could be, and have been, worse. But those whose standard of living depends on wages, not capital gains - in other words, the vast majority of Americans - aren`t feeling particularly prosperous. By two to one, people tell pollsters that the economy is "only fair" or "poor," not "good" or "excellent."

Why, then, has the Fed been raising interest rates? Because it is worried about inflation, which has risen to the top end of the 2 to 3 percent range the Fed prefers.

What`s driving inflation? Not wages: labor costs have been falling, because wages are growing less than productivity. Oil prices are a big part of the story, but not all of it. Other commodity prices are also rising; health care costs are once again on the march. And a combination of capacity shortages, rising Asian demand and a weakening dollar has given industries like cement and steel new "pricing power."

It all adds up to a mild case of stagflation: inflation is leading the Fed to tap on the brakes, even though this doesn`t look or feel like a full-employment economy.

We shouldn`t overstate the case: we`re not back to the economic misery of the 1970`s. But the fact that we`re already experiencing mild stagflation means that there will be no good options if something else goes wrong.

Suppose, for example, that the consumer pullback visible in recent data turns out to be bigger than we now think, and growth stalls. (Not that long ago many economists thought that an oil price in the 50`s would cause a recession.) Can the Fed stop raising interest rates and go back to rate cuts without causing the dollar to plunge and inflation to soar?

Or suppose that there`s some kind of oil supply disruption - or that warnings about declining production from Saudi oil fields turn out to be right. Suppose that Asian central banks decide that they already have too many dollars. Suppose that the housing bubble bursts. Any of these events could easily turn our mild case of stagflation into something much more serious.

How do we get out of this bind? As the old joke goes, I wouldn`t start from here. We should have spent the years of cheap oil encouraging conservation; we should have spent the years of modest growth in medical costs reforming our health care system. Oh, and we`d have a wider range of policy options if the budget weren`t so deeply in deficit.

So if any of these things does come to pass, we`ll just have to see how well an administration in which political operatives make all economic policy decisions, and the Treasury secretary is only a salesman, handles crises.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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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, April 18, 2005

Ex-Baathists Excluded
Police Poorly Trained

The United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite religious parties) who now dominate the Iraqi government are insisting on purging the Iraqi government of former members of the Baath Party and trying any who might be associated with crimes. They are also dismissive of attempts to reach out to Sunni guerrilla movements. The interim government of Iyad Allawi, himself an ex-Baathist, had appointed to intelligence and military positions a number of former Baath officers associated with the Iraqi National Accord, who had worked with the US CIA against Saddam after breaking with him. Since most ex-Baathists are Sunni, and since most Sunni Arabs who amount to anything in Iraq had at least some tenuous relationship to the Baath party, the upshot of deputy speaker Hussein Shahristani`s vindictive comments is actually a long-term and massive marginalization of the Sunni Arab community. This marginalization will likely prolong and deepen the guerrilla war.

It turns out the story that Sunni guerrillas had kidnapped 100 Shiites in Mada`in and were threatening to kill them may have little or even nothing to it. Iraq is prime ground for the spread of poisonous rumors, since the poor security situation makes it difficult for journalists to check stories, and the battling factions have every reason to circulate falsehoods.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani favors using Kurdish and Shiite militias against the Sunni Arab guerrillas. The problem with this plan is that it ethnicizes the conflict even further. Creating an Iraqi military that could fight for the nation rather than, as militias do, for a section of it, is the only good option.

Busines Week expresses the most severe reservations about the Iraqi police. Poorly trained, often corrupt or ineffective, and with tens of thousands accused of taking their salaries and just staying home, they may be more of a problem than a solution in the short to medium term.

posted by Juan @ [url4/18/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/ex-baathists-excluded-police-poorly.html[/url]

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Baghdad Burning

The Hostage Crisis...
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

I`m sure many people have been following the story of the moment in Iraq: Dozens of Shia hostages taken by Sunni insurgents in a town called Medain?

The first time we heard about it was a couple of days ago. I was watching the news subtitles on Arabiya but the subtitle was vague. It went something like this, "Sunni guerrillas capture 60 hostages in Iraqi town and will kill them if all Shia do not leave the town." It said nothing about which town it was, who the guerrillas claimed to be representing and just how the whole incident happened.

We kept watching the channels and hoping for more information. I remember reading that subtitle and feeling my heart sink with worry. I kept checking other news channels and then finally decided to check the internet. There was another vague news article on Yahoo. This one had a few more details- the town was Madain, south of Baghdad and the person who had called in the hostage situation was some sort of high-profile Shia politician.

News channels were still being vague about it. The only two channels who were persistently talking about the hostage situation were Arabia and Iraqia- but the numbers had risen. It was now 150 Shia hostages in Medain and the Iraqi National Guard and the American army were taking their positions on the outskirts of the town, preparing for a raid.

Medain is a town of Sunnis and Shia who have lived together peacefully for as long as anyone can remember. The people in the town come from the local "Ashayir" or tribes. It`s one of those places where everyone knows everyone else- even if only by name or family name. The tribes who dominate the town are a combination of Sunni and Shia. Any conflicts between the townspeople are more of the tribal or family type than they are religious.

The whole concept of a large number of Sunni guerrillas raiding the town and taking 60 – 150 of its members (including women and children) was bizarre, frightening and by the second day of the rumor, a little bit suspicious.

People in Baghdad didn`t believe it. Most of them waved a hand dismissing the report and said, "They just want to raid Medain." It`s a town that has been giving the Americans quite a bit of trouble this last year, a part of the Sunni Triangle . Many attacks were reported to have come from the area, but at the same time, it`s not like Falloojeh, Samarra, or Mosul- it`s half Shia. It wouldn`t be as easy or politically correct to raid.

Yesterday, there were actually Shia demonstrators from the town claiming that the rumors were false and the town was peaceful and there was no need for a raid or for door-to-door checks.

The last few days, Iraqi officials have been on television claiming that the whole hostage situation was "under control" and things were going to be sorted out, except that apparently, there`s nothing to sort out. There have been no reports of hostages, even from the majority of Shia residents themselves. Someone mentioned that it was possible a couple of people had been abducted, but it had nothing to do with Sunni guerrillas chasing out Shia.

Now, Associated Press is claiming,

"The confusion over Madain illustrated how quickly rumors spread in a country of deep ethnic and sectarian divides, where the threat of violence is all too real."

Uhm, no. Not really. See, this whole thing didn`t start out as a rumor. Rumors come to you through actual people- the guy who brings you kerosene spreads rumors, that neighbor next door brings you rumors, the man you get your rations from spreads rumors. This came to us, very decidedly, from a news source. It first made its debut as breaking news and came from an "Iraqi Shia official who wished to remain unnamed". The official should have to answer to the rumor he handed over to the press.

And now…

Shiite leaders and government officials had earlier estimated 35 to 100 people were taken hostage, but residents disputed the claim, with some saying they had seen no evidence any hostages were taken.

We know a lot of our new officials and spokespeople are blatantly lying and it`s fine to lie about security, reconstruction and democracy- we`ve gotten used to it. In fact, we tell jokes about it and laugh about it at family gatherings or over the telephone. To lie about something as serious as Sunni-Shia hostage taking is another story altogether. It`s unacceptable and while Sunnis and Shia were hardly going to take up arms against each other over this latest debacle, but it was still extremely worrisome and for people who wish to fuel sectarian violence, it was a perfect opportunity.

We have an Iraqi government that bans news channels and newspapers because they *insist* on reporting about such routine things as civilian casualties and raids, yet the Puppets barely flinch over media sources spreading a rumor as dangerous and provocative as this one.

- posted by river @ 1:06 PM

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Monday, April 18, 2005
War News for Monday, April 18, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: Seven Iraqi Kurds working at US military base kidnapped in Mansuria.

Bring `em on: Number of US soldiers wounded in a car bomb attack in Rutba.

Bring `em on: Two Iraqi policemen and one civilian killed in car bomb attack in Duluiyah.

Bring `em on: French and Czech citizens identified (along with Aid worker Marla Ruzicka) as victims of the suicide bomb attack in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: One US soldier killed and another injured in IED attack in Baghdad.

The Madain hostage crisis that never was?

Is the Insurgency waning?

Iraqi police/military deaths:

January 2005: 109 casualties.

February 2005: 103 casualties.

March 2005: 200 casualties.

April 2005: 108 so far this month.

Commentary: This illegal, unjust and unprovoked war against a sovereign country is what has alienated the rest of the world. This alienation runs deep and will have very long-term implications. The whole push of the best people in the bloody 20th century was an attempt to find ways to avert wars of aggression. The U.S. was one of the leaders in that drive. All of that was chucked on the ash heap of history by George W. Bush`s decision to invade Iraq and overthrow its government.

No sane leader of any nation in the world can trust America anymore. We have demonstrated that if we desire to attack a nation, we will fabricate the excuse and attack it, despite international law and international opinion. We have demonstrated that a nation need not provoke us or threaten us to become a victim of our aggression. We have said to the world that the only law we respect is the law of the jungle, and that might makes right. That`s why so many people consider us to be a rogue nation and a threat to world peace.

The sad part is that the American people have been so sheeplike. They believed the blarney about weapons of mass destruction, even the stupid parts such as Bush claiming Iraq`s tiny little drone airplanes could attack the U.S. When those lies were exposed, they believed that the war was justified by Saddam Hussein`s cruelty. We`ve slept with many bloody dictators, including Saddam. Now they believe that we went there to spread democracy.

What I didn`t see in Iraq: "Trust me when I tell you things are so much better in Iraq," said one US military official to me on my recent visit to that war-ravaged country. I didn`t know whether to scream or pull the remaining two strands of hair out of my head. I was in Iraq as part of a delegation of eight members of Congress, led by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Everything we have been told about Iraq by the Bush Administration has either been an outright lie or overwhelmingly false. There were no weapons of mass destruction; we have not been greeted as liberators; and the cost in terms of blood and treasure has outpaced even their worst-case scenarios. Trust is something I cannot give to this Administration.

If things in Iraq are so much better, why are we not decreasing the number of US forces there? Why is the insurgency showing no signs of waning? Why are we being told that in a few months the Administration will again ask Congress for billions of dollars more to fight the war? Why, according to the World Food Program, is hunger among the Iraqi people getting worse? It`s time for some candor, but candor is hard to come by in Iraq.

We were in Iraq for one day--for security reasons, it is US policy that Congressional delegations are not allowed to spend the night. We spent most of our time in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which serves as coalition headquarters. It`s the most heavily guarded encampment I`ve ever seen--and it still gets attacked. I even had armed guards accompany me to the bathroom. The briefings we received from US military and diplomatic officials were, to say the least, unsatisfying. The Nixonian approach that our military and diplomatic leaders have adopted in dealing with visiting members of Congress is aimed more at saving face than at engaging in an honest dialogue. At first, our briefers wanted to get away with slick slide presentations, but we insisted on asking real questions and attempting to get real answers.

During one such briefing, Lieut. Gen. David Petraeus, tasked with overseeing training of Iraqi security forces, informed us that 147,000 Iraqis had been trained. That sounded good to me. Perhaps we could start reducing the number of American forces, I suggested. But upon further questioning, General Petraeus conceded that less than one-fourth of the 147,000 were actually "combat capable." Why didn`t he say that to begin with? I asked--respectfully--our military and diplomatic officials what the gap was between the Iraqis we have trained and the number we needed to train in order to draw down the number of US troops. I could not get a straight answer.

During the morning of our visit, US military officials crowed about a recent operation in which Iraqi security forces had killed eighty-five insurgents. By the afternoon, when more reports came in, it was unclear how many insurgents had actually been killed and whether the Iraqi security forces had exaggerated their own actions.

I asked both General Petraeus and our embassy about US plans to build military bases in Iraq, which in my view would indicate a prolonged US presence. I was told--emphatically--that there are no plans to construct military bases. Yet Congress recently passed a huge supplemental wartime appropriations bill that includes, at the request of the Bush Administration, $500 million for military base construction. In Iraq.
# posted by Friendly Fire : 12:59 AM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 17, 2005
Apr.05: 23

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Die Frage bleibt, ob diese Erkenntnisse über den Terror die Verletzung vieler Rechtsvorschriften jemals rechtfertigen können.
Wenn nach dem westlichen Wertekanon diese Rechtfertigung überhaupt möglich ist.

Military Report on Guantanamo Highlights Danger of Al Qaeda
As Camp Delta`s legality is challenged, a chilling portrait of its detainees is offered by the U.S.
By Richard A. Serrano
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-gitmo18…

April 18, 2005

WASHINGTON — Three years after it began, the prison experiment known as Camp Delta at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has reached a crossroads in its incarceration of those captured in the war brought on by Sept. 11.

Military officials have completed tribunal hearings for all 558 detainees and have compiled their most comprehensive report detailing what they have learned about potential future terrorist attacks. But the Bush administration now is battling efforts by lawyers for some of the prisoners to have the cases moved to federal courts in Washington.

Should that happen, it could end the military`s long-held goal of keeping those it has identified as "enemy combatants" out of the public spotlight and ensconced in the island prison.

The new report appears to buttress the military`s claim that it should be allowed to run Camp Delta without outside intervention because the camp has become "the single best repository of Al Qaeda information."

The declassified summary cites more than 4,000 interrogation reports and says that some indicated Al Qaeda operatives were pursuing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The summary does not elaborate on what that information is or how close the terrorist organization might be to getting such weapons.

According to the report, captives have described how Al Qaeda trained them to spread deadly poisons, and at other times armed them with grenades stuffed inside soda cans, bombs hidden in pagers and cellphones and wristwatches that could trigger remote control explosions on a 24-hour countdown.

The report also showed that not all those being held were suspected of being front-line soldiers and that 1 in 10 of the captives were well-educated — often at U.S. colleges — in fields such as medicine and law.

More than 20 detainees have been positively identified as Osama bin Laden`s personal bodyguards and one as his close "spiritual advisor," according to the report. Another is listed as the "probable 20th 9/11 hijacker" — a Saudi man named Mohamed al-Kahtani who made it to Orlando, Fla., before being deported just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.

One detainee vowed to his captors that U.S. citizens in Saudi Arabia "will have their heads cut off." Another prisoner, this one with strong ties to Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Chechen mujahedin leadership, said of Americans everywhere: "Their day is coming…. One day I will enjoy sucking their blood."

The information gleaned from prisoners has been shared with U.S. intelligence agencies and top military officials. It also is designed to get the Pentagon message out to the public that the interrogations at Guantanamo Bay have been valuable and should not be interrupted by the courts.

Administration officials have maintained that it is more important to keep the interrogations on track to help prevent future terrorist strikes than it is to afford constitutional safeguards to non-U.S. citizens captured as enemy combatants. The classification was created by the administration to cover adversaries ranging from Taliban soldiers to Al Qaeda members and others suspected of threatening the United States.

But that position has been attacked by defense lawyers and civil libertarians who have gained ground before the Supreme Court and federal district court in Washington. They have argued — successfully so far — that the detainees cannot be held indefinitely without greater due process to challenge their incarceration. They also contend that many of the detainees were bystanders or small-time militants.

At the same time, the military has been pounded with allegations that prisoners have been abused and humiliated to get them to talk. That scenario has been used by critics to attack the credibility of the information the military has gathered and to question whether the Pentagon has abided by the Geneva Convention prohibiting harsh treatment.

Last week, a newly released detainee from Kuwait told the Los Angeles Times about prisoners at Camp Delta being hit, kicked, sexually humiliated and made to fear for their lives. And lawyers for six other prisoners filed suit in Boston claiming they also suffered abuse.

The Pentagon has said all allegations of abuse are routinely investigated, but they refuse to discuss individual detainees. That position makes the "Joint Task Force-GTMO" summary all the more exceptional.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico said the document was cleared for release through the military`s Southern Command, which oversees Guantanamo Bay, and is to be used "in response to general questions from the public about the operations of the joint task force."

His Southern Command colleague, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chris Loundermon, added that the data were crucial to helping the military brass tell the Guantanamo Bay story. "Unless you track GTMO operations day to day, you need to see this," he said.

But the six-page summary report does not address the frustration that has been expressed by civil liberty advocates, defense lawyers and the families of prisoners held at Camp Delta.

Without some form of due process — a concession granted to the detainees last year by the Supreme Court — lawyers could not challenge their clients` imprisonment. And without open records, families often did not even know their relatives were being held there or how they were being treated.

That veil was pierced last fall when transcripts of some of the tribunal hearings were filed in federal court in Washington as part of the federal court`s review. The transcripts detailed the charges against the detainees and showed how prisoners, unaided by lawyers, tried to defend themselves.

Some attended their hearings in utter dejection. The case of Khalid Bin Abdullah Mishal Thamer Al Hameydani was seen as typical of detainees` despair. The Kuwaiti man was accused of associating with Al Wafa, an organization linked to Al Qaeda, and of fighting against the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

His transcript includes this notation: "Detainee unresponsive. Sat in chair with head down. Did not speak at any time."

In contrast, Saifullah Paracha of Pakistan, suspected of running an export business that planned to ship deadly chemicals to the U.S., engaged his accusers in a lively dialogue over a question posed by hearing officers: What exactly is Al Qaeda?

"Sir," Paracha addressed the president of his three-officer tribunal. "How could anybody know who Al Qaeda is?" The tribunal president responded: "Good question. That`s a very good question." Then the panel unanimously declared him an enemy combatant.

His Washington lawyer, Gaillard T. Hunt, said that had the hearing conformed to the Constitution, and had he been allowed to represent Paracha at Guantanamo, the session might have been fair.

"I have a sort of respect for U.S. Army officers. Most of them are honest people," Hunt said. "And it seemed to me he had them eating out of his hand."

Otherwise, Hunt called the hearing a sham.

"This whole thing is going to come unraveled big time," he predicted, as lawsuits for detainees move through the courts.

The Guantanamo task force summary said many of the detainees remained too dangerous for release.

For instance Al-Kahtani, the presumed 20th hijacker, told interrogators that more than 20 fellow detainees were Bin Laden bodyguards who all received terrorist training at the infamous Al Farouq camp in Afghanistan. Al-Kahtani is also the captive who identified another detainee as Bin Laden`s spiritual advisor, what the report called "a significant role within Al Qaeda."

The summary also outlines possible new intelligence on terrorist financing.

A detainee who helped run an international humanitarian aid group said he spent $1 million between November 2000 and November 2001 in Afghanistan, but also "admittedly purchased $5,000 worth of weapons utilizing the organization`s funds" to support the Taliban`s fight against the Northern Alliance and its ally, the United States, according to the summary.

A second detainee described traveling to Cambodia for relief efforts at an orphanage there. The summary adds, "By his own admission this detainee [also] met [Bin Laden] as many as four times during July 2001 and is believed to have substantial ties to Al Qaeda."

More than a dozen captives had the U.S. cash equivalent of as much as $10,000 when they were apprehended. Two had more than $40,000.

And more than 10% of those housed at Guantanamo Bay, it turns out, have college degrees, many from U.S. schools, and were educated as physicians, pilots, engineers, translators and lawyers.

One detainee, who "has threatened guards and admits enjoying terrorizing Americans," studied at Texas A&M University for 18 months and also took courses in English at the University of Texas in Austin, the summary said.

Another, identified as an Al Qaeda weapons supplier, studied at the Embry-Riddle flight school in Arizona and earned a graduate degree in avionics management.

Before Sept. 11, the FBI had picked up indications that Bin Laden was sending flight students to Arizona to learn how to commandeer U.S. aircraft.

The summary also weighed the risk of releasing detainees, pointing out that "we have been able to identify at least 10 by name" who were sent home before hearings even began last fall, only to rejoin the fight against the United States.

Still more detainees remain eager to break out of Guantanamo Bay, and have told guards "all Americans should die." One warned guards that one day he would "come to their homes and cut their throats like sheep." He said he would use the Internet to "search for their names and faces."

"Some are low-level jihadists with just enough training to construct grenades from soda cans," the Pentagon summary said. "Others are highly skilled engineers with the ability to design and build sophisticated, remotely triggered bombs made with explosives manufactured from household items."

The summary said detainees were often captured wearing a particular watch "favored by Al Qaeda bomb-builders because it allows alarm settings more than 24 hours in advance."

Abdullah Kamal Abdullah Kamal Al Kandari of Kuwait was apprehended with a Casio watch, model F-91. At his tribunal hearing he testified that he worked for the Kuwaiti Ministry of Electricity and Water and that after Sept. 11 he journeyed to Afghanistan to help in relief efforts. Eventually, he said, he wound up in the custody of U.S. forces.

Questioned at his tribunal hearing about the watch, Al Kandari said it was a personal piece of jewelry that contained a compass that "shows the direction of Mecca" for his daily prayers.

"It`s not tied to an Al Qaeda company, is it?" Al Kandari said. "I swear I don`t know if terrorists use it or if they make explosives with it. If I had known that, I would have thrown it away. I`m not stupid."

The tribunal was unimpressed. They declared Al Kandari an enemy, and he was returned to his cell.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Melody Townsel: `He behaved like a madman: My horrifying John Bolton story`
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=20763&mode=nest…
Posted on Monday, April 18 @ 10:04:36 EDT
By Melody Townsel

Melody Townsel was stationed in Kyrgyzstan on a US AID project. During her stay there, she became embroiled in a controversy in which John Bolton was a key player. She described the incident in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee members who are reviewing the Bolton nomination.

Here`s the entire text of her letter:

Dear Sir:

I`m writing to urge you to consider blocking in committee the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.

In the late summer of 1994, I worked as the subcontracted leader of a US AID project in Kyrgyzstan officially awarded to a HUB primary contractor. My own employer was Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, and I reported directly to Republican leader Charlie Black.

After months of incompetence, poor contract performance, inadequate in-country funding, and a general lack of interest or support in our work from the prime contractor, I was forced to make US AID officials aware of the prime contractor`s poor performance.



I flew from Kyrgyzstan to Moscow to meet with other Black Manafort employees who were leading or subcontracted to other US AID projects. While there, I met with US AID officials and expressed my concerns about the project - chief among them, the prime contractor`s inability to keep enough cash in country to allow us to pay bills, which directly resulted in armed threats by Kyrgyz contractors to me and my staff.

Within hours of sending a letter to US AID officials outlining my concerns, I met John Bolton, whom the prime contractor hired as legal counsel to represent them to US AID. And, so, within hours of dispatching that letter, my hell began.

Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel - throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats.

When US AID asked me to return to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in advance of assuming leadership of a project in Kazakstan, I returned to my project to find that John Bolton had proceeded me by two days. Why? To meet with every other AID team leader as well as US foreign-service officials in Bishkek, claiming that I was under investigation for misuse of funds and likely was facing jail time. As US AID can confirm, nothing was further from the truth.

He indicated to key employees of or contractors to State that, based on his discussions with investigatory officials, I was headed for federal prison and, if they refused to cooperate with either him or the prime contractor`s replacement team leader, they, too, would find themselves the subjects of federal investigation. As a further aside, he made unconscionable comments about my weight, my wardrobe and, with a couple of team leaders, my sexuality, hinting that I was a lesbian (for the record, I`m not).

When I resurfaced in Kyrgyzstan, I learned that he had done such a convincing job of smearing me that it took me weeks - with the direct intervention of US AID officials - to limit the damage. In fact, it was only US AID`s appoinment of me as a project leader in Almaty, Kazakstan that largely put paid to the rumors Mr. Bolton maliciously circulated.

As a maligned whistleblower, I`ve learned firsthand the lengths Mr. Bolton will go to accomplish any goal he sets for himself. Truth flew out the window. Decency flew out the window. In his bid to smear me and promote the interests of his client, he went straight for the low road and stayed there.

John Bolton put me through hell - and he did everything he could to intimidate, malign and threaten not just me, but anybody unwilling to go along with his version of events. His behavior back in 1994 wasn`t just unforgivable, it was pathological.

I cannot believe that this is a man being seriously considered for any diplomatic position, let alone such a critical posting to the UN. Others you may call before your committee will be able to speak better to his stated dislike for and objection to stated UN goals. I write you to speak about the very character of the man.

It took me years to get over Mr. Bolton`s actions in that Moscow hotel in 1994, his intensely personal attacks and his shocking attempts to malign my character.

I urge you from the bottom of my heart to use your ability to block Mr. Bolton`s nomination in committee.

Respectfully yours,
Melody Townsel

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Libanon - neues Spielfeld für Agitatoren
http://www.monde-diplomatique.de/pm/2005/04/15/a0025.text.na…

NACH dem Mord an Exregierungschef Hariri und den Bombenanschlägen der letzten Wochen sind sich viele Libanesen nicht mehr sicher, ob die Zivilgesellschaft des Landes stark genug ist, ihre Konflikte friedlich zu regeln. Der Abzug der syrischen Truppen, den Damaskus für Ende April zugesagt hat, dürfte zwar die Spannungen dämpfen. Doch so lange die Region insgesamt nicht befriedet ist, werden in diesem Land immer mächtige Interessen aufeinander prallen.
Von GEORGES CORM *

* Ehemaliger libanesischer Finanzminister und Autor des Buches: "Orient-Occident, la fracture imaginaire", Paris (La Découverte) 2005.

Der Libanon ist wieder in den Schlagzeilen, seit am 14. Februar der ehemalige Ministerpräsident Rafik Hariri einem Attentat zum Opfer fiel. Die Ermordung eines libanesischen Spitzenpolitikers mit angeblich "außergewöhnlichem" regionalem und internationalem Renommee führte in den USA wie in Frankreich zu heftigen Reaktionen. Auch in Israel wurde der Vorgang ausgiebig kommentiert. Für den politisch instabilen Libanon verheißt die Entwicklung nicht viel Gutes.

Als der UN-Sicherheitsrat am 3. September 2004 die Resolution 1559 über den Libanon beschloss, wurde dies - außer im Lande selbst - kaum beachtet. Die UN-Resolution fordert die Aufhebung der wichtigsten Bestimmungen, die 1989 im prosyrischen Abkommen von Taif(1) den Status des Libanon neu geregelt hatten. Nach 1991 hatten auch die Staaten der Golfkriegsallianz, die die Iraker aus Kuwait vertrieben hatte, Syrien eine Aufseherrolle im Libanon zugedacht und damit die kooperative Haltung belohnt, die Damaskus in diesem Konflikt gezeigt hatte.

In der Resolution 1559 hingegen wurde das libanesische Parlament indirekt aufgefordert, keine Verfassungsänderung zu beschließen, die dem Staatspräsidenten Émile Lahoud eine Verlängerung seiner Amtszeit von sechs auf neun Jahre gewährt hätte. Noch 1995 hatte dessen Amtsvorgänger Elias Hraoui, ein Verbündeter von Damaskus wie auch von Rafik Hariri, eine solche Verlängerung erhalten, ohne dass man sich in Paris oder Washington darüber aufgeregt hätte.

Diese Forderung in der Resolution 1559 kommt überraschend, weil die UN-Charta jede Einmischung in die inneren Angelegenheiten eines Mitgliedsstaats verbietet. Die Resolution fordert des Weiteren den Rückzug der syrischen Armee aus dem Libanon, die Stationierung der libanesischen Armee entlang der Grenze zu Israel und die Entwaffnung der libanesischen Hisbollah-Miliz wie der palästinensischen Gruppen in den Flüchtlingslagern. Das alles liefe darauf hinaus, die Stabilität des Libanon in Frage zu stellen und das Land erneut zu einem Pufferstaat zu machen. Was bedeuten würde, dass der Libanon und seine politische Führungsschicht wie schon so oft in der Geschichte unter den Einfluss der Mächte kommen, die jeweils als mächtigste Anwärter auf die Herrschaft in der Region auftreten.(2)

Von 1975 bis 1990 war der Libanon Schauplatz blutiger Stellvertreterkriege. Hier wurden auf engstem Raum die großen Konflikte ausgetragen, die damals die Region erschütterten: Der Kalte Krieg, die israelisch-arabische Konfrontation, innerarabische Feindschaften, der Krieg zwischen Iran und Irak samt seiner regionalen und internationalen Weiterungen. Auf dem libanesischen Territorium konnte man Kämpfe führen, die nicht gleich im großen Maßstab eskalierten. Und es gab immer wieder politische Führer, die sich von regionalen und internationalen Kräften finanzieren, bewaffnen und lenken ließen. Die verschiedenen Religionsgemeinschaften, deren Interessen diese Führer angeblich vertraten, dienten letztlich als Kanonenfutter in den Schlachten auswärtiger Mächte. Zudem fanden die arabischen und internationalen Medien hier den dringend benötigten Stoff für ihre Geschichten von der "uralten Feindschaft" zwischen den verschiedenen Bevölkerungsgruppen.

Als im Oktober 1990 mit offizieller Zustimmung der USA und stillschweigender Duldung durch Israel eine Pax Syriana für den Libanon beschlossen wurde, war man allgemein erleichtert. In den folgenden 14 Jahren erlebte das Land eine ungewohnte Periode der Stabilität. 1991 und 1992 vollbrachten die Regierungen von Salim al-Hoss und Omar Karame das Kunststück, die staatliche Verwaltung zu effektivieren, die Konflikte zwischen der Hauptstadt und den Provinzen zu reduzieren und sogar die verfeindeten Milizen zu entwaffnen und in die Armee einzugliedern.

Die nachfolgende Regierung unter Raschid al-Solh ließ die ersten Parlamentswahlen seit 1972 abhalten. Leider wurden sie weitgehend boykottiert, vor allem von den Christen, deren Milizen die Syrer in der Endphase des Bürgerkriegs niedergeschlagen und die seither deutlich an Macht verloren hatten. Im Kabinett aber waren fast alle Fraktionen vertreten. Es fehlten nur die Anhänger von General Aoun, dem antisyrischen letzten Generalstabschef der Bürgerkriegszeit, den man nach Paris ins Exil geschickt hatte. Damals wurde auch erwogen, Syrien zur Einhaltung der Abkommen von Taif aufzufordern, die den Rückzug der syrischen Truppen in die Bekaa-Ebene vorsahen.(3)

Pro- und antisyrische Strömungen blockieren sich

ZU diesem Zeitpunkt betrat Rafik Hariri die politische Bühne. Er galt als reicher Wohltäter, als der richtige Mann für den Wiederaufbau des Libanon, vor allem für die Restaurierung des von 15 Kriegsjahren schwer gezeichneten historischen Zentrums der Wirtschaftsmetropole Beirut. Seine Ernennung zum Ministerpräsidenten löste eine ungeheure Euphorie aus. Hariri wurde zum großen Zampano, um den sich ein ungeheurer Personenkult entwickelte, der durch seine legendäre Spendenfreudigkeit gefördert wurde. Hilfreich waren aber auch die ihm ergebenen oder von ihm kontrollierten Medien, die enge Freundschaft, die er mit dem französischen Staatspräsidenten entwickelte, und seine hervorragenden Beziehungen zu Saudi-Arabien. Über die Verlegung der syrischen Truppen - wie sie immerhin in einem Regierungsvertrag zwischen Syrien und Libanon vorgesehen war - sprach jetzt niemand mehr.

Ende 1998 verlor Rafik Hariri die Regierungsmehrheit. Aber im Oktober 2000 gelang ihm eine triumphale Rückkehr an die Macht, nachdem er aus den Parlamentswahlen im Sommer eindeutig als Sieger hervorgegangen war. Damals äußerte niemand den Verdacht, die Wahlen seien manipuliert worden oder Syrien habe seine Hand im Spiel gehabt. Der Wiederaufbau des Landes schien großartig voranzukommen - so der Eindruck, den ausländische Besucher ebenso wie die Mehrheit der Libanesen hatten. Auf die exorbitanten Kosten und die zweifelhaften Ergebnisse kam man erst später zu sprechen, als Bilanz gezogen wurde.

Noch vor zwei Jahren sah es so aus, als habe Beirut seine alte politische, kulturelle und touristische Bedeutung für die ganze Region zurückgewonnen. Dies lag vor allem an der Befreiung des Südlibanon von der israelischen Armee, die dem sehr erfolgreichen Druck der Hisbollah weichen musste. Dass der Libanon erneut Schauplatz dramatischer und bedrohlicher Entwicklungen werden würde, ahnte damals niemand. Im Juni 2000 trafen sich die Außenminister der Liga Arabischer Staaten in Beirut, ein Jahr darauf richtete man - zum ersten Mal seit Jahrzehnten - das Gipfeltreffen der Liga aus. 2002 konferierten die Vertreter der frankophonen Länder in der libanesischen Hauptstadt.

Bei dieser Gelegenheit hielt der französische Staatspräsident eine Rede im libanesischen Parlament. Er machte deutlich, dass Frankreich bis zur endgültigen Regelung des Konflikts zwischen Israel und Palästina den Libanon als Protektorat Syriens betrachtete: "Der Frieden (im Nahen Osten) wird natürlich erst dann umfassend, gerecht und dauerhaft sein, wenn er auch den Libanon und Syrien einbezieht und eine angemessene Lösung des Problems der palästinensischen Flüchtlinge bietet, das ja auch den Libanon betrifft", erklärte Jacques Chirac. "Diese Position hat Frankreich schon immer vertreten. In diesem Friedensprozess, den wir alle erhoffen, sollten auch Syrien und der Libanon die Gelegenheit erhalten, ihre Beziehungen zu verbessern. Vor allem muss dann der vollständige Rückzug der syrischen Truppen aus ihrem Land erfolgen, so wie es in den Verträgen von Taif festgelegt ist."(4) Rafik Hariri hatte allerdings bereits zu Beginn seiner zweiten Amtszeit als Ministerpräsident im Oktober 2000 in einer politischen Grundsatzerklärung deutlich gemacht, dass die Anwesenheit der syrischen Truppen im Libanon unverzichtbar sei.(5)

All diese Ereignisse fanden allerdings vor dem Einmarsch der USA in den Irak und ihren Plänen für einen "Greater Middle East" statt, in dem Ordnung und Demokratie herrschen und der Terrorismus endgültig ausradiert sein soll. In Washington griff man, um dieses Programm zu vermitteln, auf die Vorstellungen und Schlagworte der amerikanischen Diplomatie der frühen 1990er-Jahre zurück, als George Bush senior nach dem ersten Golfkrieg eine neue internationale Ordnung propagiert hatte. Damals hatte auch Schimon Peres ein viel beachtetes Buch mit dem Titel "Der neue Nahe Osten"(6) veröffentlicht, das eine Ära des Friedens, des Wohlstands und der wirtschaftlichen Zusammenarbeit aller Staaten in der Region beschwor. Deren Verwirklichung sei nur noch durch ein paar irrationale Kräfte gefährdet, womit natürlich die islamistischen Bewegungen gemeint waren. Solche Vorstellungen klangen damals glaubwürdig. Das lag an dem guten Ruf, den Peres als Unterzeichner der Oslo-Verträge von 1993 genoss, und daran, dass dieses Friedensabkommen mehrere regionale Wirtschaftskonferenzen ermöglicht hatte, an denen Wirtschafts- und Regierungsvertreter aus Israel, den USA, Europa und den arabischen Staaten beteiligt waren: in Casablanca, Amman, Kairo und Doha.

Doch die Fortsetzung der israelischen Siedlungspolitik machte den Oslo-Friedensprozess zu einer leeren Hülle. Nach dem Scheitern des Camp-David-Gipfels im Juli 2000 legte Ariel Scharon die Lunte ans Pulverfass: Sein provokanter "Besuch" im heiligen Bezirk der Moscheen auf dem Tempelberg in Jerusalem löste die Zweite Intifada aus. Dass die brutale Unterdrückung durch die israelische Armee diese Erhebung immer mehr in eine militärische Auseinandersetzung verwandelte, schien den neuen US-Präsidenten George W. Bush nicht zu stören. Eine Lösung der Palästinafrage hatte für ihn offensichtlich keine Priorität, seine Hauptsorge galt dem Irak. Zu der Überzeugung, dass die Führung in Bagdad eine Gefahr für den Weltfrieden bedeute, war schon die Regierung Clinton gelangt, nachdem die UN-Waffeninspektionen 1998 gescheitert waren.

Nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September 2001 ging Präsident Bush von der völlig unbelegten Annahme aus, dass Saddam Hussein in die Vorbereitung dieser Attentate verwickelt sei und überdies die Produktion von Massenvernichtungswaffen wieder aufgenommen habe. Das war der Beginn einer Entwicklung, die zur US-Invasion im Irak und ihren weitreichenden Folgen für das politische Gleichgewicht im Nahen Osten geführt hat.(7) Nachdem diese Begründungen des Irakkriegs unglaubwürdig geworden waren, verlegte sich die US-Regierung auf eine andere Argumentation: Ihr Bestreben sei es, den Völkern der Region Freiheit und Demokratie zu bringen. Die gewaltsame Befreiung des irakischen Volks von der Zwangsherrschaft Saddam Husseins sollte nur der erste Schritt auf dem Weg einer allgemeinen demokratischen Umgestaltung des Nahen Ostens sein.

Angesichts des bewaffneten Widerstands im Irak machten die USA daraufhin Syrien als Unterstützerland aus. In Damaskus herrscht schließlich noch immer ein baathistisches Regime, das seit der Epoche an der Macht ist, die man nach dem Sturz Saddams beendet glaubt. Als der junge Präsident Baschar al-Assad im Juni 2000, nach dem Tod seines Vater Hafis, dessen Titel und Funktionen übernahm, versprach er Reformen. Doch das syrische Regime tut sich bis heute schwer damit, den Übergang zu liberalen wirtschaftlichen und politischen Prinzipien zu vollziehen, wie es vor ihm die Länder Osteuropas getan haben. Neue politische Freiheiten sind in Damaskus bislang kaum zu erkennen, die wirtschaftliche Liberalisierung beschränkt sich auf die Zulassung privater Banken, die überwiegend in libanesischer Hand sind. Auch die Rolle des privaten Sektors wurde gestärkt, während die Staatsunternehmen und die staatliche Aufsicht über Devisengeschäfte bestehen blieben.

Zweifellos herrscht in Syrien am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts nicht mehr ein Terrorregime, das jede Abweichung blutig unterdrückt. Doch seit dem Einmarsch der USA in den Irak und den Vorwürfen aus Washington sieht sich die Führung in der Defensive - was den Fortgang der Liberalisierung nicht gerade begünstigt. Im Dezember 2003 verabschiedete der US-Kongress den so genannten Syria Accountability Act(8), ein Gesetz, das relativ milde Sanktionen gegen Syrien vorsieht. Immerhin ließ sich dieses Gesetz als Druckmittel benutzen, um Syrien in der Libanonfrage zum Einlenken zu bewegen: Teil der Bestimmungen ist auch die Forderung nach vollständiger Wiederherstellung der Unabhängigkeit des Libanon.

Das nutzte Präsident Bush, als er am 11. Mai 2004 bei der Unterzeichnung des Gesetzes zugleich neue, deutlich schärfere Wirtschaftssanktionen verfügte. In Paris begrüßte General Aoun diese Maßnahmen, in Washington fanden sie den Beifall einer libanesischen Lobby, die für die Abspaltung der christlichen Landesteile oder die Umwandlung in einen Föderativstaat eintritt. Beide politischen Gruppierungen lobten auch die UN-Resolution 1559 und hoben hervor, dass sie sich bei der US-Regierung immer wieder für die Wiederherstellung der libanesische Souveränität eingesetzt haben.(9)

Im Libanon hatte sich Walid Dschumblat, lange Zeit ein ergebener Verbündeter Syriens, im Sommer 2000 gegen den syrischen Einfluss gewandt. Dies wurde weithin als taktisches Manöver angesehen, mit dem er im Wahlkampf auch Stimmen aus dem christlichen Lager gewinnen wollte. Tatsächlich schlug der Drusenführer nach den Wahlen deutlich gemäßigtere Töne an. Doch im September sorgte eine gemeinsame Erklärung der maronitischen (christlichen) Bischöfe und ihres Patriarchen für neue Aufregung. Darin machten sie Damaskus für alle Probleme verantwortlich, die den Libanon plagen: für die allgemeine Korruption, für die Verschuldung und die soziale Krise bis hin zur Marginalisierung einiger politischer Kräfte.

Noch erstaunlicher war es, dass erstmals in der Geschichte der christlichen Gemeinschaft im Libanon ein Bischof an einem Treffen der verschiedenen politischen Kräfte teilnahm. Bei dieser so genannten Zusammenkunft von Kornet Chahouan waren die aufgelöste Christenmiliz Forces Libanaises, Gefolgsleute von General Aoun, christliche Parlamentsabgeordnete und Amin Gemayel, der ehemalige Staatspräsident und Führer der rechtsgerichteten christlichen Falangistenmiliz vertreten. Diese Gruppierung verstand sich als harter Kern einer Opposition, die nicht gegen die Regierung unter Rafik Hariri, sondern gegen den prosyrischen Staatspräsidenten und die Regierung in Damaskus antreten wollte. Ihr politisches Programm forderte die Übernahme der Hisbollah-Stellungen im Südlibanon durch die Armee, den Rückzug der syrischen Truppen gemäß den Abkommen von Taif und die Haftentlassung von Samir Geagea, dem einstigen Führer der Forces Libanaises, der seit 1993 wegen einer Reihe von Attentaten einsaß.

Im Jahr 2000, nach dem israelischen Abzug aus dem Südlibanon, hatten die USA und die Mehrheit der europäischen Staaten nachdrücklich gefordert, dass sich auch die libanesische Armee von der Grenze zu Israel zurückzieht. Die Hisbollah müsse ins Zentrum des Landes verlegt und, wenn möglich, entwaffnet werden. Der Westen versprach im Gegenzug Hilfe beim Wiederaufbau der seit 22 Jahren besetzten Gebiete im Südlibanon. Dazu kam es nicht.

Spätestens nach dem Irakkrieg stand diese heikle Frage nicht mehr auf der Tagesordnung, zumal die Drohungen der USA gegen Syrien und die Hisbollah auch im Libanon zu Protesten geführt hatten, denen sich sogar der maronitische Patriarch anschloss. Die politischen Differenzen waren so etwas entschärft.

Der Tod von Rafik Hariri hat eine neue schwere Krise ausgelöst - ausgerechnet zu einem Zeitpunkt, da die Führungen in Beirut und Damaskus gleichermaßen verhandlungsbereit schienen. Dass der Libanon erneut zum Spielball regionaler Machtinteressen geworden ist, hat die alten politischen Reflexe ausgelöst und die alten Dämonen wieder geweckt. Viele Libanesen haben das Gefühl, dass ihnen mit Hariri eine Symbolfigur der Stabilität und des Aufschwungs genommen wurde.

Damaskus hinterlässt ein Vakuum

DIE wiederholten Forderungen von George W. Bush und Jacques Chirac nach Abzug der syrischen Truppen und der sofortigen, vollständigen Umsetzung der UN-Resolution 1559 finden bei vielen im Libanon also durchaus ein offenes Ohr. Das gilt vor allem für die Anhänger von Walid Dschumblat, der inzwischen der unangefochtene Führer der Opposition ist, wie auch für die Familie des ermordeten Ministerpräsidenten und alle Abgeordneten, die seine Partei im Parlament repräsentieren. Angeschlossen haben sich ihnen eine Reihe anderer politischer Gruppierungen und einige Nichtregierungsorganisationen. Vor allem gilt es aber auch für einen Großteil der Studenten, die überwiegend, wenn auch nicht ausschließlich, aus der christlichen Mittelschicht stammen.

Für den US-Präsidenten und einige europäische Führer scheint es allerdings darum zu gehen, im Libanon eine Art "Versuchsfeld" der Demokratisierung zu etablieren: Nach den Wahlen im Irak und in Palästina, die quasi unter Besatzungsbedingungen stattfanden, nach den Kommunalwahlen in Saudi-Arabien und vor der Präsidentschaftswahl in Ägypten, bei der erstmals mehrere Kandidaten antreten, dürfte es für den Westen interessant sein, bei einer Wahl im Libanon zu testen, wie der beschworene "Hauch von Freiheit" im Nahen Osten ankommt.

Eine solche Strategie wird weder den komplexen Verhältnissen im Libanon gerecht noch der Rolle, die Syrien nach wie vor in der arabischen Welt spielt. Das Regime in Damaskus hat sich reichlich Feinde gemacht, doch vielen gilt es als das letzte Bollwerk gegen die Vorherrschaft der USA im Nahen Osten und gegen eine Lösung des Palästinakonflikts, die zu Lasten der Palästinenser geht - und übrigens auch zu Lasten Syriens, das seit 1967 die Besetzung der Golanhöhen und deren Annexion (1981) durch Israel hinnehmen muss.

In Zentrallibanon mag die Opposition gegen Syrien mehrheitsfähig sein, doch im Süden, im Norden und in der Bekaa-Ebene trifft sie auf eine Formation so genannter loyalistischer Parteien, die eine Fortsetzung der engen Allianz mit Syrien wünschen. Sie hat schnell in machtvollen Gegendemonstrationen ihren Einfluss gezeigt. Das Oppositionslager wiederum ist keineswegs geschlossen, sondern weist sehr unterschiedliche politische Orientierungen auf. Dabei stehen den gemäßigten Fraktionen einige maximalistische Gruppen gegenüber, die offensichtlich den Sturz des gegenwärtigen Regimes betreiben. Auch waren nicht wenige Mitglieder dieser Opposition bis vor kurzem glühende Verfechter der syrischen Hegemonie oder waren sogar mitverantwortlich für die Massaker und Zwangsumsiedlungen im Zeitraum von 1975 bis 1990.

Der wichtigste und organisierende Faktor im Lager der "Loyalisten", das verschiedene regierungstreue und prosyrische Parteien umfasst, ist zweifellos die Hisbollah unter ihrem charismatischen Führer Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Die "Partei Gottes" ist nach Ansicht der USA eine terroristische Organisation. Doch aktuell fällt ihr eine Schlüsselposition zu, weil sie die Kräfte bündelt, die eine antiimperialistische und arabisch-nationalistische Tradition repräsentieren.

Seit die Syrer zu Ende April ihren vollständigen Rückzug aus dem Libanon angekündigt haben und nachdem die UN eine Kommission eingesetzt hat, die den Mord an Hariri untersuchen soll, hat sich die Situation etwas beruhigt. Die Opposition schlägt sanftere Töne an, und eine Art "dritte Kraft" um den allseits geachteten Exministerpräsidenten Selim Hoss versucht, die Wogen zu glätten.

Die Frage ist, ob damit eine tiefere und längere Krise abgewendet ist, unter der die ohnehin fragile Wirtschaft zusammenbrechen würde. Neue Ereignisse auf internationaler Ebene, die das Konfliktpotenzial aktivieren und die alten Agitatoren zu neuer Gewalt anstacheln könnten, sind keineswegs auszuschließen. Der Pufferstaat Libanon spiegelt nach wie vor die politischen Spannungen, die im gesamten arabischen Nahe Osten herrschen.

deutsch von Edgar Peinelt

Fußnoten:
(1) Die USA, Saudi-Arabien und weitere arabische Staaten hatten sich 1989 für das Treffen von Vertretern aller libanesischen Parteien im saudischen Taif eingesetzt. Der dort ausgehandelte Vertrag sah zum einen die Neuverteilung der Macht unter den Führern der libanesischen Religionsgemeinschaften vor, zum anderen den Rückzug der syrischen Truppen aus Beirut in die Bekaa-Ebene innerhalb von zwei Jahren.
(2) "Le Liban contemporain. Histoire et société", Paris (La Découverte) 2003.
(3) Weshalb die syrischen Truppen nicht abzogen und die Bestimmungen der Verträge von Taif über die Änderung der Verfassung nicht konsequent umgesetzt wurden, erfährt man aus einem Buch des früheren libanesischen Verteidigungsministers Mansour und aus den Verlautbarungen der beiden Regierungen, die zwischen 1989 und 1992 zur Zeit der Wiedervereinigung des Landes nach dem Ende des Bürgerkriegs amtierten. Albert Mansours Buch "Der Putsch gegen das Abkommen von Taif", Beirut (Dar al-Jadid) 1993, ist nur auf Arabisch erschienen. Mansour kritisiert vor allem die Machenschaften des damaligen Staatspräsidenten Elias Hraoui, der unter anderem die Übernahme der Regierungsmacht durch Rafik Hariri im Herbst 1992 einfädelte - nach einer geschickt inszenierten Devisenspekulation gegen das libanesische Pfund, die zum Fall der Regierung von Omar Karame führte. Kritisch betrachtet wird auch die Rolle der anderen Mächte in der Region, die Syrien in keiner Weise Einhalt geboten.
(4) Zitiert nach L`Orient Le Jour, Beirut, 18. 10. 2002.
(5) Einen Abgeordneten der Opposition, der gegen diese Erklärung Einspruch erhob, wies Rafik Hariri heftig zurecht - mit dem Argument, es sei "unrealistisch, Syrien für die Probleme des Libanon verantwortlich zu machen". Dies sei "nichts als die Wahrheit, denn ohne (Syrien) hätte der Libanon niemals politische Stabilität gewonnen". Der vollständige Text dieser Debatte wurde am 3. 11. 2000 in der Beiruter Tageszeitung An-Nahar abgedruckt. Diese Grundhaltung hat Hariri bis zu seiner Ermordung nie aufgegeben.
(6) Schimon Peres, "Der neue Nahe Osten", München (Siedler) 1993.
(7) Ignacio Ramonet, "Irak, Histoire d`un désastre", Paris (Galilée) 2005.
(8) Das vom US-Kongress am 12. Dezember 2003 verabschiedete Gesetz 108-175 trägt den vollständigen Titel "Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003".
(9) Siehe die etwas tendenziöse Berichterstattung der Beiruter Tageszeitung An-Nahar am 3. 2. 2005.
(10) Teile der maronitischen Gemeinschaft im Norden des Landes distanzieren sich von der politischen Orientierung ihrer Kirche. Suleiman Frangié, Führer dieser Gruppierung und ein Vertrauter der syrischen Führung, hat kürzlich dem Patriarchen den Vorwurf gemacht, die Meinungsvielfalt innerhalb der Glaubensgemeinschaft nicht genügend zu achten. Eine Reihe renommierter Abgeordneter und bekannter maronitischer Persönlichkeiten weigern sich, die antisyrische Opposition zu unterstützen.

Le Monde diplomatique Nr. 7640 vom 15.4.2005, Seite 6-7, 524 Dokumentation, GEORGES CORM

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Apr 19, 2005

Muqtada returns to political scene
By Valentinas Mite
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD19Ak01.html

PRAGUE - Young Shi`ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr`s movement is capitalizing on popular discontent with the US-led occupation.

Yahia Said, a researcher on Iraq and other transitional nations at the London School of Economics, told RFE/RL that the United States has been slow to present a withdrawal schedule and the Iraqi government is unwilling to press the issue.

Said said that the size of a recent demonstration of Muqtada`s supporters indicates that there is a groundswell of popular support for the withdrawal of foreign troops. He said that Muqtada is exploiting this situation, perhaps with a view to winning the next elections.

"Opinion polls suggest that around 60% - between 50 and 60% - of Iraqis want foreign troops out of the country as soon as possible. And they expect the government to do something about it, the elected government," Said said.

Said said that although Muqtada`s movement officially boycotted the January parliamentary elections, it has some two dozen sympathizers in parliament. Most of those, he said, are within the ranks of the dominant Shi`ite United Iraqi Alliance bloc.

One of those sympathizers, Salam al-Maliky, this week read out to the assembly Muqtada`s key demands. They include the withdrawal of foreign troops, the speeding up of former dictator Saddam Hussein`s trial, and the release of Iraqis held in US-run prisons.

Even though Muqtada is not in parliament, Said said he has a lot of political influence. Muqtada is also believed to have good relations with the Sunni Association of Muslim Clerics.

Said said that Muqtada`s political weight is partly due to his militia, the Mehdi Army, still being a fighting force. "Nobody disarms in Iraq, unfortunately," he said. "All these politicians keep militias ready at hand in case the political process doesn`t go the way they like. It`s an insurance policy."

Said added that there could be a crisis if the Mehdi Army resurfaces.

Other analysts, however, are not convinced of the extent of Muqtada`s influence. David Hartwell is Middle East editor at Jane`s Sentinel Security Assessments. He is not sure that Muqtada is as influential as the anti-occupation demonstration might indicate.
Also, Hartwell said, Muqtada`s demands for US withdrawal are not as radical as they might seem, as many parties now in parliament have this demand in their election programs. "I think the parties already within the parliament will probably articulate most of what al-Sadr is saying," he said. "I think al-Sadr is able to mobilize those closest to him and to those from al-Sadr City [a district of Baghdad]."

Despite Muqtada`s demands and the growing support for an end to the military occupation, it doesn`t look like US or coalition troops are leaving any time soon.

During a surprise visit to Baghdad this week, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that there was no exit strategy in place for the some 140,000 US soldiers stationed in Iraq. Rumsfeld said that their exit depends on the readiness of Iraqi security forces, who are being trained by the Americans. The country`s new leadership has also said Iraqi forces are unprepared to take over from US-led troops.

Hartwell says the US wants to pull out troops only when the insurgency is brought under control. "I think they are very, very anxious not be seen to be getting out before the insurgency has been, as they say, brought under control, or at least brought to a level that is manageable for the Iraqi security forces to take over," he said.

Iraq has experienced a surge of violence over the last week. On Sunday, reports say militants killed at least eight Iraqis in various attacks aimed at the police and government employees. Meanwhile, the US military said three American troops were killed and seven others wounded as insurgents fired mortar rounds late Saturday at a Marine base near Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, rumors continue to swirl over what appears to be a mass hostage-taking in a town south of Baghdad. US and Iraqi troops have reportedly launched an operation to free an estimated 150 Shi`ite hostages. The hostages were taken in the town of Madaen, 40 kilometers outside of Baghdad. Sunni gunmen have allegedly threatened to kill the hostages unless all of the town`s Shi`ites left.

The analysts agree that Iraqi politicians understand that without foreign troops the country could well disintegrate into civil war.

Copyright (c) 2005, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036

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Teheran die neue Macht im Nahen Osten?
Mit Zustimmung der USA, so wie es Inferno vor einiger Zeit vorausgesagt hat.
Die Mullahs als Wächter des Öls.

Apr 19, 2005

Iraq key to US-Iran engagement
By M K Bhadrakumar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD19Ak02.html

There is an old popular Arab saying: "Books are written in Cairo, printed in Beirut, but read in Baghdad." Though Persian-speaking, Iranians certainly make it a point to read those books written in Arabic. They have always been avid readers of books, though with a penchant for interpreting ideas ultimately on their own terms.

That much becomes clear by the choice that Tehran made by making its entry into the New Middle East via Baghdad. The choice was by no means easy, the journey was uncertain and fraught with perils - known and unknown - and mostly very lonesome. Tehran seems to have navigated itself astutely, finally.

President Mohammad Khatami was among the first world leaders to felicitate the newly elected political leadership in Baghdad. In a congratulatory message of undisguised happiness over the occasion, Khatami conveyed to Iraqi President-elect Jalal Talabani that it was a "magnificent electoral show" that brought the new government into office. Offering Iran`s hand of cooperation, Khatami expressed optimism that "a secure, free and independent Iraq" would emerge and that with "vigilance and unity of the entire Iraqi nation" this could be realized. He expressed satisfaction that the democratic process in Iraq was running its course "without outside interference".

Khatami`s message disregarded the US military presence in Iraq or any sense of Islamic brotherhood with the regime in Baghdad.

Iranian media commentaries have been equally revealing. The Tehran Times lauded the fact that first and foremost, Baghdad had liberated itself from the "chauvinistic atmosphere of pan-Arabism" and had broken loose from "false Arab nationalism" - the "idea that Arabic nationalism was the cornerstone of patriotism". (Will the US neo-conservatives - and Israel - take note?)

The commentary went on to stress that Kurds and Shi`ites alike were victims of Ba`athist ideology and had been all these years "encircled in the web of pan-Arabist tendencies".

The Iran Daily hailed Talabani as the "first non-Arab president" of Iraq and noted that Kurdish-Shi`ite solidarity in Iraq was "clearly a positive development for Iran that has more commonalities with Kurds than other regional countries". It advised Sunni Arabs to "come to terms with and accept the ground realities".

The Iranian commentaries sidestepped recent demonstrations organized by Shi`ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr against the US military presence.

Thus, paradoxically, Washington and Tehran find themselves providing by far the staunchest outside support for the Kurdish-Shi`ite political axis that has emerged in the Iraqi leadership - that is, Israel`s shadowy influence with the Iraqi Kurds apart. How did Tehran arrive at this point?

An authoritative benchmark of the Iranian position on Iraq was available in a speech made by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi at the United Nations General Assembly last September 25. It harped on the United States` "lawless militarism", called for the "speedy withdrawal of foreign forces" from Iraq and sought "enhancement of the UN`s pivotal role", but underlined that "Iraq`s stability was of utmost national importance for Iran".

Behind the rhetoric, Tehran had begun adjusting itself to the new interim government in Baghdad headed by Iyad Allawi. Tehran began casting its net wide with the Kurdish constituency in Iraq. Tehran could foresee the inevitability of the US searching for a political calendar in Iraq sooner rather than later. By diversifying its influence within Iraq, Iran was hoping to place itself as a factor that could not be ignored.

Iran was not seeking a "strategic defiance" of the US at all, but a constructive engagement over Iraq`s stabilization. As much as Iran`s national-security interests necessitated the policy, it also projected Iran as a factor of regional stability (reminiscent of Iranian roles in the Tajik civil war and in Afghanistan). Thus a stream of important Iraqi visitors to Tehran began, starting with Kurdish leader Masoud Barazani (even as Kharrazi was addressing the UN in New York).

Nonetheless, there were many variables at work: the nuclear standoff; US presidential elections; apprehensions of (pro-Israeli) neo-con dominance in US policymaking; stereotyped thinking in Washington toward Iran`s "Islamic regime"; lack of steady back channels with Washington; and, most important, an overall lack of clarity in the US approach to the Iraqi situation.

The last element was particularly relevant. Iranian commentaries of the November-December period last year were constantly posing questions: Was the US really sincere about holding elections in Iraq? Why was the US allowing large-scale infiltration by Arab militants into Iraq with covert backing of neighboring Arab regimes? Was the US working on a secret understanding with those Arab regimes toward preventing a democratic process that might lead to a Shi`ite-dominated government in Baghdad? Were pointed militant attacks on key figures of Shi`ite leadership part of a plan to eliminate them systematically? Was it Washington`s objective to divide Iraq and bring Iraqi Shi`ites under Hashemite tutelage as a counter to Iran`s influence in Najaf? Why else was Allawi, who enjoyed Washington`s backing, visiting Amman so often? Was there a coup in the making in the run-up to the elections?

Tehran read meanings into the drift in Washington`s policy through the October-December period. A commentary by the Tehran Times on November 24 titled "Dark secrets about the Iraq election" summed up the Iranian concerns. It asked: "Is the United States really trying to establish democracy in Iraq?" It speculated that the US would have sized up "the power of religious authorities to mobilize Iraqi Shi`ites" and concluded that "active participation by Shi`ite clerics in Iraq`s social and political scenes" would endanger long-term US interests in the region - a view prevalent in neighboring Arab countries. It warned against reinducting Ba`athist elements "with pan-Arabist tendencies" into government posts. It implied that the US was being deliberately soft on the Sunni triangle as bringing it under military control "does not seem so difficult".

On November 27, Khatami reinforced these concerns with visiting Iraqi vice president Ibrahim Jaafari at Tehran. Khatami warned against any role for "the remnants of the former Iraqi regime" and stressed the imperative of sticking to the election schedule, of allowing Shi`ite participation and of firmly countering interference by neighboring Arab governments.

Iranian commentaries of that period relentlessly cautioned Washington that Arab regimes did not want to see security established in Iraq since Iraq`s moves toward democracy would raise questions about the "socio-political structure of those countries". Equally so, Iranian commentaries showed no inclination to regard the Iraqi militants as a political resistance to US occupation. In the Iranian judgment, these were "terrorists" first and last and needed to be dealt with as a security issue. Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Saudi Arabia were singled out by the Tehran Times as working for an indefinite postponement of the Iraqi elections "because the Shi`ites would certainly win the election, which would in turn raise the question of the legitimacy and viability of unelected regional Arab governments over the long term".

A turning point came with Osama bin Laden`s message in December to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, citing him as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Tehran Times seized the moment and in a memorable commentary on December 29 asked Washington to take note that "terrorist networks have made an unholy alliance" in Iraq; that Washington`s approach to countering terrorism was flawed; and that it was time Washington adopted a "realistic policy". It explained that Washington was completely missing the point, amid September 11, 2001, that all Muslims should not be equated. Shi`ites had abhorred violence historically, had nothing to do with al-Qaeda and therefore ought to be regarded as natural allies in the struggle against terrorism. The commentary urged Washington not to be swayed by "disinformation" spread by certain Arab rulers "who exaggerated the danger of the Shi`ite sect". These misperceptions were clouding Washington`s judgement as to who were its "main enemies" in the region.

Soon after, we notice that Tehran`s comfort level began to rise, after the unequivocal position taken by President George W Bush about holding Iraqi elections and on allowing the Iraqi Shi`ite voice to be heard.

Tehran turned its mind to "positive thinking" once the assessment was made that Bush was determined to push through the Iraqi elections as per the January 30 schedule. Iran felt reassured. The Iranian concerns from then on devolved on three issues. First, do all that Tehran could to ensure that the elections would have legitimacy in the world perceptions. This, clearly, meant that Iraqis must be cajoled to participate in the election in large numbers. For large-scale popular participation by itself would be a touchstone of the credibility of the electoral process. Tehran began working in that direction.

Second, Tehran kept reminding the Iraqi Shi`ite community that the elections were a God-sent opportunity for them in their long and tragic journey in search of a political role in their own country. Tehran urged them to make the best use of that opportunity by turning up in large numbers to vote on election day. Tehran had the confidence that the Shi`ite opinion was largely crystallized around Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the electoral outcome of large-scale Shi`ite participation would be predictable.

But that was not the whole point. Tehran was also intensely conscious that the Iraqi Shi`ites were poised to conclusively leave behind their pan-Arab identity in favor of an ethnic Iraqi identity - and this was sure to have a huge downstream impact on the political landscape of the region. In fact, the growing despair in the scorn poured on the Iraqi elections by neighboring Arab regimes - questioning the legitimacy of the elections for all conceivable reasons - would substantiate Iran`s judgement that the Arab political map in the region was, post-Iraqi elections - never going to be the same again.

The big question today, in fact, is: What is "pan-Arabism" without Iraq? The repercussions for the geopolitics of the entire Middle East out of this conclusive burial of "pan-Arabism" are going to be enormous. A road is opening toward a New Middle East consisting of nation-states based on national and ethnic identities without the pretentious baggage of Arab nationalism.

Third, Tehran kept urging the Iraqi Shi`ites not to retaliate against the mounting attacks on them and their places of worship by Sunni militants. Tehran`s message was more or less: "Be patient, you will very soon have your hour of triumph." Tehran counseled the Shi`ites that they should not allow themselves to be distracted from the priority ahead, namely, that the Iraqi elections must go ahead in a way that the legitimacy of the electoral verdict would not come under cloud in the perceptions of the international community.

Will this common ground over Iraq in recent months provide the basis for a broader US-Iran engagement? Some pointers are available. Mutual rhetoric has petered out. The Iranian attitude toward the Palestine issue is mellowing. Iran is refraining from making provocative power projections as an inveterate adversary of Israel. Iran is all but suggesting that it can as well play a constructive role as regards militant Palestinian groups or Hezbollah in Lebanon.

More to the point: Is "realism taking hold in Washington" - as the hugely influential former US national security adviser Brent Scowcraft put it in an interview with Der Spiegel last week? Scowcraft maintained that he was "hopeful", but not sure if he could be "confident just yet". He said: "The Iranians aren`t as aggressive as we sometimes think. Perhaps they won`t destroy all their nuclear facilities, but we could achieve an open-ended ban on enrichment activities. That`s something we could deal with pragmatically. So far the changes in the president [Bush] in his second term have been mainly of a rhetorical nature. The government`s Iran policy provides us with the first indications of a substantial change in direction."

M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian career diplomat who has served in Islamabad, Kabul, Tashkent and Moscow.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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The senseless death of the woman who fought George Bush
By Patrick Cockburn in Sulaymaniyah and Andrew Buncombe in Washington
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?st…

19 April 2005

She looked like she should be surfing on a beach in California but Marla Ruzicka was drawn instead to Iraq and her self-appointed task of helping the civilian victims of George Bush`s war. She was 28 years old and had been a peace activist since a young age. She went to Baghdad as the head of her own charity, determined to find out how many Iraqis had been killed or injured by US forces and get compensation for survivors.

At the weekend, the dedication that had taken Marla from her home in San Francisco to the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, led to her death.

On Saturday afternoon, as she and her driver were on the road leading from Baghdad to the city`s airport, a suicide bomber attacked a passing convoy of security contractors. Marla`s car was caught in the blast and engulfed in flames. A US Army medic who tried to help her said she was briefly conscious and was able to speak. "I`m alive," she had told him. She died along with an unnamed French national and an Iraqi.

The question everyone always asked about Marla was from where did she get all of her energy. She was constantly on the move: chattering, smiling, rushing to a hospital, dashing to a meeting, cajoling journalists, pestering diplomats, taking notes from a woman whose relatives had been killed, crossing time zones, entering people`s lives.

Her drive - and probably the boundless energy - came from a deep desire to help ordinary people whose lives had been shattered in President Bush`s so-called war on terror.

In the environment of the world`s war zones, where cynicism and idealism often overlap, Marla was something of a one-woman wonder.

In the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan, she travelled to Kabul with the intention of trying to help Afghan civilians. If sometimes she appeared a little naive, it was to her advantage.

It was quite simple, she believed. If the US had been responsible for causing suffering, surely it could try and help those people who needed it?

To that aim, she established a non-governmental group Civic - Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict - and raised funds. Controversially, the US and Britain refuse to gather statistics on the numbers of dead or injured in the conflict.

In Washington, she turned to the likes of Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and asked him to help fund her programme - something she was able to persuade him to do. The senator confirmed yesterday that Marla was behind the appropriation of almost $20m in aid to Afghanistan and Iraq.

"She was the one that persuaded us to do it," Mr Leahy said. "Here`s someone who, at 28 years old, did more than most people do in a lifetime."

While Marla proved to be adept at negotiating the bureaucracy of Washington and persuading its politicians to help - she once pressed the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, about civilian casualties - it was on the ground, working with people, that she was probably most at home. It was also where she knew she was doing most good.

If Marla was dedicated, she was probably also less concerned than she might have been about her safety. While the airport road on which she was travelling is a road that all journalists, aid workers and officials in Iraq must, at some point, travel on, the young woman believed she was somehow protected from the horror of Iraq`s violence because of her work.

On Saturday afternoon, it appears she was travelling to visit an injured three-month-old Iraqi girl when the bomber struck, also killing Marla`s driver, 43-year-old Faiz Ali Salim.

April Pedersen, a colleague, said: "It seems she fell right back into her old work - identifying and helping victims. At the moment, we are just trying to get through the next few days but we are all committed to ensuring the work that Marla did is going to continue."

Marla was raised in Lakeport, California, the youngest of six. Her father, Clifford, a civil engineer, recalled how his daughter had led a school protest against the 1991 Gulf War and was suspended.

When she was a student at Long Island University she travelled to countries such as Cuba, Guatemala and Israel. "She had a lot of purpose in her life, so it was kind of natural that she would go into places like these," Mr Ruzicka said. He said he was proud she had been "a lady with a tremendously open heart and warm feelings toward the people who`ve been in conflict".

Some may question why Marla`s death has received such extensive coverage, given that tens of thousands of civilians have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. She, for one would certainly had preferred that those victims and the people she was trying to help were the front page story. Yet, in the world in which she worked Marla was undoubtedly exceptional. She recognised the most effective way for her to get things done was not simply to campaign as a peace activist but to focus on humanitarian efforts. Her overwhelming focus was always the victims.

Officials were organising the return of Marla`s body to the US last night. A funeral service has been scheduled to take place at St Mary`s Church in Lakeport on Saturday morning.


19 August 2005 10:37


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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No free lunches for pensioners

Bush`s deceptive plans for the US social security system show why privatisation is not the answer to the global pensions crisis
Joseph Stiglitz
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1462945,00.ht…

Tuesday April 19, 2005

Guardian
It is almost an optical illusion: looming on Japan`s horizon, and on Europe`s and on America`s, is a pensions crisis. The problem is real, though exaggerated. The illusion is in some of the plans being devised to deal with it.

The main question is whether privatising pension systems, as George Bush has proposed for social security in the United States, would solve the problem or merely make matters worse. With many countries pondering whether to adopt variants of the Bush plan, the question requires careful examination.

By itself, privatisation is clearly not the solution. America`s troubled private pension system - now several hundred billion dollars in debt - already appears to be heading for a government bail-out. There was a time when privatisation - allowing individuals to set up individual savings accounts - seemed better than social security, which invests in lower-yielding Treasury bills (government bonds). Advocates of privatisation argued that funds would do much better if invested in stocks, predicting a return of 9%.

But the stock market does not guarantee returns; it does not even guarantee that the stock values will keep up with inflation - and there have been periods in which they have not. America`s social security system insulates individuals against the vagaries of the market and inflation, providing a form of insurance that the private market does not offer.

It does so with remarkable efficiency. The costs of managing the social security system are far smaller than those likely to be associated with privatised accounts. This is understandable: private investment firms spend an enormous amount on marketing and salaries.

It is possible that to reduce these transaction costs, Bush will propose restricting choice, which was the main argument for privatisation in the first place. But these limited kinds of choices - for example, a T-bill fund with 90% in T-bills and 10% in an indexed stock fund - could easily be introduced into the public social security system.

Bush says that reform is urgently needed, because the system will be insolvent in about a quarter of a century. But the problem depends on America`s growth rate: if the growth rates of the late 1990s return, there is no problem. Even if there is a problem, it can easily be fixed: spending a fraction of the money that went into Bush`s two tax cuts would have fixed social security for 75 years; slight benefit cuts, adjusting the age of retirement, or minor adjustments in the level of contributions could fix the system permanently.

Moreover, Bush`s proposals won`t fix social security - unless they are accompanied by drastic benefit cuts. For how could they? He proposes diverting almost a third of the social security tax to private accounts. That means less money coming in. If benefits are not reduced, the gap between receipts and expenditures will increase. One doesn`t need a Nobel prize to figure that out.

So privatisation would not protect retirees against the social security system`s insolvency; it would merely add enormously to today`s fiscal deficit, because partial privatisation entails diverting money to private funds that would have been used to close the gap between government expenditures and revenue.

The anticipated increase in the fiscal deficit is striking. The central plan discussed by Bush`s council of economic advisers would - according to the council`s own estimates - increase America`s fiscal deficit by $2 trillion over the next decade. Advocates of privatisation claim to believe in markets, but they are proposing budget gimmickry that would move those losses off the books, as if markets could be easily fooled.

America and the world should remember: Argentina`s privatisation of its pension system was at the centre of its recent fiscal woes. Had Argentina not privatised, its budget would have been roughly in balance. The US is starting on its privatisation venture with a fiscal deficit of 4% of GDP.

Privatisation advocates insist, however, that investments in stocks would yield sufficiently higher returns to give individuals the same retirement income as before, with the surplus used to fill the gap. But if markets are working well, then returns will be higher only because risk is higher. There is still no free lunch in economics.

With higher risk, there is a chance that, 40 years from now, many individuals will find themselves with less than they need to retire. But if one really thinks that free lunches exist, there is still no reason to privatise: the government could get the additional returns by investing in the stock market itself. Indeed, President Clinton proposed doing just that.

With increased transaction costs, worsening solvency for the system, increased budget deficits and decreasing benefits and security for retirees, why the drive for privatisation? One reason is the interest financial markets have in grabbing a piece of all those transaction costs. A second is the Bush administration`s ideological hostility to the modest amount of wealth redistribution implied by the public system. America`s social security programme has been so successful in reducing poverty because the poor get back a little more than they contribute, and the rich get back a little less.

Even with social security`s mildly redistributive effect, poverty and inequality in America are increasing. Privatisation will only make matters worse.

Bush has tried to scare America about the magnitude of the problem, and he has tried to fool America about how privatisation would solve it. The social security deficit pales by comparison with the deficits created by Bush`s huge tax cuts for upper-income Americans or in comparison with the deficit in Medicare, which provides healthcare for the aged. Why has he ignored these problems? Is there another agenda?

· 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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Mos Def as Ford Prefect, Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent and Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox

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Der Versuch der USA Japan als Militärmacht auf die Bühne zurückzubringen und Chinas Gegenreaktion.
Der erste Schritt war Japans indirekte Beteiligung am Irakkrieg.

Japan emerges as America`s deputy sheriff in the Pacific

Simon Tisdall
Tuesday April 19, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldbriefing/story/0,15205,146307…

Guardian
Escalating tension with China, violently illustrated by renewed anti-Japanese protests in Shanghai and other big cities at the weekend, is increasing pressure on Tokyo to expand its military capabilities and back a deepening strategic alliance with the US reaching from east Asia to the Gulf.

Japan`s pacifist postwar constitution restricts its armed forces to self-defence. About 50,000 US troops in Okinawa and other bases guarantee the country`s security in return for a $5bn (£2.6bn) Japanese cash contribution.

But defence analysts say the perceived Chinese threat, a more assertive, nationalistic Japanese mindset, and Washington`s wish to use Japan as a command post for operations extending to the Middle East are transforming Japan`s formerly semi-detached defence posture.

In other words, after 60 years largely spent keeping its head down, Japan appears destined to supplant Australia as Washington`s "deputy sheriff" in the Asia-Pacific region and become a pillar of America`s 21st-century security architecture.

According to Kazuya Sakamoto of Osaka University, Japan and Britain are central to a far-reaching, post-9/11 US review of its overseas force deployments.

"The basic idea is that the US will gradually withdraw from the Eurasian landmass while assigning the two island nations at the east and west of Eurasia, Japan and Britain, even greater importance as strategic bases to ensure stability in Europe and Asia," Professor Sakamoto writes in the current issue of Japan Echo magazine.

An important element in this transformation fell into place last week when Japan agreed in principle to allow the command headquarters of the US Army`s 1st Corps to transfer from Washington state, on the US Pacific coast, to Camp Zama, near Yokohama, south of Tokyo.

The 1st Corps has responsibility for operations in the Pacific and Indian oceans, extending to the conflict zones and oilfields of the Gulf. The primary focus of its forward deployment is likely to be the defence of Taiwan, regional challenges posed by China`s military expansion, and the nuclear standoff with North Korea.

But the US has also reportedly proposed that command operations of the 13th Airforce, now on Guam in the Pacific - a base for long-range bombers and tanker aircraft frequently deployed in the Middle East - be moved to Yokota airbase in Tokyo.

"The ramifications of this would be that Japan would essentially serve as a frontline US command post for the Asia-Pacific and beyond," said Christopher Hughes of Warwick University in a paper published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The American forward deployments are certain to be viewed with suspicion in China and farther afield - and face political opposition in Japan. The US-Japan security treaty states that US bases may only be used "for the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the far east". It says nothing, for example, about Iran.

But Dr Hughes said that since Japan had given the US a free hand to use its bases for previous Middle East operations, Tokyo "might have to accept its enhanced role as a fulcrum for US military commands".

Japan`s worries about China are the main reason for acquiescing in US plans that effectively shatter any remaining pacifist illusions. But Tokyo is in any case growing more militarily assertive under its prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi.

Japan sent non-combat troops to Iraq while its navy has joined the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative. Military cooperation with Australia, South Korea and south-east Asian states is developing.

It is acquiring a ballistic missile defence system and new satellite intelligence capabilities. It has pledged to help keep the peace in Taiwan. And there has even been talk of pre-emptive strikes against North Korea and a Japanese nuclear deterrent.

In short, Japan, emerging from the shadow of its past, is again becoming a military power with a global role and hopes of a permanent UN security council seat.

China`s actions may thereby be more easily explained. But further demonstrations of hostility will only exacerbate the slide towards an Asian cold war.
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, April 19, 2005

Badr: Foreign Troops Unneeded

The Badr Corps claims to be in military control of Muthanna province, including the city of Samawah. Regional Badr leader Hadi al-Amiri said Monday that Samawah is secure, and there is no need for Australian troops to be deployed there. The Dutch used to be stationed in Samawah but have gone home, and are due to be replaced by 450 Australian troops. In fact, local policing in Samawah has been supplied by the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq for some time. At one point the Dawa Party militia was also patrolling there. Al-Amiri`s comment is the opening salvo in a struggle for control of the Iraqi south, where Shiite religious parties now control the provincial councils and therefore the police and bureaucracy.

In a related development, Shiite cleric Sayyid Mahmud al-Hasani, a supporter of Muqtada al-Sadr in Karbala, led a demonstration on Monday in Baghdad demanding that US troops withdraw to camps outside the cities and establish a timeline for US withdrawal from Iraq. Some 2,000 persons gathered in West Baghdad. Monday was the commemoration day for the death of the 11th Imam or descendant of the Prophet. They said they wanted a complete withdrawal of US and coalition troops. Al-Hasani`s representative in the holy city of Karbala, Sayyid Diya` al-Musawi, said, "We do not accept the presence of the Occupier on the land of the Fertile Crescent . . . They have been in our land for more than two years with no justification." He added, "We reject the sectarian conflict that the Occupier attempts to provoke." He noted that many Sunni Arabs accused the Shiites of supporting the American occupation, but said that he is now calling for a US withdrawal.

Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, is also a socialist who has opposed the death penalty on progressive grounds for decades. He doesn`t want to execute Saddam Hussein. The Shiite religious parties that now dominate parliament, however, very much want Saddam dead. It looks as though the Shiites will win this one.

The Financial Times reports on the situation in Ramadi, where the town notables are split over whether to cooperate with the new government in Baghdad. The mayor and the notables and police around him condemn attacks by guerrillas on other Iraqis. The preacher at the Khalid b. Walid Mosque and the residents of 17 Tammuz Street and environs favor continued guerrilla resistance. Ramadi is an important city in Anbar province, the largely Sunni Arab center of resistance activities. The FT illuminates some of the tensions among social groups there, and is therefore superior as reportage.

Some 8 Iraqi military and police were killed in violence on Monday, with 7 civilians killed in separate incidents, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat.

posted by Juan @ [url4/19/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/badr-foreign-troops-unneeded-badr.html[/url]

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Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Rant of the Day, April 19, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

This Day in History

I distinctly remember the moment when I heard the news that a bomb had exploded in Oklahoma City. I was sitting on a folding chair in my hex-tent at the Combined Arms Maneuver Training Center at Hohenfels, Germany, with a map on my lap.

I was platoon leader of the 3ID battlefield deception platoon and I was having a planning meeting with my senior NCOs. My platoon sergeant, my electronic team chief, my sonic team chief, my physical deception NCO, my engineer NCO, my driver and I were all crammed in that tiny tent, sitting on cots and field chairs. It was about 20:00 in Germany and the weather was cold and snowing hard outside. We were huddled around a glowing Yukon stove, trying to dry off while we read a battalion OPORD, with our K-pots, weapons and battle-rattle piled on the ground near our muddy boots.

We had remoted my vehicle radios into the tent so we could monitor traffic on the battalion command frequency and the battalion O&I net. I had a short wave radio tuned to the BBC sitting on my cot, and my driver - a young SPC we all called “Shipwreck” in a play on his surname - was listening to the news while we extracted our specified and implied tasks from the OPORD.

“Holy fuck!” Shipwreck suddenly exclaimed, interrupting our OPORD discussions. “Listen to this shit!” Shipwreck cranked up the volume on the short wave. Shipwreck was from a small town in Oklahoma.

We heard a BBC news-reader announce that a massive bomb had exploded in Oklahoma City and there were an unspecified number of casualties. Shortly afterwards, we heard another BBC reporter tell us that he was speaking to a police spokesman in Oklahoma City, and this is how I recall that radio interview:

“Can you tell us about casualties?” the BBC reporter asked.

“We’ve got 165 dead,” the police spokesman said, in a deadpan Southern drawl.

“One hundred and sixty-five?” the BBC reporter asked incredulously. “One hundred and sixty-five?!?”

For some reason, I instinctively scribbled that number in the margins of my green field notebook as I dropped my map. My platoon sergeant stood and slapped his rolled copy of the OPORD against his thigh. Shipwreck simply stared at the short wave receiver, slack-jawed. My engineer NCO, always a practical and present-minded man, reached over and turned off the tactical radio remotes so we could focus our attention on something more important than a field training OPORD.


The Oklahoma City bombing isn’t ancient history. Timothy McVeigh, the hate-filled and hateful young man raised on pop-garbage like “Red Dawn” and racist propaganda like “The Turner Diaries” who committed the right-wing terrorist atrocity in Oklahoma City died at the executioner’s hand without repentance or remorse. His execution was expedited, according to his own wishes, by Attorney General John Ashcroft. McVeigh croaked in a painless, sterile environment without revealing the identities of his co-conspirators.

This week, we saw another right-wing domestic terrorist issue a defiant, unrepentant manifesto at his sentencing hearing. Eric Robert Rudolph copped a plea on charges he committed four terrorist attacks against America that killed two people and wounded 110 others. In exchange for a guilty plea, U.S. Attorney David Nahmias obtained information about 240 pounds of dynamite Rudolph had concealed in the Carolina woods that was so weathered and chemically unstable after five years in the elements, that ATF agents blew it in place rather than risk moving it to a safe blasting range. Given my experience dealing with explosives, I`d say a hungry rat would have set off a detonation. If any of Rudolph’s fellow pro-life terrorists had attempted to access his dynamite stash, they would have been blown to bits.

Most likely, U.S. Attorney Nahmias knew nothing about the stability of Rudolph’s dynamite cache. But in exchange for a plea bargain, Nahmias obtained nothing else. No names of co-conspirators, no names of those who supported Rudolph as he remained a fugitive for five years, no nothing.

Instead, Nahmias gave Rudolph a platform to proclaim his pro-terror manifesto and deprived America of the opportunity to get a gander at the domestic terrorist connections of the Republican Party.

If you’re not reading David Neiwert`s intelligence reports, you’re not paying attention to the domestic terrorist threat.

We must also remember the true American patriots who defended Bunker Hill on the morning of April 19, 1775. Unless my research is wrong, no active US Army, Guard or Reserve unit carries a Bunker Hill battle streamer.

Although their soldiers were brave and their officers bold, the British Army never issued regimental battle honors for Bunker Hill or any other Revoluntary War campaign.

YD
# posted by yankeedoodle : 12:52 AM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 17, 2005
Military Fatalities: Total: 1737 , US: 1560 , Apr.05: 26

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Apr 20, 2005

The waxing of the Shi`ite crescent
By Sami Moubayed
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD20Ak01.html

DAMASCUS - Since the Islamic revolution took place in Iran in 1979, one of its prime objectives was to strengthen Shi`ites all over the Muslim world. Before that revolution, they were a disinherited, underprivileged and neglected community in Lebanon and Iraq.

This "Shi`ite emancipation" was first done in Lebanon, through the charismatic cleric Musa al-Sadr, who was funded and supported by the mullahs of Tehran in his "Movement of the Dispossessed" and its military branch, Amal, created in 1974 and 1975, respectively.

They later supported Hezbollah, a pure Iranian creation, that strove at first to establish a theocracy in Lebanon, similar to the one in Iran. In time, the role of Hezbollah became to defend the Shi`ite community in Lebanon, rather than bring them to power in Beirut, and safeguard their political rights in the complex confessional system of Lebanon.

In Iraq, the mullahs began to fund, train, protect and harbor Shi`ite dissidents opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein, where they were oppressed by the Sunni minority. Ibrahim Jaafari, the new prime minister, who is the de facto ruler of the new Iraq, spent the years 1980-89 as a fugitive in Iran.

After 25 years of underground struggle, this community succeeded in toppling Saddam, ironically, with the help of the US. The overthrow of Saddam, the newfound status of the Shi`ites in Iraq, their victory in the January 2005 elections, and the election of Jaafari were all well received in Tehran. They summed up what Iran had wanted in Iraq since 1979.

Jaafari, who has been active in Shi`ite politics since 1968, raises hopes throughout the Muslim world that struggle, persecution and long years of banishment will not prevent the Shi`ites from rising to power in their respective communities, just like they did in Iran in 1979, and Iraq in 2003. A member of the pan-Shi`ite United Iraqi Alliance, and a brother-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Jaafari`s appointment as premier raises more than an eyebrow in the Arab world.

The Shi`ites and Syria
Syria`s relationship with Iran and its Shi`ites has always been a strategic one, based on pragmatism and mutual interests rather than pan-Shi`ite loyalties, as was the case with Lebanon and Iraq. The Shi`ite community in Syria is small and has no history of political ambitions. They are first-class citizens, and occupy several senior posts - as Syrians, however, and not as Shi`ite Syrians.

Among the most prominent are Dr Hani Murtada, the current minister of higher education, who had been president of Damascus University and is one of the finest pediatricians in Syria, and comedian and political satirist Duraid Lahham.

During the entire pre-Ba`ath era, only one Shi`ite politician rose to fame in Syria, namely Said Haydar from Baalbak, who co-led the revolt against the French in the 1920s, and served several times as a deputy in the Syrian parliament, and who was a co-author of its constitution.

Syria`s support for the Iranian revolution began in 1979, due to its animosity toward the US-backed and Israel-allied regime of Shah Reza Pahlevi. Actually, Damascus had even involved itself in the Shi`ite underground, by helping some of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini`s lieutenants prior to the revolution that deposed the Shah.

Men like Ibrahim Yazdi, Mustapha Chamran and Sadiq Qotbzadeh (two future ministers in the Islamic Republic) were all allies of Syria, and Qotbzadeh, for example, had been given a Syrian passport to conduct anti-Shah activities, disguised as a Paris correspondent for the Syrian daily al-Thawra.

Damascus was pleased when Iran`s new leader, Khomeini, closed down the Israeli Embassy in Tehran, to show his distance from the Shah and his alliances, then reopened it as an embassy for the Palestinian Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat. Syrian leader Hafez Assad had offered Khomeini asylum in Syria in October 1978. When Khomeini came to power, Syrian vice president Abd al-Halim Khaddam remarked that the Islamic revolution in Iran was the "most important event in our contemporary history" and boasted that Syria had supported it "prior to its outbreak, during it and after its triumph".

Syria also backed, but provided no arms or money to, Iran during its eight-year war with the Ba`athist regime of Saddam, starting in 1980. When the war ended, the two countries found more room for cooperation vis-a-vis combating Israel through Hezbollah in south Lebanon. Iran did it out of pan-Shi`ite loyalties. Syria did it to continue its war by proxy with Israel.

Some speculated that with Saddam gone in 2003, the common enemy of Damascus and Tehran, both countries would have little reason for future cooperation, especially since the new leaders of Baghdad were Shi`ite allies, and proteges, of Iran. The new Iran-friendly regime in Baghdad, many argued, would end all logical reasons for a Syrian-Iranian honeymoon.

Yet Iran continued its support for Syria, even after international pressure mounted on Damascus following the assassination of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri on February 14. Iran feared, some believed, that Hezbollah`s alliance with Syria in the aftermath of the Hariri crisis would damage the guerrilla movement`s standing in Lebanon.

These fears were brushed aside by a statement by Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji al-Otari expressing solidarity with Iran, and by Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, who said, "We are ready to help Syria confront all threats." Syria noted Iran`s positive attitude and responded with positive gestures, reacting very warmly to the appointment of Iran`s ally, Jaafari, as premier.

The Shi`ites of Bahrain
In Bahrain, which has a 70% Shi`ite majority (of a total population of about 443,000), ruled by a Sunni minority, the Shi`ites hoped that Shi`ite power in Tehran and Baghdad would bring more regional and international attention to their plight. To them, the ascent of Jaafari and the Shi`ites in Iraq is of no less importance than the Islamic revolution of 1979.

Treated as an underclass, they rose against the Bahraini government in 1994, with the funding of Iran, demanding reforms, better living conditions and restoration of the parliament abrogated by Sheikh Issa bin Salman al-Khalifa in 1975. Hopes were a little heightened in 2002 when Issa`s son, King Hamad, restored constitutional life to Bahrain, but curbed its powers, and reduced Shi`ite representation.

They boycotted elections in 2002, and were very poorly represented in the lower chamber of parliament (the upper chamber was appointed by the king). Before the elections, in an attempt at bolstering Sunni representation in Bahrain, authorities decided to grant dual citizenship to nationals of the Gulf Cooperation Council living in Bahrain (mostly Sunnis). This aroused much controversy, and the Bahraini government decided to back down, fearing Shi`ite wrath, and grant citizenship to 10,000 Shi`ites living in Bahrain as an appeasement before the elections of October 2002.

On March 26 thsi year, shortly after it was confirmed that Jaafari was the new prime minister of Iraq, 80,000 Shi`ite demonstrators came out in Bahrain to demand a new constitution giving them more rights, among which was electing a prime minister, and not having him appointed by the king. In the past, demonstrators in Bahrain carried photographs of Iraq`s Sistani and Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran.

The Shi`ites of Saudi Arabia
The same scare has taken over Saudi Arabia since 2003, where 11% of its 25 million people are Shi`ites. They, too, complain of being discriminated against, and have strong alliances in Baghdad and Tehran. Only a few days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, Sheikh Hasan al-Saffa, a leading Saudi Shi`ite reformist, appeared on satellite television to demand an end to the injustice done against the Shi`ites in Saudi Arabia.

Shi`ite districts in Saudi Arabia were underdeveloped, and Saudi authorities prevented Shi`ites from practicing their rituals and building mosques, in addition to denying them equal access to government jobs and the Saudi army. By the end of April 2003, the Shi`ites had petitioned Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, for political and religious freedoms. Among other things, they demanded increased representation in government, the right to set up their own courts, publish their own books, the lifting of bans on their rituals, and the creation of a special department to oversee their issues at the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs.

Deeply rooted in the Arabian desert, the Shi`ites were around before the modern state of Saudi Arabia was created in the 1920s. In 1913, they swore allegiance to King Abd al-Aziz (the kingdom`s founder, who was then sultan of Nejd), in exchange for a promise made by him to guarantee their safety and freedom of expression, once the desert was united. This was done despite promises by the British to grant them protectorate status, similar to the one according to the small Persian Gulf sheikhdoms.

Abd al-Aziz honored his initial promise, yet reneged on his promises when creating Saudi Arabia in 1925. Matters remained strained, more or less, throughout the 20th century, and in 1993 an agreement was reached between expatriate Saudi Shi`ites and King Fahd. They promised to halt opposition activities from abroad, urge Shi`ite activists to return to Saudi Arabia, in exchange for an amnesty by the king, and no more discrimination. This did not happen.

Today, fears are heightened that the Shi`ites of Saudi Arabia will be influenced, funded or helped by the victorious Shi`ites of Iraq. The Saudi Shi`ites, it must be noted, refused to cooperate with Iran when it called on them in 1980-88 to rebel against the House of Saud.

Shi`ites in the remainder of the Gulf are not as active, or as dangerous to established regimes, as they are in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Many have become active, however, since the rise of the Iraqi Shi`ites in 2003. In Yemen, the Shi`ites, who are 30% of the country`s 20 million, have also been highly influenced by the Iraq debacle. They live in tribal regions of Yemen, are heavily armed and are greatly underdeveloped. In 2004, seeing the benefits their co-religionaries were getting in Iraq, they launched a failed rebellion against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and it was suppressed by authorities, leading to the killing of more than 400 people.

In Kuwait, where the Shi`ites are 25% of Kuwait`s 2.2 million, they are loyal and in harmony with the established government, represented with five deputies in parliament, and until recently with Mohammad Abu al-Hassan, a Shi`ite, as minister of information. Matters became tense in 2004 when Yasser Habeeb, a Kuwaiti Shi`ite student activist, was arrested for distributing material offending leaders of the Sunni faith who were companions of the Prophet Mohammed. He was released in February 2004, but authorities tried to arrest him again, to no avail. The only two countries (in addition to Syria) with a significant Shi`ite majority, which nevertheless has no history of political ambitions, or activism, are Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

There is a fear rapidly creeping throughout the Arab world from the rising Shi`ite influence in the Middle East.

Shi`ite resurgence?
Two years after the fall of Saddam`s regime in Iraq, it is safe to ask: Who were the real victors in this bloody war of the Middle East in 2003? At first glance, the only victors were George W Bush and the neo-conservatives at the White House. A closer look would show, however, that Iran as well, ironically, has a lot to gain from the new Middle East.

Or more specifically, the real victors are the Shi`ites of Iran and the Muslim world. They will enjoy the fruits of the post-Saddam order long after Bush`s army leaves Iraq. This region, many fear, is now dominated by a "Shi`ite crescent" uniting the Shi`ites of Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and the Arab Gulf region.

Fear of this threat was first used by King Abdullah of Jordan in an interview with the Washington Post last December, arousing anger of the Shi`ite community in the Arab world. Actually, the fear of a "crescent" in this part of the world dates back to the 1950s, when Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Sa`id talked about a "fertile crescent" plan for the Middle East, to unite Iraq with Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan, in a federal union to be ruled by the Hashemite family in Baghdad.

This plan, lobbied for extensively in Amman and Baghdad, was received with cold shivers in Damascus, Beirut, Cairo and Riyadh. The "crescent" remains, but players and roles have shifted over the past 50 years. Today`s "crescent" is lobbied for extensively by its Iranian creator, and supported by Baghdad, parts of Beirut and Damascus, while it is being spurned in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and Kuwait.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Ob Bush das beurteilen kann.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 19. April 2005, 22:13
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,352326,00.html

Bush

"Ein Mann großer Weisheit"
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,352326,00.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,352326,00.html


US-Präsident George W. Bush hat die Wahl Joseph Ratzingers zum neuen Papst begrüßt und den Deutschen als Mann "großer Weisheit und Erfahrung" gelobt. "Er ist ein Mann, der dem Herrn dient", sagte Bush in Washington.

Washington - Ratzinger habe ihn bei der Gedenkmesse für den verstorbenen Papst Johannes Paul II. am 8. April sehr beeindruckt. Er habe "mit seinen Worten unsere Herzen und die Herzen von Millionen berührt", sagte Bush am Dienstag. "Wir beten gemeinsam mit unseren Landsleuten und Millionen in der ganzen Welt für anhaltende Kraft und Weisheit, während Seine Heiligkeit die katholische Kirche führt."

Auch Außenamtssprecher Adam Ereli erklärte, die US-Regierung sei erfreut über Ratzingers Wahl. "Wir freuen uns darauf, mit Seiner Heiligkeit und dem Heiligen Stuhl zusammenzuarbeiten, um auf unsere bereits hervorragenden bilateralen Beziehungen aufzubauen und die Menschenwürde auf der ganzen Welt zu fördern", sagte Ereli.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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`Having seen fascism in action, Ratzinger today believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesiastical totalitarianism` über Ratzinger.
Er wird genauso gegen die Aushöhlung der Werte in der Wirtschafts- und Außenpolitik durch die Neocons und Bush sein wie auch sein Vorgänger, wie er die Prolife-Bewegung und andere Forderungen der christlichen Fundamentalisten der USA, die auch von der Bushclique unterstützt werden, mittragen wird.
Wieder genauso wie John Paul, der, obwohl er gegen den Krieg und die Menschrechtsverletzungen der USA sich sehr kritisch geäußert hat, nichts gegen den Aufruf eines großen Teils des US-Klerus zur Wiederwahl Bushs gesagt hat.
Ein Artikel der Times, wie der neue Papst gesehen wird.


April 20, 2005
A Theological Visionary With Roots in Wartime Germany
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial…

ROME, April 19 - The man who has become Pope Benedict XVI was a product of wartime Germany, but also of a deeply Roman Catholic region, Bavaria.

As the Nazis strengthened their stranglehold on Germany in the 1930`s, the strongly Catholic family of Joseph Ratzinger moved frequently among villages in rural Bavaria.

"Unemployment was rife," he wrote in his memoir, "Milestones." "War reparations weighed heavily on the German economy. Battles among the political parties set people against one another." His father, he wrote, was a determined anti-Nazi.

The Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Ratzinger recalled, was his bulwark against the Nazi regime, "a citadel of truth and righteousness against the realm of atheism and deceit."

But he could not avoid the realities of the day. In an episode certain to be scrutinized anew, Joseph Ratzinger was briefly and unenthusiastically a member of the Hitler Youth in his early teens, after membership became mandatory in 1941, according to a biography by John L. Allen Jr., who covers the Vatican for The National Catholic Reporter.

In 1943, he and fellow seminarians were drafted. He deserted in 1945 and returned home, but was captured by American soldiers and held as a prisoner of war for several months, Mr. Allen wrote.

Along his way to the papacy, he built a distinguished academic career as a theologian, and then spent nearly a quarter century as Pope John Paul II`s theological visionary - and enforcer of strict positions on doctrine, morality and the primacy of the faith.

In addition to his subtle and powerful intellect lies a spiritual, almost mystical side rooted in the traditional Bavarian landscape of processions, devotions to Mary and small country parishes, said John-Peter Pham, a former Vatican diplomat who has written about Cardinal Ratzinger.

"It`s a Christianity of the heart, not unlike that of the late pope`s Poland," he said. "It`s much different than the cerebral theology traditionally associated with German theology."

His experience under the Nazis - he was 18 when the war ended - was formative in his view of the function of the church, Mr. Allen said.

"Having seen fascism in action, Ratzinger today believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesiastical totalitarianism," he wrote. "In other words, he believes the Catholic Church serves the cause of human freedom by restricting freedom in its internal life, thereby remaining clear about what it teaches and believes."

Totalitarianism, indeed, critics might say.

They cite a long list of theologians Cardinal Ratzinger has chastised for straying from official doctrine; his condemnation of "relativism," or the belief that other denominations and faiths lead equally to salvation; his denunciation of liberation theology, homosexuality and feminism; his attempt to rein in national bishops conferences; his belief that the Second Vatican Council of the 1960`s, which led to a near-revolutionary modernization of the church, has brought corrosive excesses.

In effect, he has argued for a purer church at the expense of size.

Hans Küng, one of the theologians who ran afoul of him, has called his ideology a "medieval, anti-Reformation, anti-modern paradigm of the church and the papacy."

"To have him as pope will be considered by many Catholics to mean that the church is absolutely unable to reform itself," he said, "and that you are not to have any hope for the great process of the Second Vatican Council."

Along with Bavaria and Nazism, a third influence helped shape the new pope: the leftist-inspired student unrest of the 1960`s at the dawn of domestic German terrorism. He said it made him realize that, sometimes, there is no room for discussion.

Even before becoming the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Ratzinger wielded immense power. John Paul appointed him prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Holy Office. It was a deeply personal choice, made without his usual wide consultation.

Their regular Friday discussions were said to be often freewheeling.

The cardinal expanded the power of the role, ruling on a wide range of subjects. He was the first professional theologian in the job in more than a century, one equipped with a strong intellect and decisiveness.

"This is a man who can deal with a lot of difficult material without becoming upset," said the Rev. Augustine Di Noia, who was the under secretary of the congregation.

John Paul was said to have given Cardinal Ratzinger wide latitude; some called him the "vice pope." Other Vatican officials have suggested he served as a lightning rod, diverting criticism from the pope.

As dean of the College of Cardinals, he was also the most powerful of them - their leader in the period after John Paul`s death, the celebrant of his funeral Mass and their guide during the conclave.

Behind his fearsome reputation lies a "a simple person," Father Di Noia said. "He chuckles. There`s a simple childlike quality to him." Others speak of his dry sense of humor and modest demeanor.

He is a diminutive man with deep-set eyes and white hair, and speaks Italian - the language of the Vatican - with a strong German accent. Unlike John Paul, he had little time for sports or strenuous activity, other than walks in the mountains.

Until now, he lived in a small apartment near the Vatican and walked to work. He was perhaps the best-known cardinal, appearing at Vatican news conferences and known to many through his books and profiles of him in newspapers.

Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria, the youngest of three children. It was a part of a region long within the orbit of Salzburg, in Austria, Mozart`s birthplace. A pianist, Cardinal Ratzinger expressed a great love for the composer.

Partly because of his father`s opposition to the Nazis, he wrote, the family moved four times before Joseph was 10. His mother was a hotel cook.

He entered the seminary in 1939. After conscription, he served in an antiaircraft unit. He has said the unit was attacked by Allied forces in 1943, but he did not take part in that battle because a finger infection had prevented him from learning to shoot. After about a year in the antiaircraft unit he was drafted into the regular military, sent home and then called up again before deserting in late April 1945, according to Mr. Allen. He told Time magazine in 1993 that while stationed near Hungary, he saw Hungarian Jews being sent to death camps.

In discussing his war experience, Mr. Allen wrote that he publicly expressed little of the explicit horrors that were around him; of the resistance to the Nazis by groups other than Catholics; or of the anti-Semitism of a prominent great-uncle.

In the fall after the war ended in 1945, he returned to the seminary, where his brother, Georg - who was soon to be a prominent church music director - was also enrolled. The brothers were was ordained in 1951; two years later Joseph Ratzinger earned his doctorate at the University of Munich. His dissertation was titled "The People and House of God in St. Augustine`s Doctrine of the Church." He earned his teaching licentiate in 1957.

One of his most influential books was an early work from his university lectures, "Introduction to Christianity." He also wrote "Dogma and Revelation" and "Eschatology."

In his view, the church does not exist so that it can be incorporated into the world, but so as to offer a way to live. It is not a human edifice but a divinely created one. And theology is not a dry academic exercise. Theologians should support church teaching to serve the faithful, not depart from it.

His career as an academic began immediately after he was licensed. He spent two years teaching dogma and fundamental theology at the University of Freising and 10 years at the University of Bonn. He also had stints at the universities Münster and Tübingen. Alienated by the student protests at Tübingen, he moved to Regensburg in 1969.

In a 1985 interview with The New York Times, he called the protests "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human." Such actions taught him, he said, that to discuss terror was to collaborate with it. "I learned where discussion must stop because it is turning into a lie and resistance must begin in order to maintain freedom."

Already in 1962, at 35, he achieved prominence at the highest levels of the church. A mutual acquaintance introduced him to Cardinal Joseph Frings, archbishop of Cologne. Cardinal Frings asked him to serve as his expert assistant at the Second Vatican Council. Father Ratzinger was credited with pushing Cardinal Frings to join French and other German bishops in standing firm against the Vatican Curia members who wanted to hold back council reforms. He also helped write a speech criticizing the Holy Office, the predecessor to his future home, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The speech called it outmoded and a "source of scandal to the world."

Yet within a decade he came to express deep worry that the church was drifting to the left and losing its ecclesiastical rigor.

In 1977, Pope Paul VI appointed him archbishop of Munich, and made him a cardinal in just three months. That same year, he met the future John Paul II, although some have said that they might have met at the Second Vatican Council. They both spent their youths under totalitarianism, but they also had a feeling that the church was adrift in a permissive sea, and that there was a need to return to the fundamentals.

John Paul appointed him to the doctrinal congregation in 1981. Soon, he was taking action against liberation theology, the Marxist-inspired movement of priests in Latin America to help the poor by radical restructuring of society. The congregation denounced the movement in 1984; Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian liberation theologian, was summoned and silenced for a year.

Other theologians were chastised. Charles E. Curran, a theologian at Catholic University of America, was barred in 1986 from teaching at a Catholic institution for refusing to recant his challenge to church teaching on sexuality. The Rev. Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lanka theologian, was excommunicated in 1997 after being accused of challenging fundamental Catholic tenets like original sin and the Immaculate Conception. More than a dozen others have been disciplined by the congregation.

With the end of the cold war, Cardinal Ratzinger turned his attention to fighting "relativism." His congregation`s 2000 declaration "Dominus Jesus" - "Lord Jesus" - said other religions could not offer salvation, and were "gravely deficient." An uproar from other religious leaders followed, but John Paul publicly defended the document.

Even as he celebrated the Mass leading into the conclave on Monday morning, Cardinal Ratzinger called relativism a "dictatorship" under which the ego and personal desires are paramount.

One of his major efforts, which many say has been successful, was to sap national bishops` conferences of power - and even here he harkened back to the war. The German conference issued "wan and weak" condemnations of Nazism; the truly powerful documents, he said, "came from individual courageous bishops."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 20, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Smoke Gets in Our News
By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/opinion/20dowd.html

WASHINGTON

In the free fall of TV news, ABC`s attempt to create a successor for Ted Koppel`s "Nightline" will go down as one of the most hilariously embarrassing moments.

One show tested recently, according to reports, was set in a nightclub. It had white tablecloths, candles, a jazz quintet, a live audience at little tables and - this is not a joke - faux fog.

We`ve gone from the fog of war to the fog of news.

The nightclub segments that were tested had Gen X hosts and guests, and red-blue debates on Michael Jackson, the Olsen twins` "dumpster chic" and "mad as hell" rants.

ABC decided not to go with the smoke machine. Still, Ted Koppel - who vowed last year to leave "Nightline" before he was forced to cover "wet burka" contests - must be spinning in his country home.

Les Moonves of CBS has said that with the sonorous era of Dan, Tom, Peter and Ted coming to an end, viewers are no longer interested in "voice-of-God, single-anchor" formats.

But who knew they would prefer the voice of Frank? A ring-a-ding Sinatraesque "one for my baby and one more for the road" network voice?

In Washington last week, Rupert Murdoch echoed Mr. Moonves in giving the American Society of Newspaper Editors some bad news about young people in the age of the Internet, blogging and cable news:

"They don`t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don`t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what`s important. ... They certainly don`t want news presented as gospel."

So media big shots are moving away from patriarchal, authoritarian voice-of-God figures, even as the Catholic Church and politics are moving toward patriarchal, authoritarian voice-of-God figures.

The white smoke yesterday signaled that the Vatican thinks what it needs to bring it into modernity is the oldest pope since the 18th century: Joseph Ratzinger, a 78-year-old hidebound archconservative who ran the office that used to be called the Inquisition and who once belonged to Hitler Youth. For American Catholics - especially women and Democratic pro-choice Catholic pols - the cafeteria is officially closed. After all, Cardinal Ratzinger, nicknamed "God`s Rottweiler" and "the Enforcer," helped deny Communion rights to John Kerry and other Catholic politicians in the 2004 election.

The only other job this pope would be qualified for is "60 Minutes" anchor.

President Bush has also long acted as if he channeled the voice of God. And now Tom DeLay and Bill Frist are also pandering to the far-right-wing and evangelical Christians by implying that God speaks - and acts - through them, too.

Mr. Bush`s more subtle obeisance to the evangelical right is no longer enough. Puffed up with its electoral clout, the Christian right now wants politicians to genuflect openly.

The doctor who would be president is down on both knees. He`s happy to exploit religion by giving a video speech on a telecast next Sunday that will portray Democrats who block the president`s judicial nominations as being "against people of faith."

A flier for the Christian telecast, organized by the Family Research Council, shows a confused teenage boy with a Bible in one hand and a judge`s gavel in the other. The text reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

The born-again Tom DeLay has been fighting his ethical woes by acting like a martyr for some time. Dr. Frist, by contrast, was not known for playing the religious card before. But he is clearly willing to turn himself over, lock, stock and barrel, if it will help him marginalize such Christian-right faves as Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, and garner support from those who always vote because they see elections in terms of eternity.

Even Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Bible-Belt Republican, seemed surprised by the brazen move by Dr. Frist, the Senate majority leader. He told Newsweek: "Questioning a senator`s motives in that way is a very dangerous precedent."

And, of course, the Democrats are apoplectic. "I cannot imagine that God - with everything he has or she has to worry about - is going to take the time to debate the filibuster in heaven," Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois said.

As they toy with less lofty multiple-anchor formats, the networks may be more open to women. But at the Vatican and in the Christian right`s vanguard, we can be sure that the voice of God is not female.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Dangerous democracy

Imperial America won`t like the free Arabia that missionary America will have helped to spawn
David Hirst
Wednesday April 20, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1463725,00.ht…

Guardian
At last month`s anti-war conference in Cairo, Egyptian delegate Kamal Khalil excoriated President Mubarak`s regime over "torture, poverty, unemployment, corruption, tyranny and despotism" - then added that the "liberation of Jerusalem starts here with the liberation of the people in Cairo". This linkage of domestic reform with the external foe dramatised the quandary lying in wait for President Bush`s crusade for "freedom and democracy". God-given rights of all peoples are the panacea that will, among other things, end international terror and induce the Arabs to make their peace with Israel. So what, in this era of American-sponsored diplomacy and reconciliation, could this self-styled democrat possibly have meant by this reversion to the militant rhetoric of yesteryear?

The extent to which Bush is contributing to the winds of change now blowing across the world`s last monolithically tyrannical region is passionately debated by the Arabs, perplexingly confronted, as they feel themselves to be, by two Americas, the new missionary one of Bush`s second term and the old unrepentant superpower. The US as a promoter of democracy is a far from new idea. But the scope, fervour and lofty expectations Bush has invested in it are new. Yet, at the same time, never has imperial America, with which the missionary one is inextricably intertwined, been as rampant and detested as it is today.

For Bush didn`t embark on this radically interventionist, quasi-colonial phase of America`s relations with the Middle East only, or even mainly, to confer democracy on it. He did so for other reasons, too, that had far more to do with the traditional drive for strategic and economic dominance - as well as with an Israel whose influence on US policy has reached unprecedented levels. In fact, the rationale for Arab democracy comes partly from Israel itself, in the person of the rightwing zealot Natan Sharansky, whose thinking, says Bush, is "part of my presidential genes"; the thinking being that, since democracies are inherently peaceable, only a democratic Arabia will take Israel to its bosom.

This contradictory America feeds the tension between two broad camps into which the Arab world itself breaks down: on the one hand old-school nationalists and Islamists who in recent times have supplanted them in mass appeal, and on the other newly emergent democratic forces who blame post-independence nationalist regimes, in their despotism, for the region`s ills. As ever, the nationalists and Islamists give priority to the external problem, imperial America and Israel, while the democrats give it to the internal one, and to ways in which missionary America might be used in their reformist cause.

The more that imperial America inflames nationalist sentiment, the more it plays into the hands of regimes that appear to stand up to it, and the more difficult it is for democrats to work against them. And anyone can see that, after Iraq, Syria has become a key target of imperial America, perhaps all the more alluring because, as some in Washington say, it is the "low-hanging fruit" that, unlike Iraq, is harvestable by merely political and not military means. Lebanon`s "democratic uprising" furnished a great new opportunity to weaken or bring down the Ba`athist regime.

Naturally, the Ba`athists raise the nationalist banner in their own defence. But the more obviously home-grown and authentic - not just American-inspired - the momentum for democratic change becomes, the more nationalism, as a pretext for preserving the despotic existing order, falls away. Indeed, the democrats argue, nationalism versus democracy is a false antithesis, in that to be democratic - and seek to profit from something the US at least ostensibly wants too - is not to be anti-nationalist. On the contrary, said Shibli Mallat, a legal adviser to the Lebanese opposition, "democracy always serves the national interest more earnestly and effectively than despotism ever can. Just imagine the political authority with which Egypt, Lebanon or Syria will be able to oppose Israel`s occupation policies once we have democratic governments here!"

So, even if the first contested Iraqi elections in 50 years were missionary America`s doing, the main point was that, however flawed they were, most Iraqis took to them with the enthusiasm they did. True, it was for its own strategic reasons that the US leapt to Lebanon`s support. But that hardly impugned the credentials of a movement that, in one demonstration, put a quarter of the country`s population into Martyrs` Square in Beirut, or obscured the basic reason why Lebanon so threatens the Ba`athist regime, which is the potential domino effect inside Syria of its "people power". For could any Syrian fail to grasp that what the Lebanese were rising up against was the extension, on Lebanese soil, of what they themselves more drastically endure at home? Namely the oppressions of a once-revolutionary order that has lost its legitimacy as surely as the now-defunct Soviet-style "people`s republics" on which it was largely modelled, and whose nationalism has become little more than a rhetorical tool to suppress democracy.

N o one knows how Arab democratisation will proceed. In the latest UN-sponsored Arab Human Development Report, the Arab authors express the hope for a "historic, peaceful redistribution of power within Arab societies", but also the fear that if the people`s "understandable thirst to be rid of despots" goes unquenched, change will come in "chaotic upheavals". Either way, one thing is already clear: imperial America will not like the democratic Arabia that missionary America will have helped to spawn.

Already it is uneasy about the kind of Shia Muslims, Islamist-minded and Iranian-influenced, who, in the shape of prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and the United Iraqi Alliance, triumphed in the Iraqi elections. It will be even less pleased if Hamas does so well in coming elections that it demands to form the next Palestinian government. Secular modernists, the dissident intelligentsia and human rights activists are to the fore in demanding an end to the Syrian-backed "intelligence state" in Lebanon, saying "Enough!" to the electorally irremovable Mubarak dynasty in Egypt, and chipping away at the Ba`athist monopoly of power in Syria. But Islamists everywhere would be the first to profit from their success. Hizbullah would doubtless retain some special place in Lebanon`s confessional system. Egypt`s Muslim Brothers have now joined the pro-democracy demonstrations as the most popular and organised opposition force in the country. Last week their heavily repressed Syrian counterparts, also sensing that opportunity beckons, in effect told the Ba`athists: with America at the gates you either convene a "national congress of all political parties" that will set up "a democratic republic" or face your own destruction, and perhaps Syria`s too.

A democratic Arabia of this kind would soon pose a challenge to what the once American-supported despotic one left behind, with slogans like "liberating Jerusalem by liberating Cairo" leaving little doubt where that legacy would come under the heaviest strain. Americans and Israelis would soon find out what an occasional Israeli commentator, contradicting Sharansky, at least implicitly concedes: the Arabs` hostility to Israel never had much to do with their lack of democracy; much more with the fact that, in its treatment of the Palestinians, Israel remains far from democratic itself.

· David Hirst reported from the Middle East for the Guardian from 1963 to 2001

[e-mail]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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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/

http://www.juancole.com/2005_04_01_juancole_archive.html
Wednesday, April 20, 2005

20 Killed, 42 Wounded
US Troops Humiliate Member of Parliament

Guerrillas killed some 20 persons in Iraq on Tuesday and late Monday night, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. In the upscale Sunni Azamiyah district of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 4 National Guards and wounded 38 persons when he attacked a police recruitment center. Gunmen assassinated Baghdad University professor Fu`ad al-Bayati. In Khalidiyah west of Baghdad, guerrillas fired on National Guard members, killing 5 and wounding 4.

A tearful member of the Iraqi parliament, Fattah al-Shaikh, stood up before other MPs and told the story of how he was attacked and detained by US troops when he attempted to enter the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area near downtown Baghdad where parliament is held and the US embassy is situated. Wire services report that he said, `“I don’t speak English and so I said to the Iraqi translator with them, ‘Tell them that I am a member of parliament’, and he replied, ‘To hell with you, we are Americans.`" `

Al-Hayat reported that al-Shaikh, a member of the Muqtada al-Sadr bloc, said the US troops put their boots on his neck and handcuffed him. The Iraqi parliament was thrown into an uproar by the account, and demanded a US apology from the highest levels of government. Others demanded that the site of parliament meetings be changed. (This is not the first complaint by a parliamentarian of being manhandled).

Parliament speaker Hajim al-Hasani condemned the assault, saying that members of parliament are symbols of national honor and must be respected.

Parliament adjourned on hearing the news.



The incident will seem minor to most Americans and few will see this Reuters photograph reprinted from al-Hayat (which is not the one featured at the Reuters story on the incident on the Web). But such an incident is a serious affront to national honor, and Iraqi male politicians don`t often weep.

It should be remembered that someday not so far from now, the US will come to the Iraqi parliament for a status of forces agreement (SOFA), and Fattah al-Shaikh and his friend will vote on it.

Meanwhile back in Washington, the US Senate showed disdain for Bush`s attempt to keep the Iraq funding requests, now totaling over $200 billion, out of the budget deficit figures.

posted by Juan @ [url4/20/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/20-killed-42-wounded-us-troops.html[/url]

Outgoing Interior Minister Warns on Iran, Badr Corps

Falah al-Naqib, the interior minister in the expiring government of Iyad Allawi, warned Tuesday that melding the Shiite Badr Corps into the new Iraqi security forces would be a mistake. He also blamed Iranian intelligence for the rumors that Sunni guerrillas had taken over 100 Shiites hostage at Mada`in (a charge that is completely implausible, by the way).

Al-Naqib is a relic of the old Iraq. His father had been a high Baath official who broke with Saddam in the late 1970s and went to Scandinavia. A Sunni, Falah al-Naqib was brought in as interior minister by the ex-Baathist Iyad Allawi, a long-time CIA asset. The central officials of the Allawi government were secular ex-Baathists, many of whom sounded alarums about Iran.

In fact, Iran supported the recent elections and claims to have encouraged Iraqis to vote in them.

Al-Naqib said of the Badr Corps, "We are against multiplying security forces in Iraq. " He said that the entry of distinct units like the Badr Corps into the ministry of the interior would constitute a danger to the police force and other security agencies."

posted by Juan @ [url4/20/2005 06:18:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/outgoing-interior-minister-warns-on.html[/url]

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Der Terminator geht immer mehr zurück auf seine östereichischen Wurzeln.

SAN FRANCISCO
`Close the borders,` Schwarzenegger says
In talk to publishers, he urges increased federal enforcement
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/20/BAG3…
- Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urged federal officials to beef up enforcement and secure the state`s borders against illegal immigrants, saying Tuesday they must clean up a "lax situation" instead of "trying to run the other way."

"Close the borders. Close the borders in California, and all across Mexico and the United States," Schwarzenegger told hundreds of newspaper publishers at Newspaper Association of American convention the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.

"Because I think it is just unfair to have all of those people coming across, and to have the borders open the way it is," the California governor said. "We in California have to still finish the border. That is the key thing -- to have borders and to keep the law, enforce the law."

Margita Thompson, the governor`s press secretary, immediately explained that Schwarzenegger has long supported more border security and his statements to "close the border" did not mean to suggest that the governor -- himself an immigrant to the United States -- advocates an end to legal immigration.

Democrats were quick to react to the governor`s statement with outrage. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez issued a statement saying Schwarzenegger should "ratchet down this rhetoric and retreat from this narrow-minded approach to immigration."

Núñez argued that the idea reflects the approach of "political extremists, not rational policy-makers,`" and said that "even President Bush rejects the idea of a closed border with Mexico."

The governor`s statements were part of an address to newspaper executives, in which he stalwartly defended his proposed reform agenda, confidently joked about protesters who still dog his tracks, and even continued to tout his withdrawn pension reform ideas.

On illegal immigration, Schwarzenegger -- asked about solutions -- said that "It`s a national issue. There`s not much we can do here in California."

But he said he supported the idea "to look at all the proposals that are on the table" regarding guest workers, those who enter the country legally each year to work in industries such as agriculture and tourism.

"The Bush administration has talked about what we should do with the people that are undocumented and what we should do about guest workers programs, all of those things," the governor said. "This is a very important debate. It`s necessary that we solve the problems, rather than everyone, kind of, trying to run the other way because it`s such a hot issue."

But Maria Blanco, of the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, said the governor`s "pandering" rhetoric to anti-immigrant forces will make it harder for any compromise solution on such a divisive issue.

"He continues to shoot from the hip, which is really becoming a liability for him, This is another step to the right. Because of that, we`re really getting polarized again."

Blanco said Schwarzenegger`s tone Tuesday was far different from the respectful, positive way he praised immigrants when he sought office during the 2003 recall campaign.

"He will be guaranteed failure if he doesn`t take into account the contributions of immigrant laborers in California. These comments are going to get him into huge trouble with the Latino community and the Latino (legislative) caucus, and will only increase the polarization," she said.

At the publishers` gathering, the governor continued to include changes to public employee pension plans -- an idea he publicly withdrew a week ago -- as part of his agenda, along with redistricting, budget caps, and teacher tenure.

All of those components will require "political courage," he said, adding that he wants to get the work done on those changes this year because next year will be "a political year" in Sacramento.

But Schwarzenegger sidestepped questions about whether he will run for re- election next year, saying he is "focused" and working on immediate issues.

Schwarzenegger`s appearance, which was not announced in advance, drew about 100 protesters -- mostly nurses, teachers and state workers -- to the Fairmont to protest his reform agenda.

"We made a promise we`re going to follow him everywhere he goes ... because the governor is doing everything he wasn`t elected to do," said Ruben Garcia, a field representative for the Service Employees International Union Local 790, one of those leading chants in front of the hotel. "He doesn`t go anywhere just to talk to real people ... he`s a total actor governor."

But inside, the governor appeared in a buoyant mood and even joked about the protesters outside.

"They always think they`re going to intimidate me," he told the newspaper publishers. "They have no knowledge of what I`m used to when it comes to protesting. How about in 1986, when I told the Kennedys in Hyannis Port I was marrying Maria? Those were protests, I tell you."

E-mail Carla Marinucci at [e-mail].

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/20/B…
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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14 Thoughts For The New Pope
Condoms. Female priests. Stop gay bashing. And dammit, do something about Christian rock
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

Click to View OK, first things first.

They say you`re a hard-line conservative, new pope Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Benedict XVI) of Germany. Very old school and drab, a real lover of repressive, bitter, orthodox doctrine. No fun at parties. Catholic in chains. What glorious times of joy and progress the church is in for, millions now say, dejected sarcasm dripping from their once-hopeful mouths.

See, most spiritually progressive peoples the world over were sort of hoping for a new pope who would recognize this as a historic opportunity, an unprecedented moment for the church to finally get with the times, modernize, shake off the dust and roll some bones and pry open some of those old dungeon doors and bring in some goddamn light.

You know what we wanted? More sex. Love. Good TV. Gender freedom. Better wine. Less sneering doctrine and homophobia and sexism and more fun with condoms and music and spiritual joy. But, instead, we got you.

So then, before you venture forth on your ostensible path of increasingly bitter conservative dogma, Benedict, you need to be reminded. Right now. Before it`s too late. Is it already too late?

Here, then, 14 random thoughts and ideas, all for you, Benedict, on the off-off chance you`re open to such things. Which of course, you`re probably not. But trust me here, this is what we were hoping for. And you need to hear it.

1) You read it right: Endorse condoms. Crazy, isn`t it? But this is what millions were hoping for. Condoms and birth control and finally allow your miserable, repressed priests to get married and have sex so as to avoid mental breakdown and spiritual angst and gross pedophilic urges. Hold to the Old Ways on this topic, Benedict, and you`ll simply become even more archaic and silly and disrespected to the point where no one of the independent-minded and especially female persuasion anywhere in the world will have any respect for what you stand for. I am so not kidding.

2) Enough with the gay bashing. I know, seems almost quaint, given your orthodoxy. But haven`t we had enough of calling gay marriage part of the "ideology of evil" that is insidiously threatening society, as your predecessor did? Sure, he was "the people`s pope." But if those people happened to know a thing or two about interior design and good shoes and where to buy the best lubricant to go with their Mazda Miatas, he was suddenly like Karl Rove at the Vagina Monologues. Which is to say: abusive and mean and more than a little disrespectful. And who wants to be like that?

3) Let`s shift gears. Let`s get philosophical, Benedict. Sounds like you could use some new philosophy. If Buddha and Allah and Jesus were playing blackjack and Satan was dealing and had a six showing, who would be most likely to double down? Have you ever been to Vegas, Benedict? Is it possible to know the heights of grace without knowing the depths of happy sticky sin? In other words: If you don`t see God after spending two hours and about 500 bucks at the Palomino, does it mean you`re not tipping enough? These are the things you should know.

4) You are multilingual. They say "The Da Vinci Code" has been translated into 40 languages, and you can probably read about nine of them. I know, the book`s basically a clever pile of religious conspiratorial fantasy. Or is it? That is, everyone knows the church has stolen and repressed and rewritten the world`s (deeply feminine) religious history a thousand times over, as it sees fit. Doesn`t that make you a little uneasy? Sad? Hell, the book`s a best seller in your own home country. And that creepy conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei has a vested interest in your bitter ideology. Does that make you sleep funny at night? Put another way, were you as disappointed as the rest of us when you heard Tom Hanks was going to play Robert Langdon? Weren`t you expecting someone a little more, oh I don`t know, interesting? Rugged? Jeremy Irons? Liam Neeson, maybe?

5) Which reminds me: Pope, go see "Kinsey." Pronto. You could really learn something about sex and love and raw human heat. Plus, Laura Linney. Yum.

6) Pope, why is Christian music still so patently awful? Do you know? Oh, I know, there`s all these quasi-hip new Christian rock bands and drug- and alcohol- and debauchery- and nipple-clamp-free Christian rock festivals drawing tens of thousands of completely sanitized teens, and sure the songs no longer have to mention Jesus or the word savior, or Lord, or "Don`t touch my genitals" in the lyrics like, five hundred times to make it clear they don`t have much fun in life, but still. Christian rock is an oxymoron, Benedict. Forever and always.

7) A related confession: I recently found myself sampling snippets of the new Kristin Chenowith album on iTMS, mostly because she`s that cute little thing from "The West Wing" and she has that adorable mouse-on-helium voice and I wanted to see what she sang about and oh sweet Jesus this toxic CD totally decimates all thoughts of her cute likeability, and its numbing saccharine Jesus adoration makes you gag and sigh and wish she would discover the joys of a good Hitachi Magic Wand and a gallon of premium vodka. What is wrong with her? Why is music like this?

8) You know who Jesus would have liked? Pearl Jam. Nick Drake. Maybe some classic Deep Purple (for the badass organ). You know it`s true.

9) Speaking of "The West Wing," we all know it`s just not the same without lots of Martin Sheen and if they go for one more season you know it`s gonna be all about Alan Alda, which isn`t all that bad, I suppose, and could be far worse, but hey how cool would it have been if we had had Jimmy Smits for president?

10) And, by the way, Martin Sheen`s President Bartlet is a devout Catholic, and still a rampant pro-choice liberal. Isn`t that great? You don`t have to be so unhappy and conservative, Joe. Hey, speaking of Sheens, whatever happened to Emilio Estevez? Oh wait, I know. Two words: Mighty Ducks. Look for him on "The Surreal Life 3" in 2006.

11) Do you get pay-per-view in the Vatican? You do? Order "Repo Man." Now, that`s good Emilio. Still weird. Still a classic. Now, Harry Dean Stanton, he would`ve made a great president. Remember him as the Apostle Paul in "The Last Temptation of Christ," a film so ridiculously better than "Passion of the Christ" it makes me scream? Can you do something about my sadness, pope? Can you slap Mel Gibson? Alas, I fear you cannot.

12) True, some kudos go JPII`s way for opposing the death penalty and advocating human rights and opposing communism and for sort of mildly seeming to oppose BushCo`s insidious little war, but man, have you got a long, long way to go. Hell, it took forever for JPII to barely lift a finger on the still rampant, churchwide pedophilia scandal. Remember these words? Cocaine. Sodomy. Sex with teenage girls. Booze. Molestation. Sex as a means to access God. Pot. Rampant homosexuality. Damn, pope, the luscious Burning Man festival has nothing on the Boston Archdiocese. Remember? Because you really, really need to. After all, Boston is just the first.

13) And now, women. Ratz, your church has bashed the divine feminine for so long, it`s sad and frightening. But of course you know the Goddess is making a comeback, yes? Have you taken note? John Paul did, and he was scared, scared, scared. Because man, is She pissed. Wouldn`t you be? The Goddess is everywhere: women`s rights, female Episcopal priests, wicked-smart scholars, pop culture icons, entire monologues spoken by irate and needy and blasphemous vaginas. Smack her down again at your peril, pope. Wake up and smell the Shakti. Translation: Female priests. Now. Vatican III? You know it`s time.

14) And finally, consider this: branding. It`s the latest thing. Everyone`s doing it. All the old sports stadiums, buildings, events. Why not you? Why not the pope? Hell, you`re planning on taking the church down a much stricter road of drab ideology than JPII ever dreamed, so you`re as much an edifice, an aging artifact, as anything. Just think of it. You could be the Advil pope. 3Com pope. Google pope. And now, here`s the pope, brought to you by the new Ford F-150 Extended Cab XLT. Imagine. Your robes could be covered in patches and silly logos, like a NASCAR driver. Mopar pope. Midas Muffler pope. Penzoil pope. The mind reels.

Sorry, that one`s a little silly. But do you see? See how easy it is to get distracted? How easy it is to ignore you and deem you totally insignificant in the current Dark Age/Imminent Rebirth of the individual self-defined dogma-free spirit?

This, then, was to be your biggest challenge. To make yourself relevant again, make yourself known. To make open-hearted and sex-positive and choice-happy and pantheistic changes to your dusty dying church that make the world sit up and take notice and applaud.

Is it still possible? Is there still a glimmer of hope that you might choose to buck dour church tradition and kick down the doors and throw open the stained-glass windows and remake yourself as modern, as inclusive, as the Pope That Changed Everything? Because right now, the world has this sad, sinking feeling again. All signs point to more of the same as the last bitter and bilious 2,000 years, if not even worse. All signs point to more repression, homophobia, intolerance, denial, insularity, guilt like a weapon.

But hey, maybe I have you all wrong. Maybe there`s more to you than meets the skeptical, untrusting eye. Are you willing to at least take a peek? Consider a small dose of the new? See how the other half lives? Very doubtful. But at this point, the world can only hope.


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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Apr 21, 2005

THE ROVING EYE
The shadow Iraqi government
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD21Ak02.html

The ideal White House/Pentagon script for Iraq calls for a pro-American government, total control of at least 12% of the world`s known oil reserves and 14 military bases to make it happen. Reality has been churning up other ideas.

Whenever there is a so-called "transfer of power" in Mesopotamia, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, like clockwork, steps on a plane to Baghdad. On his latest trip designed to issue orders for the new, supposedly sovereign Iraqi government, Rumsfeld, in a splendid Freudian slip, let it be known on the record the US "does not have an exit strategy" in Iraq: only a "victory strategy". This is code for "we`re not going anywhere".

Reality had intervened two days before Rumsfeld arrived, when about 300,000 Shi`ite nationalists occupied the same Firdaws Square of "liberation day", April 9, 2003, but this time with no Saddam-toppling photo-op intent. Their messages were clear: out with the occupation; and Bush equals Saddam Hussein.

By organizing this huge, Shi`ite mass protest - the largest popular demonstration in Iraq since 1958 - young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was not just occupying a political vaccum: he was daring the new prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari of the Da`wa Party - who appeals to the same Shi`ite constituency - to reveal his true colors.

Muqtada and his thousands were saying: you cannot pose as "sovereign" and sanction the occupation at the same time. The new Iraqi president, reconstructed Kurdish warlord Jalal Talabani, also revealed his true colors: he said he wanted the American military to stay. Talabani has a history of shady deals with everyone and his neighbor - Israel, the Shah of Iran, Turkey, Britain, the US - and his tug-of-war with rival warlord Masoud Barzani has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds.

To add fuel to the fire, Talabani now is also in favor of using Kurdish peshmerga and assorted Shi`ite militias to fight the Sunni Arab resistance - a certified recipe for civil war: this could begin the day the peshmerga are sent to guard Kirkuk`s oil fields.

The Sadrists - now constituted as a very organized, openly anti-sectarian and anti-occupation movement - have learned a political thing or two after the 2004 face-to-face between Muqtada and the Pentagon. They have 23 seats in the new National Assembly. In the elections in Basra - the Shi`ite-dominated southern city - they got only 12 of 41 city council seats. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) won 20. But the Sadrists managed to form a coalition and are now actually in control in Basra. The Sadrists` Mehdi Army is even more powerful than the SCIRI`s Badr Brigades. Without Mehdi Army interventions, the Badr Brigades would have taken over every government institution in the south. The Badr Brigades` thuggish approach has led many Shi`ites to give at least the benefit of the doubt to the Mehdi Army. The whole Shi`ite south around Basra - provincial councils, the police, the administrative bureaucracy - is controlled by Shi`ite militias.

Muqtada the religious outsider and the Sadrists are cleverly placing Jaafari and his supporters - the powerful Najaf Shi`ite clergy - in an intolerable position. In this epic battle between Muqtada and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Sadrists all-out campaign for the end of the occupation is touching a raw nerve: popular opinion is exasperated with the haggling and corruption in Baghdad; with the snail`s pace of the political process; and most of all with the abominable conditions of everyday life.

Don`t touch our thugs
According to Washington`s script, progressive invisibility of the occupying force means increasing repression exercised by Iraqi forces. This means the return - in full force - of Saddam`s Mukhabarat agents, now posing as agents of the new Iraqi security and intelligence services. Seemingly, that is the way the disenfranchised Muqtada-regimented masses see it: Bush equals Saddam because the same people who repressed us are back. Not to mention that everyone painfully remembers how George Bush senior did nothing to prevent Saddam from smashing the Shi`ite uprising at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. The masses correctly interpreted the meaning of Rumsfeld`s "message" to the Shi`ite al-Jafaari: don`t touch the defense and interior ministries, ie, don`t touch our old Mukhabarat allies and counterinsurgency experts.

Not featured in the elaborate Pentagon plans to regiment Mukhabarat agents is that these same Sunni, Saddam-era operatives may not be exactly inclined to fight the Sunni resistance. To complicate the equation, 70% of the US-trained Iraqi security forces are former Ba`athists. The top commando, with 10,000 operatives, is almost 100% composed of former Saddam army officers. If Jaafari`s government purges them, it`s the end of the American dream of having Iraqis doing the dirty jobs.

All the explosive issues - federalism, who gets Kirkuk, the fate of the oil industry - which translated into nine weeks of turbulence before a president, two vice presidents and a prime minister were appointed - are now back into the negotiations over a new constitution. People in Baghdad knows it`s unrealistic to expect a draft of the new constitution in the course of the next four months, according to the American-imposed calendar.

Ominous signs abound. Sunni tribal sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer, one of the two vice presidents, is furious that the Shi`ites and Kurds have decided to give only four ministries to Sunni Arabs, instead of the original six. Even moderate Sunnis now accuse Shi`ites and Kurds of marginalizing what we have termed the Sinn Fein stance of the Sunni Arab resistance.

Moreover, the story playing in the global media for days, according to which the Wahhabi hardcore faction of the Sunni resistance had kidnapped up to 150 Shi`ites in Madaen, south of Baghdad, is an elaborate hoax - and this after former Central Intelligence Agency asset and outgoing prime minister Iyad Allawi quickly described the alleged hostage situation as "a dirty atrocity". The story was apparently planted by the SCIRI. Abdul Salam al-Qubaisi of the powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, said: "This was an excuse to produce a small-scale Fallujah." Iraqis tend to agree that intimations of civil war only benefit one player: the occupying power.

Allawi - the Americans` man, as he is known in Baghdad - also has his reasons to be furious. He badly wanted the Interior Ministry, so he could organize the Mukhabarat-led espionage and overall repression in conjunction with the Green Zone. The Shi`ites of SCIRI came up with a resolute "no". The next interior minister may well be Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Brigades. To say that Amiri is a bete noire of choice in Rumsfeld`s vast collection would be an understatement.

It is well known that the Badr Brigades - the paramilitary wing of SCIRI, recently renamed Badr Organization - were trained in exile by Iran`s Revolutionary Guards. That makes them extremely suspicious to all Sunni Arabs. So just like in Afghanistan, private militias (peshmergas, Badr Brigades) in Iraq are fusing into the government`s army and police, competing with small militias of former Ba`athist friends of Allawi armed with Pakistani weapons and following the American agenda. Adding to this lethal cocktail, the hardcore Wahhabis, Abu Musab Zarqawi-style, who get their kicks killing Shi`ites, the overall picture spells chaos. Once again, in the eyes of a majority of Iraqis, this benefits only one player: the occupying power.

Highway to hell
The occupation is worse than an economic tsunami: it managed to plunge Iraq - once a beacon of development in the Arab world - into Sub-Saharan poverty. There`s less electricity each day than in 2003 or even 2004. Without electricity, the whole country is paralyzed: nothing - communications, industry, the healthcare system, the educational system - works properly. All water plants "reconstructed" by Bechtel and co are breaking down. With weekly, sometimes daily attacks on pipelines, oil production is pitiful, still inferior to Saddam-era, pre-war levels. Sixty percent of the total population survives on food stamps.

Baghdad is a hellish labyrinth of concrete walls and barbed wire, where a BMW is "the kidnappers` car", 4X4s are favored by candidates for suicide attacks and there`s no safe place to hide. Reuters staff survive barricaded behind sandbags and concrete walls; the only one able to venture out to collect images by motorbike is Abu Ali, a kind of local hero. Gas lines are endless. The resistance is relentless. The al-Batawiyyin district has become a Dantesque hell of criminal gangs, drug trafficking, prostitution and trafficking of human organs. Western Iraq is totally out of US control. Mosul is infiltrated by the Iraqi resistance. Ramadi, the resistance capital of the Sunni triangle, is controlled by - who else - the resistance.

Made in the shade
There may be no funds for rebuilding American-bombed Iraqi infrastructure, but US$4.5 billion promptly found its way to Halliburton`s subsidiary KBR for the construction and maintenance of the 14 "enduring camps" or permanent military bases. The most notorious of these may be Camp Victory North, a sprawling complex attached to Baghdad (former Saddam) International Airport. Camp Victory is a KBR-built, bungalow-with-air-con American city for 14,000, complete with Burger King and gym. When finished, it will be twice the size of giant Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, the base attached to surveillance of oil pipelines in the Balkans.

American economist Jeremy Rifkin has calculated the number of years known world oil reserves would last at current rates of consumption and extraction. In the US it would be only 10 years. By contrast, in Iran it would be 53 years; in Saudi Arabia 55; in the United Arab Emirates 75; in Kuwait 116; and in Iraq no less than 526 years. That says it all about controlling oil reserves in the Middle East.

Nothing gets done in Iraq without Green Zone approval, ie the all-powerful American Embassy. The overwhelming majority of Sunnis as well as many disgruntled Shi`ites who sympathize with the Sadrists know the Green Zone would never tolerate new Iraqi ministers not pliable to the White House/Pentagon military/corporate agenda for Iraq.

The White House/Pentagon, just in case, can count on a number of key Trojan Horses. Antonia Juhasz, who was project director at the International Forum on Globalization for many years and is currently writing a book about corporate greed in Iraq, has been one of the very few voices who pointed out the key role of the ultimate Trojan Horse - Abdel Mahdi, one of the two new Iraqi vice presidents and former finance minister in the Allawi interim government.

Mahdi was the man who carried out the shock therapy conceived by former American proconsul L Paul Bremer to totally deregulate the Iraqi economy. Last December, in a press conference in Washington, Mahdi stressed that a new Iraqi oil law would be "very good" for the American oil majors (Iraq`s oil was fully nationalized in 1972). Mahdi will keep on pushing for full privatization of the Iraqi oil industry - a prospect that makes the bulk of the Iraqi population recoil in horror. The myriad laws passed by Bremer remain in effect and can only be amended by a three-quarters vote in the new National Assembly. There`s ongoing, serious, widespread speculation in Iraq that the SCIRI may have made a deal with Washington: we get political power, you get control of our oil industry.

The only way Jaafari`s transitional government can garner any measure of popular credibility is to demand a firm deadline for total American withdrawal. This is what the Shi`ite masses voted for. Whatever the scale of mass protests though, Rumsfeld remains unfazed: he wants Saddam`s Mukhabarat back in action and he wants the 14 military bases.

The White House/Pentagon/Green Zone axis wants "shock therapy", deregulation, wide-ranging privatization, control of Iraqi natural resources, Iraq reduced to a deregulated capitalist colony with all or most government properties and services controlled by American multinationals and all assets held by the foreign lending institutions that own the majority shares of the Iraqi National Bank. People who disagree may hit the streets and scream. So much for Iraqi "democracy". Long live the shadow Iraqi government.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Latest Fatality: Apr 19, 2005
Apr.05: 28

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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______________Full Apologies To Fellini.
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Is John Bolton Going Down?
An amazing afternoon at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2117028/
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, April 19, 2005, at 3:46 PM PT

Could it be that John Bolton is about to go down?

Something amazing happened at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this afternoon. In nearly 30 years of watching Congress, off and on, I can`t remember anything quite like it.

Bolton, the most dreadfully ill-qualified candidate ever to be nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has nonetheless been an odds-on favorite to be confirmed because the committee enjoys a Republican majority and because George W. Bush`s White House has a knack for iron party discipline.

But that majority is only 10-8, and it`s been the Democrats` hope to turn just one of those Republicans. That would turn the vote to a 9-9 tie, which would prevent the nomination from going to the floor (where, given the Republicans` vaster majority, he would win easily).

The Democrats and assorted lobbyists have been working on two of the panel`s fairly moderate Republicans, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. But in recent days, both have said they were leaning toward voting in Bolton`s favor. It seemed all over.

A vote was scheduled for this afternoon. The panel`s Democrats advanced some delaying maneuvers. The Republican chairman, Richard Lugar of Indiana, swiftly put them down. The vote looked imminent.

Then, at about 4:30 p.m., out of nowhere, George Voinovich, a Republican from Ohio, said that he hasn`t attended any of the hearings on Bolton (he claimed to be busy with something or other) but, based on charges that he had just heard today, he would not "feel comfortable" voting Bolton out of committee.

The audio on C-SPAN 2 isn`t so great, but the room seemed to go quiet for a few seconds, then to erupt with buzz. Chafee nervously asked if Lugar still intended to stage a vote, given what Voinovich had just said. Sure, Lugar replied, let`s vote. The Republican half of the room started shaking its collective head. Hagel had intoned, a few minutes earlier, that he`d vote for Bolton in committee but might not on the floor (as if that matters, given the Republicans` healthy margin there). Now he shifted. At the start of the session, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D–Conn., had suggested postponing the vote in order to investigate a recent spate of allegations about Bolton. That was when Dodd`s side looked like it was about to lose; Lugar shut the motion down. But now Hagel and a few other Republicans said, ahem, maybe we need to take some time and look into these matters after all.

Lugar and Joseph Biden of Delaware, the committee`s ranking Democrat, reached an accord. The Democratic and Republican staff members, working together, will investigate the new charges, calling more witnesses for interviews. The senators will go on recess. When they come back, they`ll look at the probe`s results. Maybe they`ll call Bolton back for another hearing, perhaps to defend himself. Then they`ll vote. In short, the vote is delayed by at least a couple of weeks. Meeting adjourned.

The White House now faces a question: Is it time to pull the rug out from under this nuisance named John Bolton? Bush is usually, by nature, opposed to giving in under this sort of pressure. Here, though, he may have no choice.

The new allegations (click here for some details) are terrible in two senses. First, they make Bolton look like a thin-skinned creep who tolerates no disagreement from anyone around him. This is not an ideal quality for a diplomat, but by itself it probably wouldn`t be enough to put off Bush. Everyone who knows Bolton has known this about him from the beginning.

The second factor is the key. An extended investigation can only make things worse. Every time there`s been a delay, more and more bad stuff has come out about this guy; more and more officials, present and former, have mustered the courage to come forth and tell more. Beyond that, Bolton faces possible charges of perjury. In his day of hearings earlier this month, he made statements to the committee—under oath—that, given what has been learned since, can only be called lies. If he goes back to the committee two weeks from now, he will be asked about those statements; they will be contrasted with statements, also made under oath, by a half-dozen other people. How do you reconcile these contradictions, Mr. Secretary? The thing is, he can`t.

There`s a third factor. Almost nobody around President Bush likes Bolton. That "almost" is a big qualifier. The guy who does like Bolton is Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney put him up for this job, and what Cheney wants usually goes. But Cheney wanted Bolton to have a bigger job, deputy secretary of state. And the person who blocked that promotion was Condoleezza Rice, who was about to be confirmed as secretary of state and didn`t want her No. 2 to be someone who`d report behind her back to Cheney. Rice has publicly supported Bolton, but with some body language that can be read as a caveat. Usually, nominees for U.N. ambassador are introduced to the press by the president. Bolton was introduced by Rice. It was as if she were saying, "This guy will be under my thumb." Some insiders said to themselves that day, "Good luck." One of the charges that has since come out is that, during Bush`s first term, when Bolton was undersecretary of state for arms control (a position he still holds), he held on to documents about Iran that were meant to be passed up to Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, then the secretary and deputy secretary of state. It has been reported that, as a result, Rice now keeps Bolton out of the loop. It`s a reasonable inference that she—and many other officials at Foggy Bottom—would be relieved if Bolton`s nomination were somehow withdrawn.

So, President Bush must choose between his two most trusted advisers, Cheney and Rice. Cheney is a fairly cold-blooded politico. Maybe even he will realize that the cause is no longer worth saving. Bolton has caused a mess, and it can only get messier. The Democrats might beat him in the Senate, and once they win one contest they will only get more aggressive on other, more important contests to come. "It`s not personal, John, it`s business," Cheney might say, as he stretches the cord and wraps it around Bolton`s neck (metaphorically, of course).

It`s a good guess that one of two things is going to happen in the coming days and weeks: Either Bolton goes down—or we start learning a lot of unpleasant things about Sen. George Voinovich.

The allegations were made by at least seven officials who have been interviewed by the committee staff (and leaked or otherwise provided to the press) as well as, in a public hearing, by Carl Ford, a conservative Republican and career intelligence official who, until recently, was assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. They boil down to these: On at least five occasions, Bolton intimidated and tried to get fired intelligence analysts at the State Department and the CIA who disagreed with his views. A former official with the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a letter to the committee stating that during one run-in with Bolton, while she was working on projects in Kyrgyzstan, he harassed her in a Moscow hotel lobby, banged on her door, then went to Kyrgyzstan and spread lies about her—saying she was being investigated for absconding with government funds—that nearly derailed her work. Several officials have claimed, though anonymously for now, that Bolton blocked official documents about Iran from moving up the chain of command to Colin Powell.

During his hearings, Bolton was asked about some of these matters. He said that he`d asked for the reassignment of one intelligence analyst not because of a dispute over substance but because the analyst had gone behind his back. This claim has been thoroughly rebutted by several witnesses, who affirm that the dispute was over substantive intelligence analysis. A small but telling lie: When Biden asked Bolton whether he personally drove out to CIA headquarters to pressure one high-ranking official to fire the national intelligence officer for Latin American affairs, Bolton said that he`d gone there mainly to ask about intelligence procedures and that he drove there on his way home from work—it was no special trip. Biden said today that he`d since received Bolton`s logs for that day. It turned out he made the trip in the morning, then came back to the State Department for a full day`s work.

And there`s more and more to come.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at [e-mail].

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2117028/

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The Girl Blogger from Iraq
By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet
Posted on April 20, 2005, Printed on April 20, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21782/
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[urlBaghdad Burning,Riverbend]http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/[/url]
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On Aug. 17, 2003, Riverbend posted the first entry of her blog, where she introduced herself to her readers: "I`m female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That`s all you need to know. It`s all that matters these days anyway."

Nearly two years later, the readers of “Baghdad Burning” know a whole lot more – both about Riverbend and Iraq. We now know that she has not just survived the war, but prevailed over its horrors, emerging from its ruins as a passionate advocate for her people and an incisive critic of the occupation. Even the most casual visitor to her site cannot fail to be impressed by her insight into the tragic, onerous, and sometimes absurd reality of everyday life in Iraq. As Village Voice correspondent James Ridgeway notes in the introduction to her new book -- an eponymously named collection of her blog entries -- "this anonymous `girl blog` has made the war and occupation real in terms that no professional journalist could hope to achieve."

She responded to AlterNet`s questions via e-mail from her home in Baghdad.

Lakshmi Chaudhry: Let`s start with the obvious: why did you start writing a blog?

The first person to encourage me to write a blog was Salam Pax of "Where is Raed?." After the war he suggested I should start my own blog as I could write in English and after thinking about it for a while, I eventually did. I liked the idea of blogging because I was very frustrated with the Western media for telling only half the story in Iraq. No one seemed to know what was going on inside of the country -- all the damage and horror Iraqis were facing on a daily basis.

In addition to this, blogging proved to be therapeutic. It was a way to vent fears and anger that I couldn`t really express in front of family and friends because it was always necessary to stay strong and, to some extent, positive.

Reading your blog entries, it`s obvious that a significant portion of your audience is not Iraqi. Was this your original intention or did it just turn out that way?

I don`t think I wrote the blog for any particular audience. I simply wanted to express my emotions and thoughts and I wasn`t sure who would read it. I never expected many Iraqis inside of Iraq to read it because Iraqis are far too busy coping with daily realities to read blogs or even write them. I liked blogging in English because it`s a language people in many different countries understand. I would have been preaching to the choir if I blogged in Arabic.

What role does the blog play in your life today, especially given its immense success?

The blog for a while became a part of my daily life. I began seeing things from a blogging point of view in many situations and wondering what the readers would think if they could do or see what I was currently doing or seeing! My family is sometimes curious about it but more often than not, they worry about my safety. I try to make time for reading and answering emails and sometimes blogging, but it all depends on the electricity/phone situation.

One of the most powerful aspects of your writing is your ability to convey how much all that is horrifying in the human experience -- death, violence, terror -- has become a part of an Iraqi`s everyday life. Could you talk about the ways the experience of war and occupation has changed you? First, as a human being, i.e. how you you see yourself, and secondly in terms of your politics, i.e. how you see the world.

I think the occupation and war has made me more aware of the world. I think the average Iraqi has begun to look differently at certain world situations -- for example the tsunami. Before, it would have been difficult to empathize with the thousands of people who were living in fear and without the basic necessities. Now, seeing them without homes and running water and schools, etc. reminds us of our own refugees who come from cities and villages being bombed or evacuated.

Personally, I think it has hardened me in some aspects. We`re accustomed now to hearing explosions and sirens. It becomes less frightening and shocking with time.

It has helped me realize that the many people all over the world (but especially in the U.S. and UK) are quite naive and uninformed. It was disturbing to see their emails making claims that simply weren`t true. For example, the Western perception of women in Iraq prior to the war. Until I began writing the blog, I had no idea that many Americans thought Iraqi women were like Afghani women or Saudi women. I had no idea that many Americans thought their military had brought computers and internet into Iraq. It has been disturbing and frustrating to know that so many people who supported the war supported it for the wrongest reasons.

The blog has also helped me realize that many people support certain issues not from certain beliefs but because they support a certain party or political group. This was made especially apparent after the whole WMD fiasco. It always amazes me how chameleon-like many Bush supporters are -- how they go smoothly from WMDs and protecting America to human rights and protecting Iraqis to terrorism and protecting the whole Middle East.

There is an important debate going on within antiwar advocates in the United States about our goals should be as a movement -- immediate withdrawal, an orderly transition to an Iraqi or U.N.-controlled authority, full reparations etc. What would you say to the anti-war movement here in America?

My advice to antiwar advocates is to push for a timetable for withdrawal. I think that at this point it`s vital that the U.S. make it perfectly clear that eventually, there will be withdrawal from the country. I think it`s also important for Americans to push for no permanent military bases in Iraq. Iraqis fear that even if the Americans leave, they will want to leave behind permanent bases. It is important that these issues be addressed clearly by policy makers in America.

As for reparations and worry about Iraqis and the infrastructure -- I have a lot of hope in Iraqis, especially after we reconstructed the country after the war of `91. I think that once we have security and independence, it will be easier to rebuild the country.

There is a lot of disagreement as to what the recent elections meant to the average Iraqi. Do you see it as a sign of hope or just an empty exercise in perception management?

I think elections are a nice concept. They give the image of democracy, but what we currently have on the ground is far from democracy. The problem is that the people who were running in the elections were the same people being rotated for positions during the first year of the occupation. It was just a process of choosing the best of a bad bunch.

You have written about the threat to women`s rights from Islamic fundamentalists. Do you worry that those rights will be threatened even in a democratic Iraq -- especially if religious parties gain power? Or do you think the Western media overplays the religious ideology of the Shiite parties?

The problem right now isn`t so much with laws as it is the complete lack of security, and the fact that attacks against women by common criminals or fundamentalists are not being taken seriously. The new government has many religiously inclined Shia who openly support the Iranian model of government. Asking women to cover up or quit work or act properly is not seen so much as an illegal act as it is a religious one to many of these people currently in power.

I`m afraid we`ll be relegated to living in a situation where no precise laws are made to curb women`s rights, but where the lack of security and behind the curtains support of fundamentalist groups will result in a situation Iraqi women haven`t seen for almost half a century.

Finally, what are your hopes for the future -- both for your nation and in your own life?

My hopes for the future are like those of millions of Iraqis. I hope for a peaceful, independent, secure country. I also hope for prosperity for the millions of Iraqis who certainly deserve it after all these hardships. I think if Iraq can have the above, there`ll be nothing lacking in my life personally.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21782/

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Marla Ruzicka ist vor einigen Tagen im Irak getötet worden.
Siehe auch [urlAid worker uncovered America`s secret tally of Iraqi civilian deaths]http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=631173[/url]


Aid worker`s words — just a week before she was killed
By Marla Ruzicka
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-04-18-r…

BAGHDAD — The writer, a 28-year-old humanitarian aid worker from California, was killed Saturday in Baghdad when a suicide bomber aiming for a convoy of contractors pulled alongside her vehicle and detonated his explosives. Her driver also died. She filed this piece from Baghdad a week before her death. The facts cited in it have been reported elsewhere as a matter of public record. However, estimates of the number of civilian deaths in Iraq vary widely. Media reports put the number between 17,000 and 20,000 people.

In my two years in Iraq, the one question I am asked the most is: "How many Iraqi civilians have been killed by American forces?" The American public has a right to know how many Iraqis have lost their lives since the start of the war and as hostilities continue.

In a news conference at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in March 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks said, "We don`t do body counts." His words outraged the Arab world and damaged the U.S. claim that its forces go to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties.

During the Iraq war, as U.S. troops pushed toward Baghdad, counting civilian casualties was not a priority for the military. However, since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations over and the U.S. military moved into a phase referred to as "stability operations," most units began to keep track of Iraqi civilians killed at checkpoints or during foot patrols by U.S. soldiers.

Here in Baghdad, a brigadier general commander explained to me that it is standard operating procedure for U.S. troops to file a spot report when they shoot a non-combatant. It is in the military`s interest to release these statistics.

Recently, I obtained statistics on civilian casualties from a high-ranking U.S. military official. The numbers were for Baghdad only, for a short period, during a relatively quiet time. Other hot spots, such as the Ramadi and Mosul areas, could prove worse. The statistics showed that 29 civilians were killed by small-arms fire during firefights between U.S. troops and insurgents between Feb. 28 and April 5 — four times the number of Iraqi police killed in the same period. It is not clear whether the bullets that killed these civilians were fired by U.S. troops or insurgents.

A good place to search for Iraqi civilian death counts is the Iraqi Assistance Center in Baghdad and the General Information Centers set up by the U.S. military across Iraq. Iraqis who have been harmed by Americans have the right to file claims for compensation at these locations, and some claims have been paid. But others have been denied, even when the U.S. forces were in the wrong.

The Marines have also been paying compensation in Fallujah and Najaf. These data serve as a good barometer of the civilian costs of battle in both cities.

These statistics demonstrate that the U.S. military can and does track civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognize they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimize mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy. The military should also want to release this information for the purposes of comparison with reports such as the Lancet study published late last year. It suggested that since the U.S.-led invasion there had been 100,000 deaths in Iraq.

A further step should be taken. In my dealings with U.S. military officials here, they have shown regret and remorse for the deaths and injuries of civilians. Systematically recording and publicly releasing civilian casualty numbers would assist in helping the victims who survive to piece their lives back together.

A number is important not only to quantify the cost of war, but as a reminder of those whose dreams will never be realized in a free and democratic Iraq.

Marla Ruzicka was founder of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. In 2003, she organized surveyors across Iraq to document civilian casualties. Before that, she managed a similar project in Afghanistan that helped to secure assistance from the U.S. government for civilian victims.



Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-04-18-r…

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Tomgram:
Andrew Bacevich on the New American Militarism
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2334

We are now in an America where it`s a commonplace for our President, wearing a "jacket with ARMY printed over his heart and `Commander in Chief` printed on his right front," to address vast assemblages of American troops on the virtues of bringing democracy to foreign lands at the point of a missile. As Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post puts it: "Increasingly, the president uses speeches to troops to praise American ideals and send a signal to other nations the administration is targeting for democratic change."

As it happens, the Bush administration has other, no less militarized ways of signaling "change" that are even blunter. We already have, for instance, hundreds and hundreds of military bases, large and small, spread around the world, but never enough, never deeply enough embedded in the former borderlands of the Soviet Union and the energy heartlands of our planet. The military budget soars; planning for high-tech weaponry for the near (and distant) future -- like the Common Aero Vehicle, a suborbital space capsule capable of delivering "conventional" munitions anywhere on the planet within 2 hours and due to come on line by 2010 -- is the normal order of business in Pentagonized Washington. War, in fact, is increasingly the American way of life and, to a certain extent, it`s almost as if no one notices.

Well, not quite no one. Andrew J. Bacevich has written a book on militarism, American-style, of surpassing interest. Just published, The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War would be critical reading no matter who wrote it. But coming from Bacevich, a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, former contributor to such magazines as the Weekly Standard and the National Review, and former Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, it has special resonance.

Bacevich, a self-professed conservative, has clearly been a man on a journey. He writes that he still situates himself "culturally on the right. And I continue to view the remedies proferred by mainstream liberalism with skepticism. But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering foreign policy, a disregard for the Constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values. On this score my views have come to coincide with the critique long offered by the radical left: it is the mainstream itself, the professional liberals as well as the professional conservatives who define the problem."

I`ve long recommended Chalmers Johnson`s book on American militarism and military-basing policy, The Sorrows of Empire. Bacevich`s The New American Militarism, which focuses on the ways Americans have become enthralled by -- and found themselves in thrall to -- military power and the idea of global military supremacy, should be placed right beside it in any library. Below, you`ll find the first of two long excerpts (slightly adapated) from the book, and posted with the kind permission of the author and of his publisher, Oxford University Press. This one offers Bacevitch`s thoughts on the ways in which, since the Vietnam War, our country has been militarized, a process to which, as he writes, the events of September 11 only added momentum. On Friday, I`ll post an excerpt on the second-generation neoconservatives and what they contributed to our new militarism.

Bacevich`s book carefully lays out and analyzes the various influences that have fed into the creation and sustenance of the new American militarism over the last decades. It would have been easy enough to create a 4-part or 6-part Tomdispatch series from the book. Bacevich is, for instance, fascinating on evangelical Christianity (and its less than war-like earlier history) as well as on the ways in which the military, after the Vietnam debacle, rebuilt itself as a genuine imperial force, separated from the American people and with an ethos "more akin to that of the French Foreign Legion" -- a force prepared for war without end. But for that, and much else, you`ll have to turn to the book itself.
Tom

The Normalization of War
By Andrew J. Bacevich

At the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The skepticism about arms and armies that pervaded the American experiment from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamored with military might.

The ensuing affair had and continues to have a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue. Few in power have openly considered whether valuing military power for its own sake or cultivating permanent global military superiority might be at odds with American principles. Indeed, one striking aspect of America`s drift toward militarism has been the absence of dissent offered by any political figure of genuine stature.

For example, when Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, ran for the presidency in 2004, he framed his differences with George W. Bush`s national security policies in terms of tactics rather than first principles. Kerry did not question the wisdom of styling the U.S. response to the events of 9/11 as a generations-long "global war on terror." It was not the prospect of open-ended war that drew Kerry`s ire. It was rather the fact that the war had been "extraordinarily mismanaged and ineptly prosecuted." Kerry faulted Bush because, in his view, U.S. troops in Iraq lacked "the preparation and hardware they needed to fight as effectively as they could." Bush was expecting too few soldiers to do too much with too little. Declaring that "keeping our military strong and keeping our troops as safe as they can be should be our highest priority," Kerry promised if elected to fix these deficiencies. Americans could count on a President Kerry to expand the armed forces and to improve their ability to fight.

Yet on this score Kerry`s circumspection was entirely predictable. It was the candidate`s way of signaling that he was sound on defense and had no intention of departing from the prevailing national security consensus.

Under the terms of that consensus, mainstream politicians today take as a given that American military supremacy is an unqualified good, evidence of a larger American superiority. They see this armed might as the key to creating an international order that accommodates American values. One result of that consensus over the past quarter century has been to militarize U.S. policy and to encourage tendencies suggesting that American society itself is increasingly enamored with its self-image as the military power nonpareil

How Much Is Enough?

This new American militarism manifests itself in several different ways. It does so, first of all, in the scope, cost, and configuration of America`s present-day military establishment.

Through the first two centuries of U.S. history, political leaders in Washington gauged the size and capabilities of America`s armed services according to the security tasks immediately at hand. A grave and proximate threat to the nation`s well-being might require a large and powerful military establishment. In the absence of such a threat, policymakers scaled down that establishment accordingly. With the passing of crisis, the army raised up for the crisis went immediately out of existence. This had been the case in 1865, in 1918, and in 1945.

Since the end of the Cold War, having come to value military power for its own sake, the United States has abandoned this principle and is committed as a matter of policy to maintaining military capabilities far in excess of those of any would-be adversary or combination of adversaries. This commitment finds both a qualitative and quantitative expression, with the U.S. military establishment dwarfing that of even America`s closest ally. Thus, whereas the U.S. Navy maintains and operates a total of twelve large attack aircraft carriers, the once-vaunted [British] Royal Navy has none -- indeed, in all the battle fleets of the world there is no ship even remotely comparable to a Nimitz-class carrier, weighing in at some ninety-seven thousand tons fully loaded, longer than three football fields, cruising at a speed above thirty knots, and powered by nuclear reactors that give it an essentially infinite radius of action. Today, the U.S. Marine Corps possesses more attack aircraft than does the entire Royal Air Force -- and the United States has two other even larger "air forces," one an integral part of the Navy and the other officially designated as the U.S. Air Force. Indeed, in terms of numbers of men and women in uniform, the U.S. Marine Corps is half again as large as the entire British Army--and the Pentagon has a second, even larger "army" actually called the U.S. Army -- which in turn also operates its own "air force" of some five thousand aircraft.

All of these massive and redundant capabilities cost money. Notably, the present-day Pentagon budget, adjusted for inflation, is 12 percent larger than the average defense budget of the Cold War era. In 2002, American defense spending exceeded by a factor of twenty-five the combined defense budgets of the seven "rogue states" then comprising the roster of U.S. enemies.16 Indeed, by some calculations, the United States spends more on defense than all other nations in the world together. This is a circumstance without historical precedent.

Furthermore, in all likelihood, the gap in military spending between the United States and all other nations will expand further still in the years to come. Projected increases in the defense budget will boost Pentagon spending in real terms to a level higher than it was during the Reagan era. According to the Pentagon`s announced long-range plans, by 2009 its budget will exceed the Cold War average by 23 percent -- despite the absence of anything remotely resembling a so-called peer competitor. However astonishing this fact might seem, it elicits little comment, either from political leaders or the press. It is simply taken for granted. The truth is that there no longer exists any meaningful context within which Americans might consider the question "How much is enough?"

On a day-to-day basis, what do these expensive forces exist to do? Simply put, for the Department of Defense and all of its constituent parts, defense per se figures as little more than an afterthought. The primary mission of America`s far-flung military establishment is global power projection, a reality tacitly understood in all quarters of American society. To suggest that the U.S. military has become the world`s police force may slightly overstate the case, but only slightly.

That well over a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States continues to maintain bases and military forces in several dozens of countries -- by some counts well over a hundred in all -- rouses minimal controversy, despite the fact that many of these countries are perfectly capable of providing for their own security needs. That even apart from fighting wars and pursuing terrorists, U.S. forces are constantly prowling around the globe -- training, exercising, planning, and posturing -- elicits no more notice (and in some cases less) from the average American than the presence of a cop on a city street corner. Even before the Pentagon officially assigned itself the mission of "shaping" the international environment, members of the political elite, liberals and conservatives alike, had reached a common understanding that scattering U.S. troops around the globe to restrain, inspire, influence, persuade, or cajole paid dividends. Whether any correlation exists between this vast panoply of forward-deployed forces on the one hand and antipathy to the United States abroad on the other has remained for the most part a taboo subject.

The Quest for Military Dominion

The indisputable fact of global U.S. military preeminence also affects the collective mindset of the officer corps. For the armed services, dominance constitutes a baseline or a point of departure from which to scale the heights of ever greater military capabilities. Indeed, the services have come to view outright supremacy as merely adequate and any hesitation in efforts to increase the margin of supremacy as evidence of falling behind.

Thus, according to one typical study of the U.S. Navy`s future, "sea supremacy beginning at our shore lines and extending outward to distant theaters is a necessary condition for the defense of the U.S." Of course, the U.S. Navy already possesses unquestioned global preeminence; the real point of the study is to argue for the urgency of radical enhancements to that preeminence. The officer-authors of this study express confidence that given sufficient money the Navy can achieve ever greater supremacy, enabling the Navy of the future to enjoy "overwhelming precision firepower," "pervasive surveillance," and "dominant control of a maneuvering area, whether sea, undersea, land, air, space or cyberspace." In this study and in virtually all others, political and strategic questions implicit in the proposition that supremacy in distant theaters forms a prerequisite of "defense" are left begging -- indeed, are probably unrecognized. At times, this quest for military dominion takes on galactic proportions. Acknowledging that the United States enjoys "superiority in many aspects of space capability," a senior defense official nonetheless complains that "we don`t have space dominance and we don`t have space supremacy." Since outer space is "the ultimate high ground," which the United States must control, he urges immediate action to correct this deficiency. When it comes to military power, mere superiority will not suffice.

The new American militarism also manifests itself through an increased propensity to use force, leading, in effect, to the normalization of war. There was a time in recent memory, most notably while the so-called Vietnam Syndrome infected the American body politic, when Republican and Democratic administrations alike viewed with real trepidation the prospect of sending U.S. troops into action abroad. Since the advent of the new Wilsonianism, however, self-restraint regarding the use of force has all but disappeared. During the entire Cold War era, from 1945 through 1988, large-scale U.S. military actions abroad totaled a scant six. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, they have become almost annual events. The brief period extending from 1989`s Operation Just Cause (the overthrow of Manuel Noriega) to 2003`s Operation Iraqi Freedom (the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) featured nine major military interventions. And that count does not include innumerable lesser actions such as Bill Clinton`s signature cruise missile attacks against obscure targets in obscure places, the almost daily bombing of Iraq throughout the late 1990s, or the quasi-combat missions that have seen GIs dispatched to Rwanda, Colombia, East Timor, and the Philippines. Altogether, the tempo of U.S. military interventionism has become nothing short of frenetic.

As this roster of incidents lengthened, Americans grew accustomed to -- perhaps even comfortable with -- reading in their morning newspapers the latest reports of U.S. soldiers responding to some crisis somewhere on the other side of the globe. As crisis became a seemingly permanent condition so too did war. The Bush administration has tacitly acknowledged as much in describing the global campaign against terror as a conflict likely to last decades and in promulgating -- and in Iraq implementing -- a doctrine of preventive war.

In former times American policymakers treated (or at least pretended to treat) the use of force as evidence that diplomacy had failed. In our own time they have concluded (in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney) that force "makes your diplomacy more effective going forward, dealing with other problems." Policymakers have increasingly come to see coercion as a sort of all-purpose tool. Among American war planners, the assumption has now taken root that whenever and wherever U.S. forces next engage in hostilities, it will be the result of the United States consciously choosing to launch a war. As President Bush has remarked, the big lesson of 9/11 was that "this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense." The American public`s ready acceptance of the prospect of war without foreseeable end and of a policy that abandons even the pretense of the United States fighting defensively or viewing war as a last resort shows clearly how far the process of militarization has advanced.

The New Aesthetic of War

Reinforcing this heightened predilection for arms has been the appearance in recent years of a new aesthetic of war. This is the third indication of advancing militarism.

The old twentieth-century aesthetic of armed conflict as barbarism, brutality, ugliness, and sheer waste grew out of World War I, as depicted by writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque, and Robert Graves. World War II, Korea, and Vietnam reaffirmed that aesthetic, in the latter case with films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket.

The intersection of art and war gave birth to two large truths. The first was that the modern battlefield was a slaughterhouse, and modern war an orgy of destruction that devoured guilty and innocent alike. The second, stemming from the first, was that military service was an inherently degrading experience and military institutions by their very nature repressive and inhumane. After 1914, only fascists dared to challenge these truths. Only fascists celebrated war and depicted armies as forward-looking -- expressions of national unity and collective purpose that paved the way for utopia. To be a genuine progressive, liberal in instinct, enlightened in sensibility, was to reject such notions as preposterous.

But by the turn of the twenty-first century, a new image of war had emerged, if not fully displacing the old one at least serving as a counterweight. To many observers, events of the 1990s suggested that war`s very nature was undergoing a profound change. The era of mass armies, going back to the time of Napoleon, and of mechanized warfare, an offshoot of industrialization, was coming to an end. A new era of high-tech warfare, waged by highly skilled professionals equipped with "smart" weapons, had commenced. Describing the result inspired the creation of a new lexicon of military terms: war was becoming surgical, frictionless, postmodern, even abstract or virtual. It was "coercive diplomacy" -- the object of the exercise no longer to kill but to persuade. By the end of the twentieth century, Michael Ignatieff of Harvard University concluded, war had become "a spectacle." It had transformed itself into a kind of "spectator sport," one offering "the added thrill that it is real for someone, but not, happily, for the spectator." Even for the participants, fighting no longer implied the prospect of dying for some abstract cause, since the very notion of "sacrifice in battle had become implausible or ironic."

Combat in the information age promised to overturn all of "the hoary dictums about the fog and friction" that had traditionally made warfare such a chancy proposition. American commanders, affirmed General Tommy Franks, could expect to enjoy "the kind of Olympian perspective that Homer had given his gods."

In short, by the dawn of the twenty-first century the reigning postulates of technology-as-panacea had knocked away much of the accumulated blood-rust sullying war`s reputation. Thus reimagined -- and amidst widespread assurances that the United States could be expected to retain a monopoly on this new way of war -- armed conflict regained an aesthetic respectability, even palatability, that the literary and artistic interpreters of twentieth-century military cataclysms were thought to have demolished once and for all. In the right circumstances, for the right cause, it now turned out, war could actually offer an attractive option--cost-effective, humane, even thrilling. Indeed, as the Anglo-American race to Baghdad conclusively demonstrated in the spring of 2003, in the eyes of many, war has once again become a grand pageant, performance art, or a perhaps temporary diversion from the ennui and boring routine of everyday life. As one observer noted with approval, "public enthusiasm for the whiz-bang technology of the U.S. military" had become "almost boyish." Reinforcing this enthusiasm was the expectation that the great majority of Americans could count on being able to enjoy this new type of war from a safe distance.

The Moral Superiority of the Soldier

This new aesthetic has contributed, in turn, to an appreciable boost in the status of military institutions and soldiers themselves, a fourth manifestation of the new American militarism.

Since the end of the Cold War, opinion polls surveying public attitudes toward national institutions have regularly ranked the armed services first. While confidence in the executive branch, the Congress, the media, and even organized religion is diminishing, confidence in the military continues to climb. Otherwise acutely wary of having their pockets picked, Americans count on men and women in uniform to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. Americans fearful that the rest of society may be teetering on the brink of moral collapse console themselves with the thought that the armed services remain a repository of traditional values and old fashioned virtue.

Confidence in the military has found further expression in a tendency to elevate the soldier to the status of national icon, the apotheosis of all that is great and good about contemporary America. The men and women of the armed services, gushed Newsweek in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, "looked like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. They were young, confident, and hardworking, and they went about their business with poise and élan." A writer for Rolling Stone reported after a more recent and extended immersion in military life that "the Army was not the awful thing that my [anti-military] father had imagined"; it was instead "the sort of America he always pictured when he explained… his best hopes for the country."

According to the old post-Vietnam-era political correctness, the armed services had been a refuge for louts and mediocrities who probably couldn`t make it in the real world. By the turn of the twenty-first century a different view had taken hold. Now the United States military was "a place where everyone tried their hardest. A place where everybody… looked out for each other. A place where people -- intelligent, talented people -- said honestly that money wasn`t what drove them. A place where people spoke openly about their feelings." Soldiers, it turned out, were not only more virtuous than the rest of us, but also more sensitive and even happier. Contemplating the GIs advancing on Baghdad in March 2003, the classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson saw something more than soldiers in battle. He ascertained "transcendence at work." According to Hanson, the armed services had "somehow distilled from the rest of us an elite cohort" in which virtues cherished by earlier generations of Americans continued to flourish.

Soldiers have tended to concur with this evaluation of their own moral superiority. In a 2003 survey of military personnel, "two-thirds [of those polled] said they think military members have higher moral standards than the nation they serve… Once in the military, many said, members are wrapped in a culture that values honor and morality." Such attitudes leave even some senior officers more than a little uncomfortable. Noting with regret that "the armed forces are no longer representative of the people they serve," retired admiral Stanley Arthur has expressed concern that "more and more, enlisted as well as officers are beginning to feel that they are special, better than the society they serve." Such tendencies, concluded Arthur, are "not healthy in an armed force serving a democracy."

In public life today, paying homage to those in uniform has become obligatory and the one unforgivable sin is to be found guilty of failing to "support the troops." In the realm of partisan politics, the political Right has shown considerable skill in exploiting this dynamic, shamelessly pandering to the military itself and by extension to those members of the public laboring under the misconception, a residue from Vietnam, that the armed services are under siege from a rabidly anti-military Left.

In fact, the Democratic mainstream -- if only to save itself from extinction -- has long since purged itself of any dovish inclinations. "What`s the point of having this superb military that you`re always talking about," Madeleine Albright demanded of General Colin Powell, "if we can`t use it?" As Albright`s Question famously attests, when it comes to advocating the use of force, Democrats can be positively gung ho. Moreover, in comparison to their Republican counterparts, they are at least as deferential to military leaders and probably more reluctant to question claims of military expertise.

Even among Left-liberal activists, the reflexive anti-militarism of the 1960s has given way to a more nuanced view. Although hard-pressed to match self-aggrandizing conservative claims of being one with the troops, progressives have come to appreciate the potential for using the armed services to advance their own agenda. Do-gooders want to harness military power to their efforts to do good. Thus, the most persistent calls for U.S. intervention abroad to relieve the plight of the abused and persecuted come from the militant Left. In the present moment, writes Michael Ignatieff, "empire has become a precondition for democracy." Ignatieff, a prominent human rights advocate, summons the United States to "use imperial power to strengthen respect for self-determination [and] to give states back to abused, oppressed people who deserve to rule them for themselves."

The President as Warlord

Occasionally, albeit infrequently, the prospect of an upcoming military adventure still elicits opposition, even from a public grown accustomed to war. For example, during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, large-scale demonstrations against President Bush`s planned intervention filled the streets of many American cities. The prospect of the United States launching a preventive war without the sanction of the U.N. Security Council produced the largest outpouring of public protest that the country had seen since the Vietnam War. Yet the response of the political classes to this phenomenon was essentially to ignore it. No politician of national stature offered himself or herself as the movement`s champion. No would-be statesman nursing even the slightest prospects of winning high national office was willing to risk being tagged with not supporting those whom President Bush was ordering into harm`s way. When the Congress took up the matter, Democrats who denounced George W. Bush`s policies in every other respect dutifully authorized him to invade Iraq. For up-and-coming politicians, opposition to war had become something of a third rail: only the very brave or the very foolhardy dared to venture anywhere near it.

More recently still, this has culminated in George W. Bush styling himself as the nation`s first full-fledged warrior-president. The staging of Bush`s victory lap shortly after the conquest of Baghdad in the spring of 2003 -- the dramatic landing on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with the president decked out in the full regalia of a naval aviator emerging from the cockpit to bask in the adulation of the crew -- was lifted directly from the triumphant final scenes of the movie Top Gun, with the boyish George Bush standing in for the boyish Tom Cruise. For this nationally televised moment, Bush was not simply mingling with the troops; he had merged his identity with their own and made himself one of them -- the president as warlord. In short order, the marketplace ratified this effort; a toy manufacturer offered for $39.99 a Bush look-alike military action figure advertised as "Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush -- U.S. President and Naval Aviator."

Thus has the condition that worried C. Wright Mills in 1956 come to pass in our own day. "For the first time in the nation`s history," Mills wrote, "men in authority are talking about an ‘emergency` without a foreseeable end." While in earlier times Americans had viewed history as "a peaceful continuum interrupted by war," today planning, preparing, and waging war has become "the normal state and seemingly permanent condition of the United States." And "the only accepted ‘plan` for peace is the loaded pistol."

Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran, he has a doctorate in history from Princeton and was a Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is the author of several books, including the just published The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War.

Copyright 2005 Andrew J. Bacevich

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War, copyright © 2005 by Andrew J. Bacevich. Used by permission of the author and Oxford University Press, Inc.


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Wednesday, April 20, 2005
War News for Wednesday, April 20, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Seven civilians wounded by car bomb targeting a US military patrol in west Baghdad. Iraqi Brigadier General and his driver shot dead by gunmen in Amara. Another Iraqi Brigadier General assassinated in Mosul. Philippines government calls for its nationals to leave Iraq.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed, four wounded in car bombing in the Al-Amil area of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi President reports that 50 bodies have been taken from the Tigris river south of Baghdad, that the bodies are those of hostages who were held in a nearby town earlier this week, and that the names of the dead and their killers are known.

Bring ‘em on: Nineteen Iraqis soldiers shot to death in a soccer stadium in Haditha. One child and one adult killed, at least five wounded in car bomb attack aimed at a US patrol in the Amiriyah district of Baghdad. Eight wounded in car bombing near the Bilat police station in Baghdad’s Dora district. Three civilians wounded in a third car bombing in Baghdad. A driver working for the health ministry killed, another individual wounded in attack by gunmen in east Baghdad. One Turkish truck driver killed when his truck struck a mine near Shorjat. Two Iraqi soldiers killed, three insurgents captured in clashes near Dujail. One Iraqi soldier killed, another wounded by mortar fire near Duluiyah. Basra tribal leader assassinated in Zubair. A 50-strong group of guerillas unsuccessfully attempted to overrun one or more local police stations in Mosul on Monday.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi civilian killed in Tikrit in explosion targeting an Iraqi army vehicle. One Iraqi soldier killed by gunfire in al-Dalou’eya area. One Iraqi civilian killed in an explosion in Baquba.


A strange story gets stranger: The bodies of 50 people, believed to be those of hostages held in a town near Baghdad earlier this week, have been found in the Tigris river south of Baghdad, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Wednesday.

"More than 50 bodies have been brought out from the Tigris and we have the full names of those who were killed and those criminals who committed these crimes," Talabani told reporters.

Shi`ite officials said last Saturday that around 50 people had been taken hostage by Sunni militants in the town of Madaen, south of Baghdad, and were threatened with death.

Iraqi security forces raided the town earlier this week, but said they had found next to no evidence that anyone had been taken hostage or that there were any gunmen in the town.

Later, Shi`ite officials said that dozens of bodies had been found in the Tigris south of Madaen, but residents and police in the area who spoke to Reuters said they hadn`t seen any bodies.


Basra: A series of recent daytime assassinations of Shiite and Sunni Muslim officials here has led to fears that Sunni insurgents, Shiite radicals and Iranian agents may be seeking to destabilize this southern city, which had remained relatively calm since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq two years ago.

No one has been arrested or claimed responsibility for the shootings, which have taken the lives of a Sunni criminal judge and an educational inspector, and two Shiite city council candidates and a major in the Iraqi national guard.

Some residents are concerned that the killings could spark widespread sectarian violence in a city that is dominated by Shiites but also has a significant Sunni population.


Wait, we’re not winning?: For a while after Iraq`s election in January, it looked as if the country`s nearly two-year-old insurgency was showing signs of flagging.

Attacks against U.S. forces fell more than 20 percent in the weeks immediately after the poll, and March`s U.S. death toll was the lowest in more than a year, the U.S. military said.

While Iraqi security forces were still dying every day, with more than 400 police and soldiers killed over the past two months, positive signs were appearing. Iraqi troops even captured several senior militant leaders, the government said.

But over the past two weeks, much of that optimism has been wiped away as insurgents have hit back with a series of deadly attacks targeting both U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies.

"I don`t think the insurgency has gone away at all," said a U.S. military official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named. "Perhaps we just had a spike in success against it."


Line of defense: As they kill time smoking cigarettes, the border guards at Fort 15 do not watch Jordan. Instead they look east, toward Baghdad, as if searching for help.

Only 10 guards remain of the 50 assigned to the fort. The rest have trickled out in disputes over pay. There are no uniforms, no furniture. The fort is armed with a single machine gun, with one banana clip of ammunition.

If Iraq`s insurgency is being stoked by guns, money and fighters crossing from Jordan and Syria, as U.S. and Iraqi officials say, the men at Fort 15 can do little to stop it.

Traveling 200 miles of Iraq`s borders with Jordan and Syria, as Marine Lt. Col. Ken DeSimone did recently, one finds snapshots of a line of defense so devastated that "porous" would be an improvement.

"It`s like the Wild West out here," said DeSimone, a reservist from North Carolina who was a tank commander before being assigned to inspect the border. "This is worse than anybody thought."


The safest city in Iraq: In last November`s U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah, dozens of U.S. troops, hundreds of insurgents and an unknown number of civilians were killed. Now, curfews, checkpoints and other stringent security measures are being used to prevent the city from falling back into insurgent hands. But enhancing security is hampering efforts to rebuild. Checkpoints choke the influx of supplies and business, ultimately slowing the creation of jobs needed to give young people an alternative to joining the insurgency for money.

"If you don`t have enough people flowing in to sustain commerce, you will stunt growth," said Capt. Rudy Quiles, a Marine civil affairs officer here. Letting more people and goods into Fallujah "is a risk we`re going to have to take at some point for the good of the city." He estimated that 85 percent of people in Fallujah were unemployed or underemployed.

Nearly all of the city`s estimated 250,000 residents fled before the fighting started, and about 90,000 have returned to find wide swaths of the town in ruin. More than half of Fallujah`s 39,000 homes were damaged, and about 10,000 of those were destroyed or left structurally unsound to live in, U.S. officials say. Limited food and fuel supplies mean higher prices and lines that can reach 100 cars at government gas stations.

Wearing a white tunic called a dishdasha, sunglasses and headdress, Hamid Taha, a district leader, brushed his hands together when asked about local electricity. "There is no power in our area," he said. Running water is available about three or four hours a day. About half of the 5,000 houses in his district are damaged. But Taha said he worried most about the lack of work.

"What did we do to have to live like this?" said Ali Hussein, a neighbor whose home was also destroyed.

Iraqi Politics

That government’s gonna be ready any day now! Honest!: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Wednesday he hoped Iraq`s new government would be announced on Thursday, nearly 12 weeks after elections.

Iraqi leaders have been negotiating over the formation of the government since the Jan. 30 elections that brought a Shi`ite Muslim majority to power.

But disagreements over which parties should get which ministries, and on how the Sunni minority should be brought into political process, have held up the formation of the government.

Much of the squabbling over ministries has focused on the Oil, Interior and Defense ministries. The Interior Ministry is expected to go to a member of SCIRI, the main party in the Shi`ite alliance.


Hey, just like Republicans!: Saddam Hussein`s rules for young and ambitious Iraqis were clear: If you want a future, you must join the Baath Party.

Now, as the leaders of the new National Assembly parcel out Cabinet posts according to ethnic group and religious or political affiliation, students and recent college graduates worry that the government will become a collection of fiefdoms in which loyalties matter more than merit.

"I guess now with so many political parties, and the way the different ministries are divided according to sects, one doesn`t know which party he should be a member in," said Haider Ali, 24.

Students and job seekers swap tales of friends who were told by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to produce letters of recommendation from the Kurdish Democratic Party or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Kurdish leader Hoshyar Zebari runs the foreign ministry, which resonates with the sounds of Kurdish rather than Arabic. He`s likely to retain the post.

"We know that ministry is for the Kurdish party," said Kareem al-Saadi, 22, a graduating senior at Mustansiriyah University. "When you want to have a job in this ministry, you must get a notification from the Kurdish party." Al-Saadi said it happened in all the ministries.


Sunni fractures: Last Friday, two of the main mosques in Ramadi delivered conflicting sermons.

One called for a halt to the violence that has wracked this western Iraqi town for nearly two years.

The other demanded ceaseless resistance against the “atheist American occupiers”.

The split between the mosques mirrors a debate throughout Ramadi, and among Sunni Arabs in general, over whether or not to support continued armed resistance against the US armed forces.


Uppity buggers: Iraqi deputies demanded Tuesday an official apology from Washington over the manhandling by US soldiers of an MP at a Baghdad checkpoint, with some calling for the fortified Green Zone to be "liberated from the occupation".

Deputies suspended their session for an hour in protest at the incident involving Fatah al-Sheikh, a partisan of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and member of the dominant United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) bloc.

They then voted unanimously on a motion demanding an official apology from the US embassy and Washington, and the punishment of the US soldier involved.


Miscellaneous

Spreading that liberty around: Two new reports on economics ("Arab World Competitiveness Report 2005") and politics ("Towards Freedom in the Arab World," launched in Amman, Jordan on April 5, 2005) in the Arab states dramatized what all astute observers already knew: the Arab region is a mess and US policies have exacerbated the situation.

Such judgments by leading independent Arab scholars who drafted the latest report reflect deep pessimism. Absence of freedom pervades the region, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf States like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, they noted.

The 2004 AHDR also focuses on Washington`s hypocrisy in including its allies like Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, as "democratic." These governments would not pass rudimentary democratic tests, argued the authors.

Bush backers, however, deny reality on several fronts. First, the tyrannical regimes that they call allies will not redistribute power or wealth. Second, and more damaging to Bush`s freedom indicator, elections, is that the Arabs interviewed by the AHDR team want "liberation from foreign occupation and the freedoms of opinion, expression and movement". Such facts don`t bother "democracy pushers."

"We are at the dawn of a glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East," wrote columnist Charles Krauthammer. "It was triggered by the invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and televised images of 8 million Iraqis voting in a free election".

Awada Dakil, an Iraqi Shia, offers a stark contrast to Krauthammer`s frothy enthusiasm. "Nothing has changed," he said. "The only difference is that we were once ruled by a dictator and now we are ruled by clowns".

(Hey, look at the bright side, Awada – at least in Iraq you’re ruled by dictators or clowns.)


Commander Codpiece in sympathy mode: The story of Telecinco cameraman José Couso is familiar to most journalists. How, on the morning of April 8, 2003, he stood on a balcony of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, watching with other journalists and cameramen as a Third Infantry tank division exchanged fire with Iraqi forces. How, after a 35-minute lull in the battle, a tank commanded by Sgt. Shawn Gibson swung its cannon toward the hotel and, 10 minutes later, fired an incendiary shell. And how that one shell seriously injured three journalists and killed two, including Couso and Taras Protsyuk, from Reuters.

Two years later, there still has been no official independent investigation of the incident, nor any credible explanation of why an American tank crew was given permission to target a clearly identifiable landmark housing several hundred journalists. The Pentagon’s claim that the tank was returning fire has been disputed by every reporter at the hotel who has spoken out on the event.

Indeed, Couso and Protsyuk were only two of 14 media workers slain in Iraq by U.S. forces without credible explanation, prompting the International Federation of Journalists to renew its demand that the U.S. properly investigate the various incidents. The demand was given additional impetus by the recent U.S. shooting of an Italian journalist who had been taken hostage by Iraqi insurgents.

To be sure, some progress has been made. Hundreds of supporters, including many journalists, protest outside the U.S. embassy in Madrid on the eighth of each month. Spain’s new president, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, granted compensation to Couso’s widow under a law to help victims of terrorism and asked Secretary of State Colin Powell for an explanation for the attack. Support is building in the European Parliament behind a demand for an independent investigation. And the family has filed a war crimes complaint under the Geneva Conventions against three U.S. officers.

But when asked about Couso’s slaying, President Bush reflected an official American nonchalance about the incident by responding, “I think war is a dangerous place.”


Everybody in the world knows: Seventeen Afghan men released from the U.S. detention center for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay were turned over to local authorities in Kabul on Tuesday with a warning not to discuss mistreatment at the facility. One of the men nonetheless accused the U.S. military of abuse, but gave no details.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said the 17 Afghans and the Turkish man had been cleared of accusations they were enemy combatants during the Combatant Status Review Tribunal process that recently ended. Five others cleared in late March already had been sent home and another 15 await transfers home.

One of the former Afghan detainees, Abdul Rahman, said abuse had occurred during his 3 1/2 years in detention, but he would not elaborate.

"There was a lot of bad treatment against us, but this is not the time to tell you," said Rahman. "Everybody in the world knows what kind of jail it is. I can`t talk about it now."


Commentary

Interview with Ahmed Chalabi: Leader of the Iraqi National Congress Party, Ahmed Chalabi, may be a controversial figure, but he is also a force to contend with in today`s Iraq. He came to the spotlight as a staunch supporter of the US invasion and has since continued to influence the course of events.


A Resolution: WHEREAS: The Bush Administration, using false intelligence estimates, misled the country into an illegal, unnecessary and unwise invasion and occupation of Iraq, against a country that had neither attacked nor posed an immediate threat to the United States, thus jeopardizing our national security; and

WHEREAS: As a result of that action, more than 1,500 American troops have been killed and more than 10,000 other brave Americans have been maimed or injured, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, including many innocent civilians, have also lost their lives, been injured, and seen their property and country’s infrastructure destroyed; and

WHEREAS: The invasion and occupation have created a severe burden on our economy, stretched the capacity of our armed forces including Reserve and National Guard troops who are serving unexpectedly long and difficult tours in Iraq, and continues to cause deep concern at home and abroad about the policies and intentions of the United States to the point where the United States is widely regarded with suspicion, hostility and distrust, and elections in Iraq confirmed that Iraqis wish the United States to withdraw

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the California Democratic Party calls for termination of the occupation at the earliest possible time with the withdrawal of American troops, coupled with the creation of an international body that can assist the Iraqi people in freely and peacefully determining their own future, and that we participate in multi-lateral reconstruction.


Imagine: Imagine you`re a child, maybe 8 years young, riding in the back of the family car, your parents up front, your siblings pressed around you. It is dusk and you are making for home.

Suddenly you hear the all-too-familiar pop of gunfire. Your father slows down but keeps driving, afraid to stop.

Perhaps you turn to a sibling and ask what is wrong. But before anyone can answer, the war invades the thin cocoon of the automobile.

Bullets pierce the windows and doors. Instinctively, you duck as splinters of glass and metal shower the interior.

And with it comes the blood, splattering everywhere - on your clothes, your hands, your face - everywhere.

For a brief, stunned moment, the carnage ceases and there is only silence. Then screaming fills your ears.

Light streams in as you and the other children, sobbing, tumble out of the vehicle, now resting against the curb. Inside, your parents lay dead, riddled with bullets, your father`s face unrecognizable.

The soldiers gather, piecing together the tragedy they have unwittingly perpetrated. One holds and consoles you, perhaps thinking of his own children.

He talks, but even if he spoke your language, there would be nothing he could say that would make any sense.


Casualty Reports

Local story: Nashau, NH, soldier killed in Ramadi.

Local story: Pellston, MI, Marine killed in Al-Anbar province honored by his state.

Local story: West Burlington, IA, soldier killed in Ramadi.

Local story: Flint, MI, soldier killed outside of Baghdad.

Local story: Eastville, VA, soldier killed in Ramadi.


Note to Readers: I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you to alert reader and prolific commenter bob for his many contributions to this site. Between his comments and his many links - well, sometimes he links, sometimes he just posts the whole story - he`s supplied perspectives and insights unlike those of any other regular posters. His passion and commitment to justice shine through everything he`s posted here and it enriches the site immeasurably. Thanks, bob. Don`t ever let the bastards bring you down.


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China und das US-Handelsdefizit. Siehe auch: [urlDaimler Weighs Plant in China for Imports to U.S.]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/business/worldbusiness/21auto.html?hp&ex=1114142400&en=7e1de5d2dc6ad1cf&ei=5094&partner=homepage[/url]

April 21, 2005
EDITORIAL
Blame China?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/opinion/21thu1.html

Members of Congress, egged on by American manufacturers, are threatening to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese goods unless China increases the exchange rate of its currency, the yuan, thus raising the price of Chinese imports here. Some Senate Democrats are even threatening to block President Bush`s choice for the United States trade representative, Rob Portman, unless the administration also espouses get-tough tactics. This is protectionism raising its ugly head, and an all-around dreadful strategy. That`s only in part because Mr. Portman, one of the president`s better nominations, deserves confirmation. Worse, it`s based on a misunderstanding of both China`s financial situation and the cause of American economic woes.

At the heart of this debate is China`s policy of linking the value of the yuan to the value of the dollar. That was called sound policy when the dollar was strong. But now that it is weak, Congressional critics call it manipulation because it makes already inexpensive Chinese goods even cheaper the world over. As proof that the yuan is undervalued, the tariff seekers point to the United States` ballooning trade deficit with China, which accounted for about one-fourth of the United States` gargantuan global trade imbalance of $617 billion in 2004.

The trade deficit and the loss of American manufacturing jobs are very serious problems. It would be nice to think that they would self-correct if China would only change its ways. Nice, but wrong. Most of the trade gap with China is caused by Americans` insatiable appetite for Chinese imports, for which there are few domestic substitutes. And even if the yuan`s exchange rate is too low - a point on which economists differ - it is a minor contributor to the trade deficit. If China let the yuan appreciate by 20 percent, and most other Asian currencies followed suit, the deficit would probably decline by only about one-fifth over the next year or two. That`s not nearly enough to bring the American trade imbalance into a range that is generally considered sustainable.

Tariff-mongering politicians don`t necessarily want to believe this. "Many of us feel they`re playing this country for a fool," Senator Charles Schumer of New York fumed at a recent hearing. Treasury Secretary John Snow, to his credit, explained at that hearing how a premature yuan revaluation might do more harm than good.

Pegging a currency to the dollar is perfectly legitimate for a country like China with a fragile banking system and rudimentary capital markets. China`s problem is that its underdeveloped finance sector exists hand in hand with a surging economy, which puts pressure on the yuan to appreciate. That state of affairs has attracted huge amounts of speculative capital into China, in anticipation that its government will soon allow the yuan to rise. Such speculative capital is destabilizing - feeding, for example, a worrisome Chinese real estate bubble.

This helps explain why China`s leaders are so nervous about letting the yuan appreciate. They need a more flexible currency, sooner rather than later, both for the sake of trade relations and to gain more control over their own economy. But if China makes a small currency adjustment, the speculators will be rewarded and will pour in more money in expectation of future upward moves, further destabilizing the economy. And if China makes a large adjustment, it will incur sharp losses in its huge dollar holdings because an upward move in the yuan means a downward move in the dollar. That would only weaken its financial sector.

It`s not in China`s interest, or in the interest of global economic stability, for China to move the yuan before its officials have coalesced around a strategy for doing so. And American lawmakers should be thinking twice about what the impact at home could be if the yuan is revalued. America`s lack of savings - by the government and individuals - is the biggest contributor to global imbalances, making it necessary to "import" billions of dollars of foreign capital daily to cover our budget and trade deficits.

China is America`s second-most-important lender, after Japan, and it will become even more important if other Asian nations curb their lending, as they have recently indicated they may. As long as China links the yuan to the dollar, it needs to buy large quantities of United States securities to prop up the dollar, a process that has helped keep American interest rates down and economic growth up.

If China loosened its currency`s peg to the dollar, or removed it altogether, it wouldn`t need to buy up dollar-based assets at its current torrid pace. The result could be a rise, even a sharp rise, in United States interest rates and, as a corollary, a falloff in economic growth. Neoprotectionist members of Congress should be careful about what they ask for.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Christian Europe RIP

The new Pope will hasten the decline of the old continent`s formative faith
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1464532,00.ht…

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday April 21, 2005

Guardian
A theists should welcome the election of Pope Benedict XVI. For this aged, scholarly, conservative, uncharismatic Bavarian theologian will surely hasten precisely the de-Christianisation of Europe that he aims to reverse. At the end of his papacy, Europe may again be as un-Christian as it was when St Benedict, one of the patron saints of Europe, founded his pioneering monastic order, the Benedictines, 15 centuries ago. Christian Europe: from Benedict to Benedict. RIP.

Europe is now the most secular continent on earth. The phenomenon of the last pope masked the underlying trend. We saw the great crowds of enthusiastic young people on St Peter`s Square, or at open-air masses on his many journeys, and half-forgot the plummeting figures for church attendance and the recruitment of priests. An American Baptist missionary website puts things in perspective. "Western Europe," it states, "is ... one of the world`s most difficult mission fields. Most missiologists compare it to the Muslim-held Middle East when it comes to responsiveness to the gospel." Voltaire would be proud of us.

This used to be less true in eastern Europe, where the pressure of communism helped to keep the churches strong. But an irony of John Paul II`s pontificate was that, by hastening the end of communism, he helped unleash those forces of capitalist modernisation that contributed to secularisation in western Europe. Meanwhile, both immigration and the prospective enlargement of the EU are making Islam the most dynamic, growing faith in Europe. In Berlin, for example, Muslims are already the second-largest active denomination, after Protestants but before Catholics.

As everyone keeps saying, elderly popes can surprise us all, as John XXIII did by convoking the reforming Second Vatican Council. But I see nothing in the personality, biography, principles or strategy of Benedict XVI to suggest that he can reverse these trends.

Joseph Ratzinger has all the conservatism of Karol Wojtyla with none of the charisma. He can be charming, witty and persuasive in intellectual debate, as he showed recently when taking on the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, rather as Benedict XIV took on Voltaire in the 18th century. But for a wider audience his soft, precise voice, mildly professorial manner and uncertain wave cannot begin to compare with the communication skills of the great actor who was his predecessor. Nor do they compare with the potential appeal of some of the alternative candidates, younger men from Latin America who could credibly have made the Catholic church one of the strongest voices for the world`s poor. Paradoxically, a Latin American pope might have had more appeal to young Europeans than this European one.

How could he inspire the young? The Catholic writer Daniel Johnson suggests in the Times that Benedict XVI has the learning and intellect to get across to young people the last pope`s exciting reinterpretations of ancient doctrines. "In particular," he writes, "the Theology of the Body, which sees sexuality as an emanation of divine love, has enormous unrealised potential to enthuse the young." Well, I shall be watching that space.

This Bavarian theologian is not just old but old-fashioned. Like several German professors of his generation, he seems to have been traumatised by the student protests of 1968, which were led by figures like Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer. On the day of Ratzinger`s election, Chancellor Schröder made polite claims of patriotic pride in the election of a German pope, but I can guess his pillow talk that night. It was striking to switch from Polish television, still mourning the greatest Pole in history, to German television, greeting their compatriot with faint praise and waspish worrying.

Unfair though it is to blame him for his compulsory enrolment in the Hitler Youth, his biography is hardly the asset that Wojtyla`s was. And not just in the extreme version presented by the Sun, which hailed his election with the memorable headline From Hitler Youth to ... Papa Ratzi, and described him as an "ex-World War II enemy soldier".

His principles are very similar to those of his predecessor. It would be unreasonable to expect that he should change them. The Catholic church is not a political party, trimming to pick up votes. The strength of a rock is that it is not sand. None the less, there are a couple of important adjustments that a new pope could make without threatening the central core of Catholic dogma. One is that he could allow the exceptional use of condoms to prevent babies being born with HIV/Aids. This would have a major life-saving effect in the developing world, but also a positive impact on public opinion in Europe. Secondly, he could allow Catholic priests to marry. Perhaps he may yet surprise us on the first issue; it will be a miracle if he changes his position on the second.

Then there is his strategy. John Paul II was a welcoming, ecumenical, big-tent pope. In Benedict XVI`s view, if becoming smaller is the price of the Catholic church remaining true to its basic principles, so be it. The church will be smaller but purer. Klein aber fein, as they say in his native German.

His homily in St Peter`s basilica before the cardinals went into conclave made it clear that he intends to tackle the secularism, moral laxity and consumerism of contemporary Europe head-on. He has described homosexuality as tending towards an "intrinsic moral evil". He was reportedly shocked by the rejection of the devout Catholic Rocco Buttiglione as a European commissioner. He rails against the "dictatorship of relativism".

Rampant secularism is not the only danger he spies. This pope also has some decidedly old-fashioned views on Islam. In a sermon delivered in Regensburg in 2003, he sharply attacked the then German president for suggesting that the monk`s habit has as little place in European public life as the Islamic headscarf. He quoted with approval a German theologian`s response "that Europe was, after all, built not through the Qur`an but through the holy scriptures of the old and new covenant". (That is, including Judaism as well as Christianity.) "I would not ban any Muslim woman from wearing the headscarf," he generously declared. "But far less will we allow the cross, which is the public sign of a culture of reconciliation, to be banned!"

Identifying Europe with Christianity, he sees no place for Turkey in the European Union. In an interview with Le Figaro last August, he spoke of Europe as a "cultural" rather than a merely geographical continent, and said Turkey had "always represented another [cultural] continent in the course of history, in permanent contrast to Europe". Turkey could, he suggested, "try to set up a cultural continent with neighbouring Arab countries and become the protagonist of a culture with its own identity".

They are already calling the 265th pope a "transitional" figure. But so far as we know he has none of the serious health problems of John Paul II and, with the best of modern, scientific medical care, he could well survive another 10 years. That means he could live to see the European Union in 2015. This Europe would probably be more Islamic than now in its poorer parts, and more secular than ever in its richer ones. Whether that would also be a better Europe is a subject for another column.

www.freeworldweb.net
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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[urlSammlung von Artikel über Folterungen in Nahost Bush`s Torturegate]http://www.ccmep.org/2004_articles/abu_ghraib.htm[/url]
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[urlColorado Campaign for Middle East Peace Home Page]http://www.ccmep.org/[/url]
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Apr 20, 2005

America`s riotous real estate
By Mike Davis
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GD20Dj01.html

Last February the sirens howled in Hollywood as the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) rushed reinforcements to the 5600-block of La Mirada Avenue. While a police captain barked orders through a bullhorn, an angry crowd of 3,000 shouted back expletives. A passer-by might have mistaken the confrontation for a major movie shoot, or perhaps the beginning of the next great LA riot.

In fact, as LAPD Captain Michael Downing later told the press: "You had some very desperate people who had a mob mentality. It was as if people were trying to get the last piece of bread." The bread-riot allusion was apt, although the crowd was in fact clamoring for the last crumbs of affordable housing in a city where rents and mortgages have been soaring through the stratosphere. At stake were 56 unfinished apartments being built by a non-profit agency. The developers had expected a turnout of, at most, several hundred. When thousands of desperate applicants showed up instead, the scene quickly turned ugly and the police intervened.

A few weekends after this tense confrontation in Hollywood, another anxious mob - this time composed of more affluent home-seekers - queued up for hours for an opportunity to make outrageous bids on a single, run-down house with a cracked foundation in a nearby suburb renowned for its good schools. "The teeming crowd," wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, "was no surprise given the latest evidence that California`s public schools are dropout factories."

Los Angeles` underfunded, overcrowded and violent schools, according to a recent report by Harvard researchers, currently fail to graduate the majority of their black and Latino students, as well as one-third of whites. Parents, as a result, are willing to make extraordinary sacrifices to move their children to suburbs with functioning public education. This gives the old adage of "location is everything" in real estate a new twist: housing in southern California is universally advertised and graded by the prestige of local school districts.

The southern California housing crisis, of course, has a sunnier side as well. In the past five years median home values have increased 118% in Los Angeles and an extraordinary 137% in neighboring San Diego. Homes, as a result, have become private automated teller machines (ATMs), providing their owners with magical, unearned cash flows for purchasing new sports utility vehicles, making down payments on vacation homes, and financing increasingly expensive college educations for their kids. Second mortgages and home refinancings, according to a Wharton Business School survey, have generated an astounding US$1.6 trillion in additional consumption since 2000.

The great American housing bubble, like its obese counterparts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Australia, is a classical zero-sum game. Without generating an atom of new wealth, land inflation ruthlessly redistributes wealth from asset-seekers to asset-holders, reinforcing divisions within as well as between social classes. A young schoolteacher in San Diego who rents an apartment, for example, now faces an annual housing cost ($24,000 for a two-bedroom in a central area) equivalent to two-thirds of her income. Conversely, an older school-bus driver who owns a modest home in the same neighborhood may have "earned" almost as much from housing inflation as from his unionized job.

The current US housing bubble is the bastard offspring of the stock-market bubble of the mid-1990s. Housing prices, especially on the west coast and in the east`s Bos-Wash (Boston-Washington, DC) corridor, began to rocket in the second half of 1995 as dot-com profits were plowed into real estate. The boom has been sustained by sensationally low mortgage rates, thanks principally to the willingness of China to buy vast amounts of US Treasury bonds despite their low or negative yields. Beijing has been willing to subsidize US mortgage borrowers as the price for keeping the door open to Chinese exports.

Similarly, the hottest home markets - southern California, Las Vegas, New York, Miami, and Washington, DC - have attracted voracious ant columns of pure speculators, buying and selling homes in the gamble that prices will continue to rise. The most successful speculator, of course, has been George W Bush. Rising home values have propped up a stagnant economy and blunted criticisms of otherwise disastrous economic policies. The Democrats for their part have failed to address seriously the crisis of millions of families now locked out of home ownership. In a bubble city such as San Diego, for instance, less than 15% of the population earns enough to finance the cost of a median-value new home.

Accordingly, if "values" were the basis for the Bush victory last November, they were property values, not moral principles or religious prejudices. In the face of the perverse housing bubble, the John Kerry campaign, as with health-care costs and the export of jobs, was simply running on empty. It offered no compelling alternative to the status quo. But the Republicans have more serious things to worry about than Democrats. As the real-estate bubble reaches its peak, George Bush may discover that he has been surfing a tsunami and that a towering cliff looms ahead.

The bubble has already burst in San Francisco, and the April 11 issue of Business Week headlined fears that a general deflation - perhaps of international magnitude - is nigh. What will life be like in the United States (or Britain or Ireland) after the home-equity ATM shuts down?

The business press, as always, reassures passengers that they are headed for a "soft landing", a slowdown rather than a crash, but even a mild jolt may be sufficient to end the current anemic recovery and throw all the dollar-pegged economies into recession. More ominously, some eminently respectable Wall Street economists, like Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, have been warning of a dangerous negative-feedback loop between the foreign-subsidized housing bubble and the huge US trade and budget deficits. "The funding of America," he has written, "is an accident waiting to happen."

At the end of the day, US military hegemony is no longer underwritten by an equivalent global economic supremacy. The housing bubble, like the dot-com boom before it, has temporarily masked a mess of economic contradictions. As a result, the second term of George W Bush may hold some first-class Shakespearean surprises.

Mike Davis is the author of Dead Cities and the forthcoming Monster at the Door: The Global Threat of Avian Influenza (New Press 2005).

(The article has appeared on [urlTomDispatch.com]http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2329[/url] and has been posted here by permission)

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Thursday, April 21, 2005

I`ll gladly stay behind
By BRENDA PETERSON
GUEST COLUMNIST
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/220902_petersonearth21…

A neighbor recently insisted I read the Left Behind series. "Especially now after 9/11," he said, "and the blessed countdown for the Rapture has begun."

"Why are you so ... well, cheerful, about the end of the Earth?" I asked him.

He gazed at me with the true alarm of deep pity. "I`m afraid you`ll have a rough time of it here during the Tribulations -- plagues of locusts, frogs, viruses ... the Earth attacked by tsunamis, volcanoes, dark legions of the unsaved."

"Don`t you love any of us you believe will suffer so?" I said.

This gave my neighbor a moment`s pause. But then he admitted with some chagrin. "You can`t blame us born-agains for at last getting our heavenly rewards. We`ve waited thousands of years for End Times."

My neighbor`s fervor sent me to search the Internet for the Rapture Index -- a "prophetic speedometer," which concludes that we`ve hit 153, and the warning, "Fasten Your Seatbelts." Giddily, the Rapturers anticipate ecological collapse, Mideast holy wars and Christian Zionists as evidence of the Second Coming. In a twinkling, they say, the righteous will ascend, dropping golden dental work, our nightgowns and perhaps even some spouses.
[urlKeine Satire]http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html[/url]
All this might seem darkly comic, if not for a Time magazine poll that 56 percent of Americans "believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true." And that the Left Behind books are the biggest selling fictional series in the United States.

In complex and challenging times, apocalypse is such a simple answer. This fight-or-flight fear is hardwired into our reptilian, forest-slashing, migrating, pioneering species -- leave the Old World behind, find a New World. No need to really change, adapt or evolve, just find another planet or heaven to plunder for our own rewards. After all, the dark side of fundamentalism is consumerism.

The next time I saw my neighbor he sported a new bumper sticker: "This Vehicle Will Be Unmanned in Case of Rapture." It was a surprisingly sunlit Seattle day and we strolled down to our backyard beach on the Salish Sea to continue our End Times talk. We sat down on driftwood and watched the comic black-and-white tuxedo harlequins diving and popping up in the waves. A Great Blue Heron swooped in with the caw of a dinosaur bird. How could this ancient bird fly with such huge wings? How did she escape extinction? Somehow the Great Blue had adapted and survived beautifully.

"So," my neighbor asked excitedly, "what did you think of the Rapture Index?"

"Doesn`t the Scripture say, `For God so loved the world?` " I asked. "Well, I`m going to start a Real Rapture Index with signs and wonders of how beautiful and sacred this Earth is. Another mantra is: For we so love the world ... ."

My neighbor looked at me, startled, then fell very quiet as we watched a harlequin float past, his bright beak dripping a tiny fish. Happy, so happy in this moment. The Great Blue cawed hoarsely and stood on one leg in a fishing meditation. Wave after bright wave lapped our beach and the spring sunshine warmed our open faces.

I put my arm around my neighbor, the driftwood creaking slightly under our weight.

"Listen," I said softly, "I want to be left behind."

Left Behind to figure out a way to fit more humbly into this abiding Earth, this living and breathing planet we happily call home, we call holy.

Slowly my neighbor took my hand and we sat in silence, listening to waves more ancient than our young, hasty species, more forgiving than our religions, more enduring. Rapture.

Brenda Peterson is a novelist and nature writer, most recently of "Animal Heart" from Sierra Club Books.

© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Democrats Will Expand Inquiry of U.N. Nominee
White House officials accuse rival senators of an `ugly` partisan effort against John R. Bolton.
By Paul Richter and Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writers
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-bolt…

April 21, 2005

WASHINGTON — Republicans were bracing Wednesday for a "barrage" of new allegations against John R. Bolton, President Bush`s choice for U.N. ambassador, as Democrats planned to expand an investigation of the controversial nominee.

After a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation vote was unexpectedly delayed Tuesday, surprised and angry White House officials accused Democrats of exaggerating and making unproven allegations as part of an "ugly" partisan effort to derail the nominee.

The committee postponed the vote after Democrats had argued that additional time was needed to evaluate new allegations that Bolton intimidated and threatened intelligence analysts and others.

"What you`re seeing is some Democrats on the committee trumping up allegations and making unsubstantiated allegations against someone the president believes will do an outstanding job at the United Nations," said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary. He contended that the nomination was "absolutely not" a lost cause.

Bolton`s nomination was thrown into question after Sen. George V. Voinovich, an independent-minded Ohio Republican, voiced concern over the allegations and said he wanted to learn more about the nominee`s record.

Voinovich`s unexpected declaration created the possibility of a deadlocked committee vote that would block the nomination from advancing to the full Senate. The Ohio senator also forced the committee chairman, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), to agree to a delay of three weeks or more.

McClellan pointedly questioned whether Voinovich knew enough about Bolton to make an informed decision, noting that the senator had not attended the public hearings on the nomination.

"We are more than happy to answer any questions that he has, and we are in touch with him on the matter," McClellan said.

Voinovich spokeswomen Marcie Ridgway sought to rebut the White House`s assertion that he was not well informed.

"The senator has met with Bolton] personally," Ridgway said. "He was briefed on those hearings by staff." She added that Voinovich had gone to the Tuesday hearing intending to vote for Bolton.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), a moderate who also is considered a possible swing vote, said in a CNN interview that Republicans on the committee ought to "get together and talk about this" nomination. But an aide said that Chafee did not believe the White House should withdraw Bolton from consideration.

During last week`s confirmation hearings, Bolton was questioned about whether he sought to have two intelligence analysts removed or reassigned after they disagreed with his assessments. In both cases, Bolton testified that he had lost confidence in the analysts, but did not seek disciplinary action.

Since last week`s hearings, reports of other incidents in which Bolton confronted subordinates or others over disagreements have emerged, suggesting the need for further investigation, Democrats argued.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the committee, and others said evidence had emerged that called into question some of Bolton`s sworn statements. Democratic senators and aides said that new allegations about the nominee continued to trickle in and deserved to be examined.

Republicans prepared for the worst.

"It`s probably going to be two or three weeks of a barrage of this stuff," said Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who has been a leading defender of Bolton. He contended in an interview that the allegations "aren`t based on anything that`s truthful…. They`re part of a pattern of frolics and detours."

The committee could meet again May 10, after a weeklong congressional recess, aides said. Democratic and Republican committee staff members met briefly Wednesday to discuss the next phase of the deliberations. Among the options are a new public hearing, possibly with Bolton testifying. Aides also may compile a joint document laying out the evidence against him, along with a rebuttal.

The committee may interview John E. McLaughlin, the former deputy director of the CIA, and two other senior intelligence officials about allegations that Bolton sought to remove or reassign an intelligence analyst, the Associated Press reported, quoting a Democratic Senate aide.

Republicans fear that Democrats are seeking to draw out the candidacy in order to weaken and ultimately kill it, so they want time limits on the deliberations. Democratic aides denied that they intended to drag out the proceeding past mid-May.

Meanwhile, the political heat being generated by the Bolton nomination has risen noticeably since Tuesday`s confirmation vote postponement.

Some conservatives urged the White House to step up efforts to defend Bolton, who has served since 2001 as the State Department`s top arms control official.

"I think it is incumbent on the White House now to speak seriously with Republicans on that committee … to make clear why Bolton should be ambassador to the United Nations," said Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

May added that "people like me don`t believe that this has anything to do with his management style; it has to do with politics and with the fact that Bolton is a conservative."

A conservative California-based advocacy group, Move America Forward, said Wednesday that it planned to run a series of radio ads in Ohio complaining about Voinovich`s "obstruction" of Bolton`s confirmation. The group said it had collected more than $24,000 in a public appeal that began after the Tuesday committee hearing.

The stalled nomination posed a challenge for the White House and Republican leaders that also carried diplomatic overtones, given the international audience for the nomination of a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The Senate`s Democratic leader, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, said the administration would have to dig Bolton out of a political hole.

"As to whether he can reconstruct himself in that [next] hearing, only time will tell. Because right now he`s a damaged piece of goods," Reid said.

But a Republican lobbyist with close ties to the White House and the GOP leadership said the administration remained confident because candidates accused of having difficult personalities had survived such tests before. The lobbyist pointed to the case of Richard C. Holbrooke, who came under fire for his brusque manner when he was a candidate for U.N. ambassador during the Clinton administration.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in Europe, added her voice to the administration`s defense of Bolton.

"We need a representative at the United Nations, and we are at this point without someone who can engage in what is an intensifying debate on U.N. reform," Rice said. "That`s an area in which the United State is going to be a leader in, so we need to get somebody there."

*

Times staff writers Peter Wallsten and Janet Hook in Washington, and Tyler Marshall in Vilnius, Lithuania, contributed to this report.


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Es klingt wie eine Satire, aber ist es auch eine Satire? Sonst könnte es auch noch aus Olaf Henkels Buch stammen.

Hybrids could pay more gas tax
U.S. to study tariffs on miles driven, not gallons purchased
- Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04…

Washington -- The federal tax man has an eye on those increasingly popular high- mileage vehicles, gas misers whose drivers love going further between fill-ups and saving on sky-high gas prices.

The idea is simple but technologically daunting -- base gas taxes on miles driven instead of on gallons of fuel bought. And advocates say the reason for such a change is also simple -- although such fuel-efficient vehicles as hot-selling hybrids pay less in gas taxes, they`re still out on the nation`s roads contributing to congestion and wear and tear on an aging infrastructure.

A switch in the way the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax is levied could be in the offing, making it more of a user fee than a tax. By unanimous voice vote, the Senate Finance Committee approved legislation Tuesday to establish a 15-member commission to report back within two years on ways to ensure enough tax revenue to pay for the nation`s highway, bridge and public transit programs.

High on the list the panel will consider is the per-mile fee that is already the subject of a $1.25 million pilot project in Oregon that will use a special "smart`` odometer coupled with a global positioning system in every vehicle, a system invented at Oregon State University.

When the project begins later this year or early next year, every time a volunteer motorist fills up, the odometer`s information will be electronically downloaded and the fee automatically added to the gas purchase price at the pump, just like today`s per-gallon gas taxes. The GPS equipment tells the state when a vehicle has left Oregon, so motorists won`t be charged for those miles. Oregon figures it will charge the volunteers 1.25 cents per mile in taxes.

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger`s administration says the idea of a gas-tax change isn`t on his agenda.

"The bottom line is this is something that`s not on the front burner or back burner,`` said H.D. Palmer, state Department of Finance spokesman. California has studied the idea in the past, and the Legislature would have to approve any change to the current system.

Proponents of the new idea say increasing sales of fuel-efficient vehicles are only partially offset by sales of gas-guzzling SUVs and light trucks. The consumer changes affect the amount of money produced by the federal gas tax, which raised about $15.4 billion in the 2004 fiscal year. They argue the amount isn`t enough to keep pace with the nation`s growing infrastructure needs.

Opponents say the idea penalizes people for being more energy efficient, and privacy advocates worry that tracking the movements of motorists smacks of Big Brother.

"We support the effort to see how we`re going to invest in road-building, " said Matthew Jeanneret, spokesman for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. "There are not enough resources available to meet our nation`s transportation needs.``

His group endorsed studying the per-mile fee in 2001 and has also called for increasing the federal tax, which was last raised in 1993.

Congress, which has failed to reauthorize the highway and transit spending program that expired in 2003, is now considering a $284 billion, six- year program financed mainly by gas taxes. The bill will include the proposal for the tax study commission.

Asked why fuel-efficient vehicles should pay more, Jeanneret said cars and trucks "cause wear and tear to the system. The infrastructure still takes a pounding.``

But the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials opposes the idea, questioning its premise. "We believe it is a myth that the federal gas tax is becoming a less efficient source of revenue,`` said spokeswoman Jennifer Gavin.

Gavin cited a Congressional Budget Office estimate of a 3.3 percent annual increase in the federal gas tax`s annual take, meaning that it will total $20.9 billion by 2015. While hybrid vehicles are hot sellers, Gavin said, they still account for a small piece of the U.S. vehicle market and are forecast to account for 15 percent by 2020.

Instead of a per-mile fee, her group suggests that states get more leeway to create toll roads on interstate highways.

After the Finance Committee vote that created the commission to study transportation tax measures, the committee`s chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, approached the per-mile tax idea cautiously.

"I`m so attuned to actual per-gallon increases that I`m a traditionalist, but I`m willing to let the commission study it and see where they come out,`` he said.

In Oregon, the state Department of Transportation said it was pursuing the mileage fee because the gas tax is a "declining source of revenue.`` It also said it was aware of privacy concerns about equipping cars with GPS technology.

"The Road User Fee Task Force is looking at several devices to electronically calculate mileage and each of these devices can be configured in such a way that will not allow tracking of a car`s movements,`` the department says on its Web site.

But privacy advocates are worried. "It`s one more step to a surveillance society,`` said Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The right to travel freely without telling anyone is fundamental to our notions of privacy.``

Environmentalists are split somewhat on the idea.

"Attaching it to miles traveled, at first gloss, is an attractive option, " said Deron Lovaas, vehicles campaign director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It`s a proxy for how much wear and tear the roads have.`` But he said the idea of raising taxes on fuel-efficient vehicles was "a kink in the rug that would have to be ironed out.``

David Hamilton, national director of the Sierra Club`s global warming and energy program, was more emphatic. "If some vehicles use much more gas per mile, you are giving them an advantage by going to a per-mile charge, and that goes in exactly the wrong direction in helping to solve global warming and other environmental issues,`` he said.

E-mail Edward Epstein at [e-mail].

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/20/M…
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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Helicopter Shot Down, Killing 9; Govt Delayed
Thu Apr 21, 2005 08:16 AM ET

By Luke Baker
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A video grab shows the wreckage of a Russian-built commercial helicopter in
Baghdad, April 21, 2005.
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A Russian-built commercial helicopter was shot down north of Baghdad on Thursday and all nine people aboard were believed to have been killed, U.S. military sources said.

The attack, believed to be the first downing of a civilian aircraft in Iraq, comes amid a surge in guerrilla violence and puts further pressure on leaders struggling to form a government nearly three months after elections.

The Mi-8 helicopter, which has both commercial and military use, was flying near the town of Tarmiya, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, when it was hit by ground fire, possibly by a rocket-propelled grenade, the military sources said.

They said three crew and six passengers, all civilians, were on board at the time. Their nationalities were not known, although it was believed that the crew may have been Bulgarian.

The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry in Sofia said it had no information on any incident. The twin-engined Mi-8 has been in operation for more than 30 years and can carry up to 24 passengers.

Television footage received by Reuters showed mangled and burning wreckage, including rotor blades, in a deserted area.

At least two charred bodies could be seen near the site. The bulk of the aircraft was burned almost beyond recognition, although what appeared to be two engines were also visible.

Insurgents frequently fire on U.S. aircraft in Iraq and have brought down several helicopters in the past. A U.S. Chinook transporter was shot down west of Baghdad in November 2003, killing at least 16 U.S. troops and wounding more than 20.

Ten British troops died on Jan. 30 when a C-130 Hercules transport plane came down north of Baghdad. The cause remains unclear but officials have said it may have been shot down.

POLITICAL DISPUTE

The attack comes amid a surge in guerrilla activity over the past two weeks, with more than 20 car bombings in Baghdad and an increase in ambushes, shootings and assassinations.

The violence threatens to eclipse efforts by elected leaders to form a government, amid growing tensions between Iraq`s majority Shi`ite and once-dominant Sunni Muslim communities.

Hopes that a government would be announced on Thursday were scotched late on Wednesday when last-minute disagreements emerged between Shi`ite Muslims, who won the Jan. 30 election, and other factions, including interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Hussain al-Shahristani, a senior member of the main Shi`ite alliance, said they did not think a deal would be sealed on Thursday, as previously hoped.

"I think the government will not be announced today ... We want to see the Sunni Arabs represented as well ... Negotiations also continue over the allocation of some posts," Talabani told Turkey`s CNN Turk television in an interview.

Disputes surfaced when Allawi rejected an offer to join the cabinet, sources involved in the negotiations said.

"The talks were going well, but the Shi`ites offered Allawi just two ministries, not the four that he wants, and he rejected the offer," one source said, referring to ministries offered to Allawi`s political grouping.

"There was also continued disagreement over what ministries the Sunnis should get. The question really is whether the Shi`ites want to create a government of national unity, or just a Shi`ite-Kurd government," he said.

SHI`ITE-SUNNI TENSION

The constant delays in forming a government have heightened tensions between Shi`ites and Sunnis at the leadership level, and also appear to have fueled the insurgency.

Shortly after the talks, Allawi narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Al Qaeda in Iraq, a militant group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attempt in a statement on the Internet. The group has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks over the last month.

Immediately after January`s election militant activity appeared to taper, with the country buoyed by the fact that more than 8 million people had turned out to vote. But in recent weeks, there has been a marked resurgence in violence.

On Thursday, a roadside bomb hit a convoy carrying foreign security contractors on the road to Baghdad`s airport, killing two people. Three foreign contractors were killed on the same stretch of road on Wednesday, and two U.S. soldiers were killed in the same vicinity the day before.

The inability to secure the airport road, an essential link for military and civilian supplies, has come to symbolize the difficulty U.S. forces have in taking on the insurgency.

(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson, Lutfi Abu-Oun and Michael Georgy in Baghdad and Gareth Jones in Ankara)
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Latest Fatality: Apr 19, 2005

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Ann Coulter, die in dem Bild von #27896 yu sehen ist, ist vom Time Magazine, dem Magazin das sonst für den Mann des Jahres zeichnet, mit einer Titelstory gewürdigt worden.

Allgemein wird ja von den Konservativen in den USA der "liberal bias", also die angeblich linkslastige Medienlandschaft bei jeder sich bietenden Gelegenheit beklagt.
Dass nun auch das Time Magazine einer extrem rechtskonservativen Schlampe wie Ann Coulter ein Forum bietet, ist bezeichend dafür in welche Richtung die Medien in den USA tendieren.

Hier nur ein ein paar Zitate von Ann Coulter aus den letzten Jahren:

"Clinton masturbates in the sinks."---Rivera Live 8/2/99

"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, `Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It`s yours.`"---Hannity & Colmes, 6/20/01

The "backbone of the Democratic Party" is a "typical fat, implacable welfare recipient"---syndicated column 10/29/99

To a disabled Vietnam vet: "People like you caused us to lose that war."---MSNBC

"Women like Pamela Harriman and Patricia Duff are basically Anna Nicole Smith from the waist down. Let`s just call it for what it is. They`re whores."---Salon.com 11/16/00

Juan Gonzales is "Cuba`s answer to Joey Buttafuoco," a "miscreant," "sperm-donor," and a "poor man`s Hugh Hefner."---Rivera Live 5/1/00

On Princess Diana`s death: "Her children knew she`s sleeping with all these men. That just seems to me, it`s the definition of `not a good mother.` ... Is everyone just saying here that it`s okay to ostentatiously have premarital sex in front of your children?"..."[Diana is] an ordinary and pathetic and confessional - I`ve never had bulimia! I`ve never had an affair! I`ve never had a divorce! So I don`t think she`s better than I am."---MSNBC 9/12/97

"I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote."---Hannity & Colmes, 8/17/99

"I think women should be armed but should not be allowed to vote."---Politically Incorrect, 2/26/01

"If you don`t hate Clinton and the people who labored to keep him in office, you don`t love your country."---George, 7/99

"We`re now at the point that it`s beyond whether or not this guy is a horny hick. I really think it`s a question of his mental stability. He really could be a lunatic. I think it is a rational question for Americans to ask whether their president is insane."---Equal Time

"It`s enough to be impeached for the president to be a pervert."---The Case Against Bill Clinton, Coulter`s 1998 book.

"Clinton is in love with the erect penis."---This Evening with Judith Regan, Fox News Channel 2/6/00

"I think we had enough laws about the turn-of-the-century. We don`t need any more." Asked how far back would she go to repeal laws, she replied, "Well, before the New Deal...The Emancipation Proclamation would be a good start."---Politically Incorrect 5/7/97

"If they have the one innocent person who has ever to be put to death this century out of over 7,000, you probably will get a good movie deal out of it."---MSNBC 7/27/97

"If those kids had been carrying guns they would have gunned down this one child gunman. ... Don`t pray. Learn to use guns."---Politically Incorrect, 12/18/97

"The presumption of innocence only means you don`t go right to jail."---Hannity & Colmes 8/24/01

"I have to say I`m all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the `hood to be flogged publicly."---MSNBC 3/22/97

"Originally, I was the only female with long blonde hair. Now, they all have long blonde hair."---CapitolHillBlue.com 6/6/00

"I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn`t."---TV Guide 8/97

"Let`s say I go out every night, I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I`m not married."---Rivera Live 6/7/00

"Anorexics never have boyfriends. ... That`s one way to know you don`t have anorexia, if you have a boyfriend."---Politically Incorrect 7/21/97

"I think [Whitewater]`s going to prevent the First Lady from running for Senate."---Rivera Live 3/12/99

"My track record is pretty good on predictions."---Rivera Live 12/8/98

"The thing I like about Bush is I think he hates liberals."---Washington Post 8/1/00

On Rep. Christopher Shays (d-CT) in deciding whether to run against him as a Libertarian candidate: "I really want to hurt him. I want him to feel pain."---Hartford Courant 6/25/99

"The swing voters---I like to refer to them as the idiot voters because they don`t have set philosophical principles. You`re either a liberal or you`re a conservative if you have an IQ above a toaster. "---Beyond the News, Fox News Channel, 6/4/00

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that`s because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism."---MSNBC 2/8/97

"You want to be careful not to become just a blowhard."---Washington Post 10/16/98

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0111.coulterw…

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Posted on Thu, Apr. 21, 2005

Militarism threatens to bankrupt U.S. economically and morally
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/1144…
By Reed M. Smith

Michael Parenti, eminent author and historian, recently told an audience of almost 300 people in Penn State`s Schwab Auditorium that what empires do is much different from how they are represented in history by their leaders.

This has been true since Greece and Rome, for Persians in biblical times, Turks, Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, Belgians and others up to the present time.

We were always told that the United States does not do such things. America, "the land of the free and the home of the brave," is, as President Bush declared, bringing liberty, democracy, justice, peace, progress and stability to the poor and troubled nations.

A person can always look at the goodness and blessings of our country, or can look at its faults and abuses.

We now hear about our responsibility as the world`s only superpower to liberate and democratize the Middle East and to oppose tyranny everywhere. So why aren`t we intervening in Darfur, where more than 2 million innocents have been uprooted or slaughtered in a brutal, racist civil war?

In Iraq, the most prosperous country in the Middle East before our first Gulf War, we helped Saddam Hussein to gain ascendancy, and even supplied chemicals for his chemical warfare, when current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was there in the 1980s.

With an estimated 700 military bases, and American troops worldwide, the U.S. is the greatest empire in history, whether we recognize it or not. Why then are we so universally hated and resented, not just by a new breed of terrorists, but are seen abroad as an arrogant superpower, guilty of an illegal Iraq war, massive arrests, brutal raids and continuing torture?

Members of our rather phony coalition seem to be dropping like flies.

In two years, 1,547 U.S. soldiers have been killed and more than 11,664 wounded, 92 percent of them since the fall of Baghdad.

By April 9, there were 2,005 Iraqi police and guardsman deaths, and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians were killed.

Total coalition losses are 1,724 soldiers, about 90 percent from the U.S.

Congress has been largely supine. It has never officially declared any of our wars since December 1941.

As Parenti noted, the U.S. media has generally legitimized the system, as have many veterans groups, the dominant Republican Party, the right wing and many churches. A new breed of flag waving nationalists or superpatriots has been justifying if not propagandizing the war, often with lots of profitable contracts to clinch the deal.

Competent observers have said that Iraq has never been a direct threat to U.S. security, but it is now a breeding ground for terrorists as a result of the war and occupation, much of which has been shielded from American eyes.

We devastated Fallujah, a city of about 200,000, with orders, as in Vietnam, to "shoot anything that moves." The whole world, particularly the Muslim nations, was shocked.

Informed people who are not swayed by our warhawks agree that Iraq is now a mess, not a budding democracy, but another grab for oil and lucrative U.S. contracts, a la Halliburton, Boeing and others. The best thing is to get out before we kill thousands more Americans, Iraqis and others, and before we turn the Middle East into a smoking cauldron.

As in the case of Vietnam we must face facts, accept defeat -- or as Knight Ridder columnist Joseph Galloway wrote recently, just declare victory and go home.

Even Rumsfeld was almost promising that to the troops last week.

As Parenti predicted, the very next day things will start to improve.

It is up to the American people to demand that our representatives stop the warhawks` world-girdling military appetite in the Middle East and elsewhere, restore our own democracy, and devote our tax resources to urgent human needs at home and abroad.

Rampant American militarism is bankrupting our country morally and economically. The sooner we recognize that and rejoin the human race, the better.

Reed M. Smith, of State College, is a retired political science professor who taught at Penn State as a graduate assistant and later at the University of Pennsylvania, Bradley University and elsewhere.



© 2005 Centre Daily Times and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.centredaily.com

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The end of oil is closer than you think

Oil production could peak next year, reports John Vidal. Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye
John Vidal
Thursday April 21, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1464050…

Guardian
The one thing that international bankers don`t want to hear is that the second Great Depression may be round the corner. But last week, a group of ultra-conservative Swiss financiers asked a retired English petroleum geologist living in Ireland to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age.

They called Colin Campbell, who helped to found the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre because he is an industry man through and through, has no financial agenda and has spent most of a lifetime on the front line of oil exploration on three continents. He was chief geologist for Amoco, a vice-president of Fina, and has worked for BP, Texaco, Shell, ChevronTexaco and Exxon in a dozen different countries.

"Don`t worry about oil running out; it won`t for very many years," the Oxford PhD told the bankers in a message that he will repeat to businessmen, academics and investment analysts at a conference in Edinburgh next week. "The issue is the long downward slope that opens on the other side of peak production. Oil and gas dominate our lives, and their decline will change the world in radical and unpredictable ways," he says.

Campbell reckons global peak production of conventional oil - the kind associated with gushing oil wells - is approaching fast, perhaps even next year. His calculations are based on historical and present production data, published reserves and discoveries of companies and governments, estimates of reserves lodged with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, speeches by oil chiefs and a deep knowledge of how the industry works.

"About 944bn barrels of oil has so far been extracted, some 764bn remains extractable in known fields, or reserves, and a further 142bn of reserves are classed as `yet-to-find`, meaning what oil is expected to be discovered. If this is so, then the overall oil peak arrives next year," he says.

If he is correct, then global oil production can be expected to decline steadily at about 2-3% a year, the cost of everything from travel, heating, agriculture, trade, and anything made of plastic rises. And the scramble to control oil resources intensifies. As one US analyst said this week: "Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye."

But the Campbell analysis is way off the much more optimistic official figures. The US Geological Survey (USGS) states that reserves in 2000 (its latest figures) of recoverable oil were about three trillion barrels and that peak production will not come for about 30 years. The International Energy Agency (IEA) believes that oil will peak between "2013 and 2037" and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran, four countries with much of the world`s known reserves, report little if any depletion of reserves. Meanwhile, the oil companies - which do not make public estimates of their own "peak oil" - say there is no shortage of oil and gas for the long term. "The world holds enough proved reserves for 40 years of supply and at least 60 years of gas supply at current consumption rates," said BP this week.

Indeed, almost every year for 150 years, the oil industry has produced more than it did the year before, and predictions of oil running out or peaking have always been proved wrong. Today, the industry is producing about 83m barrels a day, with big new fields in Azerbaijan, Angola, Algeria, the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere soon expected on stream.

But the business of estimating oil reserves is contentious and political. According to Campbell, companies seldom report their true findings for commercial reasons, and governments - which own 90% of the reserves - often lie. Most official figures, he says, are grossly unreliable: "Estimating reserves is a scientific business. There is a range of uncertainty but it is not impossible to get a good idea of what a field contains. Reporting [reserves], however, is a political act."

According to Campbell and other oil industry sources, the two most widely used estimates of world oil reserves, drawn up by the Oil and Gas Journal and the BP Statistical Review, both rely on reserve estimates provided to them by governments and industry and do not question their accuracy.

Companies, says Campbell, "under-report their new discoveries to comply with strict US stock exchange rules, but then revise them upwards over time", partly to boost their share prices with "good news" results. "I do not think that I ever told the truth about the size of a prospect. That was not the game we were in," he says. "As we were competing for funds with other subsidiaries around the world, we had to exaggerate."

Most serious of all, he and other oil depletion analysts and petroleum geologists, most of whom have been in the industry for years, accuse the US of using questionable statistical probability models to calculate global reserves and Opec countries of drastically revising upwards their reserves in the 1980s.

"The estimates for the Opec countries were systematically exaggerated in the late 1980s to win a greater slice of the allocation cake. Middle East official reserves jumped 43% in just three years despite no new major finds," he says.

The study of "peak oil" - the point at which half the total oil known to have existed in a field or a country has been consumed, beyond which extraction goes into irreversible decline - used to be back-of-the envelope guesswork. It was not taken seriously by business or governments, mainly because oil has always been cheap and plentiful.

In the wake of the Iraq war, the rapid economic rise of China, global warming and recent record oil prices, the debate has shifted from "if" there is a global peak to "when".

The US government knows that conventional oil is running out fast. According to a report on oil shales and unconventional oil supplies prepared by the US office of petroleum reserves last year, "world oil reserves are being depleted three times as fast as they are being discovered. Oil is being produced from past discoveries, but the re­serves are not being fully replaced. Remaining oil reserves of individual oil companies must continue to shrink. The disparity between increasing production and declining discoveries can only have one outcome: a practical supply limit will be reached and future supply to meet conventional oil demand will not be available."

It continues: "Although there is no agreement about the date that world oil production will peak, forecasts presented by USGS geologist Les Magoon, the Oil and Gas Journal, and others expect the peak will occur between 2003 and 2020. What is notable ... is that none extend beyond the year 2020, suggesting that the world may be facing shortfalls much sooner than expected."

According to Bill Powers, editor of the Canadian Energy Viewpoint investment journal, there is a growing belief among geologists who study world oil supply that production "is soon headed into an irreversible decline ... The US government does not want to admit the reality of the situation. Dr Campbell`s thesis, and those of others like him, are becoming the mainstream."

In the absence of reliable official figures, geologists and analysts are turning to the grandfather of oil depletion analysis, M King Hubbert, a Shell geologist who in 1956 showed mathematically that exploitation of any oilfield follows a predictable "bell curve" trend, which is slow to take off, rises steeply, flattens and then descends again steeply. The biggest and easiest exploited oilfields were always found early in the history of exploration, while smaller ones were developed as production from the big fields declined. He accurately predicted that US domestic oil production would peak around 1970, 40 years after the period of peak discovery around 1930.

Many oil analysts now take the "Hubbert peak" model seriously, and the USGS, national and oil company figures with a large dose of salt. Similar patterns of peak discovery and production have been found throughout all the world`s main oilfields. The first North Sea discovery was in 1969, discoveries peaked in 1973 and the UK passed its production peak in 1999. The British portion of the basin is now in serious decline and the Norwegian sector has levelled off.

Other analysts are also questioning afresh the oil companies` data. US Wall street energy group Herold last month compared the stated reserves of the world`s leading oil companies with their quoted discoveries, and production levels. Herold predicts that the seven largest will all begin seeing production declines within four years. Deutsche Bank analysts report that global oil production will peak in 2014.

According to Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, a monthly magazine published by the Energy Institute in London, conventional oil reserves are now declining about 4-6% a year worldwide. He says 18 large oil-producing countries, including Britain, and 32 smaller ones, have declining production; and he expects Denmark, Malaysia, Brunei, China, Mexico and India all to reach their peak in the next few years.

"We should be worried. Time is short and we are not even at the point where we admit we have a problem," Skrebowski says. "Governments are always excessively optimistic. The problem is that the peak, which I think is 2008, is tomorrow in planning terms."

On the other hand, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome, Chad and Angola are are all expected to grow strongly.

What is agreed is that world oil demand is surging. The International Energy Agency, which collates national figures and predicts demand, says developing countries could push demand up 47% to 121m barrels a day by 2030, and that oil companies and oil-producing nations must spend about $100bn a year to develop new supplies to keep pace.

According to the IEA, demand rose faster in 2004 than in any year since 1976. China`s oil consumption, which accounted for a third of extra global demand last year, grew 17% and is expected to double over 15 years to more than 10m barrels a day - half the US`s present demand. India`s consumption is expected to rise by nearly 30% in the next five years. If world demand continues to grow at 2% a year, then almost 160m barrels a day will need to be extracted in 2035, twice as much as today.

That, say most geologists is almost inconceivable. According to industry consultants IHS Energy, 90% of all known reserves are now in production, suggesting that few major discoveries remain to be made. Shell says its reserves fell last year because it only found enough oil to replace 15-25 % of what the company produced. BP told the US stock exchange that it replaced only 89% of its production in 2004.

Moreover, oil supply is increasingly limited to a few giant fields, with 10% of all production coming from just four fields and 80% from fields discovered before 1970. Even finding a field the size of Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, by far the world`s largest and said to have another 125bn barrels, would only meet world demand for about 10 years.

"All the major discoveries were in the 1960s, since when they have been declining gradually over time, give or take the occasional spike and trough," says Campbell. "The whole world has now been seismically searched and picked over. Geological knowledge has improved enormously in the past 30 years and it is almost inconceivable now that major fields remain to be found."

He accepts there may be a big field or two left in Russia, and more in Africa, but these would have little bearing on world supplies. Unconventional deposits like tar sands and shale may only slow the production decline.

"The first half of the oil age now closes," says Campbell. "It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, allowing the population to expand six-fold. The second half now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital."

So did the Swiss bankers comprehend the seriousness of the situation when he talked to them? "There is no company on the stock exchange that doesn`t make a tacit assumption about the availability of energy," says Campbell. "It is almost impossible for bankers to accept it. It is so out of their mindset."

Crude alternatives

"Unconventional" petroleum reserves, which are not included in some totals of reserves, include:

Heavy oils

These can be pumped just like conventional petroleum except that they are much thicker, more polluting, and require more extensive refining. They are found in more than 30 countries, but about 90% of estimated reserves are in the Orinoco "heavy oil belt" of Venezuela, which has an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels. About one third of the oil is potentially recoverable using current technology.

Tar sands

These are found in sedimentary rocks and must be dug out and crushed in giant opencast mines. But it takes five to 10 times the energy, area and water to mine, process and upgrade the tars that it does to process conventional oil. The Athabasca deposits in Alberta, Canada are the world`s largest resource, with estimated reserves of 1.8 trillion barrels, of which about 280-300bn barrels may be recoverable. Production now accounts for about 20% of Canada`s oil supply.

Oil shales

These are seen as the US government`s energy stopgap. They exist in large quantities in ecologically sensitive parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah at varying depths, but the industrial process needed to extract the oil demands hot water, making it much more expensive and less energy-efficient than conventional oil. The mining operation is extremely damaging to the environment. Shell, Exxon, ChevronTexaco and other oil companies are investing billions of dollars in this expensive oil production method.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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POLITICS-US:
Delay on Bolton Vote Marks Defeat for Hawks
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28403

Jim Lobe

Demands by a key Republican senator for a two-week delay in the vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on John Bolton as Washington`s next U.N. ambassador mark a significant and potentially strategic defeat for Vice President Dick Cheney and the administration hawks he led during George W. Bush`s first presidential term.

NEW DELHI, Apr 21 (IPS) - If Bolton`s bid is defeated or, more likely, if he is forced to withdraw, chief beneficiaries will likely be the administration`s realist forces led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Robert Zoellick.

Despite their public support for the nominee, according to reports over the weekend by the Washington Post, the two had excluded Bolton from internal discussions on key issues that would normally fall within his domain.

Democrats, who emerged from the November elections dispirited and dejected, also stand to gain politically if the delay translates into Bolton`s defeat because it shatters the air of invincibility that the White House has tried so hard to perpetuate. In what some considered a risky move, the Democratic leadership decided to oppose Bolton early in the confirmation process.

Bolton, a longstanding unilateralist with frankly extreme right-wing views about the U.N. and indeed international law in general, had been expected to be approved on a 10-8, party-line vote by the Committee Tuesday.

Anti-Bolton forces had focused their lobbying efforts on the most moderate Republican Committee member, Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, to oppose the nomination, ensuring a tie vote which, under Senate rules, meant that the nomination would be defeated.

But Chafee, under intense White House pressure, refused to waver, while the Committee chairman, Richard Lugar, who had privately objected to the appointment, repeatedly rejected Democratic requests to put off the vote.

It thus came as a major surprise when Sen. George Voinovich, who had been absent for the confirmation hearings leading up to Tuesday`s meeting, said he was not prepared to vote for the nominee based on what he heard about Bolton from his colleagues.

Without the assurance that he would have a majority voting `aye`, Lugar announced that the vote would be put off until at least the week of May 7, a move that drew expressions of relief from two other moderate Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel and Chafee, who had reluctantly pledged to vote for the nomination in committee.

It was noted that no Republican during the often rancorous Committee debate offered a positive reason for voting for Bolton, insisting instead that the president was entitled to his choice as U.N. ambassador and that senators should not interfere.

While the delay does not necessarily mean that Bolton ultimately will be defeated, it makes that outcome far more likely, particularly given the virtually daily appearance in the media of more damaging revelations about Bolton`s record by former diplomats, including Republican appointees, and current officials willing to speak to reporters on background.

As Bolton`s most important backer by far, Cheney has the most to lose from his defeat, if only because of his apparent failure to anticipate the controversy that Bolton`s attitudes and past behaviour would provoke.

The White House was reportedly assured by Cheney that it would not have to spend much political capital on securing Bolton`s approval, but, what with an apparent mutiny by one Republican and great discomfort with the nomination shown by three others, this now appears to have been a major miscalculation that could prove deeply embarrassing to Bush.

Conversely, Bolton`s defeat would mark a big win for Rice and Zoellick, who appear to be building a major power centre at the State Department that is clearly capable of challenging the often-decisive foreign policy role played by Cheney during Bush`s first term.

Bolton, who served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security under Rice`s predecessor, Colin Powell, was seen as far more responsive to Cheney and neo-conservative and nationalist hawks in the Pentagon during the first term than to his putative boss, particularly with respect to frustrating the State Department`s efforts to persuade the administration to engage Iran and North Korea.

It was thought that Bolton would eventually find a home either on Cheney`s huge foreign policy staff or in the Pentagon, but the vice president prevailed on Bush to make him U.N. ambassador, which was Bolton`s second choice.

That Bush, who had just spent more than a week in Europe trying to reassure allies there that Washington was committed to the U.N., multilateralism more generally, and international law, went along with Cheney`s proposal was particularly shocking because, of all of the administration`s senior officials, Bolton probably has the longest track record of open contempt for all three, and for Washington`s European allies, as well.

Known for his belligerence, ideological certainty, self-righteousness, and a total lack of a sense of humour, Bolton, it has since been revealed, also has a history of excluding, verbally abusing, and trying to remove subordinates who disagree with him -- precisely the kind of behaviour that Voinovich has repeatedly complained about in confirmation hearings of other nominees, both Democrats and Republicans.

Worse, particularly in light of the administration`s false claims about pre-war Iraq, disclosures about Bolton`s manipulation and exaggeration of intelligence data relating to Iran and Cuba, for example; and his peculiar interest in highly classified transcripts of electronic intercepts concerning colleagues in whom he apparently lacked confidence, appear to have planted serious doubts with some Republican senators about his personal and professional integrity.

Indeed, Bolton`s nomination even appears to have divided some of the most administration`s most ardent neo-conservative supporters.

While hard-line neo-cons, including the American Enterprise Institute`s (AEI) Richard Perle and David Frum, former CIA director James Woolsey, and even Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol publicly supported the nomination, other prominent neo-cons, including Kristol`s long-time foreign-policy sidekick, Robert Kagan, as well as some of Perle`s AEI associates, such as Joshua Muravchik, apparently decided to stay out of the fray.

With neo-conservatives and the Christian Right already in some disarray due to splits in their respective ranks over the administration`s support for Israel`s disengagement plan and its opposition to the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the hawks who led the drive to war in Iraq have been able to gain real traction on any of their pet issues since the new term began, despite Powell`s departure.

If Bolton is now defeated or forced by the White House to withdraw his name, the perception in Washington will almost certainly be that the hawks` influence, and particularly that of Cheney, are on the wane not only within the administration but also among Republican lawmakers for whom Cheney is still a much-feared figure.

With so much at stake, Cheney will be very reluctant to give up, and statements by White House since the Tuesday debacle so far have stressed that Bush retains full confidence in Bolton and believes he will win confirmation.

But given the unexpectedly heavy political price already paid by the White House in very unhappy Republican moderates, Bush may decide that it`s best to pull the plug sooner rather than later so as to avoid spending anymore capital on an ill-advised appointment. (END/2005)



Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

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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/

Friday, April 22, 2005

Guerrillas Shoot down Helicopter, Killing 11 (6 Americans)

AP reports that guerrillas shot down a helicopter carrying civilian security guards on Thursday. A jihadi website claimed that the guerrillas executed the one survivor of the crash, a Bulgarian. There are thousands of civilian security guards in Iraq of various nationalities. If the Iraqi guerrillas are now able to import more sophisticated shoulder-fired missile launchers, like SA-14s, they could become extremely deadly to US military helicopters, as well. (I don`t know what weapon they used to down this helicopter.)

AP adds:


On Thursday, a roadside bomb exploded on the highway leading to Baghdad`s airport, severely damaging three SUVs carrying civilians. Police Capt Hamid Ali said two foreigners were killed and three were wounded . . . In Ramadi, a roadside bomb wounded one soldier in a U.S. convoy. Another American soldier fired his machine gun at a suspected Iraqi ambush site, killing a female Iraqi civilian, U.S. officials said in a statement. Soldiers found an electronic device near the woman that may have been used to trigger the explosion, the statement said.



Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports a string of further violent incidents not covered by most Western news services, mainly involving Iraqi police or civilians, in Mahawil, Baiji and elsewhere.

The newly elected politicians of Iraq failed again on Thursday to form a government, over 2 1/2 months after the January 30 election. Part of the problem is that the Shiite majority is only offering Iyad Allawi`s list, al-Iraqiya, 2 cabinet posts, when Allawi wants 4. Likewise there appear to be difficulties in getting the Sunni Arabs aboard. The wire service report just linked to quotes an anonymous well-connected source in Baghdad as saying "There was also continued disagreement over what ministries the Sunnis should get. The question really is whether the Shiites want to create a government of national unity, or just a Shiite-Kurd government . . ." Some Iraqis maintain that the political gridlock is contributing to a worsening of the security situation.

With the Senate passage of another emergency appropriation of $81 billion, the cost of the Iraq War and aftermath now approaches $300 billion. (It is already $300 billion if we throw in Afghanistan, on which relatively little has been spent in comparison to Iraq).

The Christian Science Monitor`s Jill Carroll, courageously reporting from Salman Pak, examines the continued and worsening problem of kidnapping for ransom in Iraq.

Resistance to seeing Australian troops come in to attempt to provide security in Samawah, al-Muthanna Province, continues to be expressed by local Iraqi officials. Samawah police chief Brig. Karim al-Zayadi is quoted by the Herald Sun as saying ` "My people need electricity and running water, not more security." ` The article ends,


Brig. Kareem warned that one of the most testing challenges for the Australians would be the complex and often-violent rivalries between local tribal groups. There were 12 main tribes, each of which could have up to six clan groups.


Everyone should please read this paragraph several times and think about what it means for US troops fighting these clans in the Sunni Arab heartland.

USA Today reports that Iraqis face shortages in clean drinking water, a problem it has been difficult to address because security needs have drained off funds for fixing it.

Iraq`s oil industry is plagued by corruption and smuggling from within, in addition to the problems of sabotage carried out by guerrillas.

The BBC attempts to clear up the mystery of the bodies found in the Tigris River near al-Suwayra, and their connection, if any, to the charges that guerrillas took Shiites captive in Madaen. It appears that President Jalal Talabani may have been incorrect to link these bodies to that incident. But the story by now has become a rollercoaster, and I am an agnostic until someone nails it down. (Everyone should remember that journalists trying to get to the bottom of the story are risking their lives because of the poor security in the country, and that it shouldn`t be any surprise that events in Iraq are murky). My own suspicion is that the jihadis want to provoke Sunni-Shiite violence, and that spreading rumors of a big kidnapping of Shiites is almost as useful for their purpose as actually committing it (and a lot less dangerous for them). That is, the story may be a black psy-ops operation of Baathist military intelligence. But the story could still turn out to have something to it.

Anthony Cordesman thinks the US military is stuck in Iraq for a while.

Tidbits from the Iraqi press from the BBC World Monitor:


` Al-Mu`tamar [Baghdad, daily newspaper in Arabic published by the Iraqi National Congress] 20 April: [MP] Mudar Shawkat suspends his National Assembly membership, demands departure of multinational forces as condition for return; US soldier insults National Assembly member, grabs his throat, ties his hands with cuffs; consensus on summoning US ambassador to offer formal apology ...`

`Al-Shahid [Baghdad, weekly independent newspaper in Arabic] 20 April: Conspiracy against Al-Ja`fari; Arab political parties try to prevent Al-Ja`fari from forming new government; Rumsfeld conveyed four US messages to Al-Ja`fari ... Where did [former parliament Speaker] Sa`dun Hammadi disappear? ... Allawi demands deputy PM post, defence portfolio, three other ministries to agree on joining new government ...`

posted by Juan @ [url4/22/2005 06:30:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/guerrillas-shoot-down-helicopter.html[/url]

The New McCarthyism at Columbia

My extended op-ed on the Columbia affair ("The new McCarthyism: A witch hunt against a Columbia professor, and the New York Times` disgraceful support for it, represent the gravest threat to academic freedom in decades") is out in Salon.com.

I had earlier addressed the controversy briefly here.

posted by Juan @ [url4/22/2005 06:20:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/new-mccarthyism-at-columbia-my.html[/url]

Al-Qaeda Fights on in Mecca

Two Muslim radicals and two policemen died Thursday in a running gun battle between the authorities and the jihadis in the Muslim holy city of Mecca. The Saudis said that the gunmen were linked to al-Qaeda. There has been a string of such violent incidents between the Saudi military and the jihadis during the past 4 years.

posted by Juan @ 4[url/22/2005 06:05:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/al-qaeda-fights-on-in-mecca-two-muslim.html[/url]

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Bush Lies, America Cries
This just in: Global terrorism rates are higher than any time since 1985. Thanks, Dubya!
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 22, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

Oh my God I feel so much safer. Don`t you?

I mean, don`t you feel so much more secure in your all-American gun-totin` oil-happy lifestyle now that we have wasted upward of $300 billion worth of your child`s future education budget, along with 1,600 disposable young American lives and over 20,000 innocent Iraqi lives and about 10,000 severed American limbs and untold wads of our spiritual and moral currency, all to protect America from terrorism that is, by every account, only getting worse? Nastier? More nebulous? More anti-American?

Here`s something funny, in a rip-your-patriotic-heart-out-and-spit-on-it sort of way: Just last week, BushCo`s State Department decided to kill the publication of an annual report on international terrorism. Why? Well, because the government`s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985. Isn`t that hilarious? Isn`t that heartwarming? Your tax dollars at work, sweetheart.

Lest you forget, this is what they do. They trim. They edit. They censor. BushCo kills what they do not like and fudges negative data where they see fit and completely rewrites whatever the hell they want, and that includes bogus WMD reports and CIA investigations and dire environmental studies and scientific proofs about everything from evolution to abortion and pollution and clean air, right along with miserable [urlunemployment data]http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0103-02.htm[/url] and all manner of research pointing up the ill health of the nation, the spirit, the world.

In other words, if BushCo doesn`t like what comes out of their own hobbled agencies and their own funded studies, they do what any good dictatorship does: They annihilate it. Now that`s good gummint!

Let`s be clear: The obliteration of the National Counterterrorism Center report merely goes to prove what so many of us already know -- that BushCo`s brutish and borderline traitorous actions since they leveraged 9/11 to blatantly screw the nation have done exactly nothing to stem the tide of terrorism -- and, in fact, have, by most every measure, apparently increased the threat of terrorism. In other words, the world is a more dangerous place because of George W. Bush. Is that clear enough?

Let`s put it another way: Under Bush, in the past five years, the U.S. has made zero new friends. But we have made a huge number of new and increasingly venomous enemies. And no, they don`t hate us because of our malls, Dubya. They don`t hate us because of our freedoms. They don`t hate us because of our low-cut jeans and our moronic 8 mpg Ford Expeditions or our corrupt Diebold voting system that snuck you into office.

They hate us, George, because of our policies. Anti-Muslim. Pro-Israel. Oil-uber-alles. Anti-U.N. Anti-Kyoto. Anti-planet. Pro-war. Pro-insularity. Pseudo-swagger. Bogus staged "town hall" meetings stocked with prescreened monosyllabic Bush sycophants. Ego. Empire.

But here`s the truly sad part, the hideous and depressing and soul-shredding part about all those young kids in the U.S. military right now, all those mostly undereducated, lower-middle-class kids, most of whom aren`t even old enough to buy beer and many of whom have barely had sex and many who got sucked into the military vortex in an honest attempt to help pay for a college education so they could go out and not find a decent job in this miserable economy. The sad part is all those kids in the military who`ve been trained/brainwashed to believe they are serving in Iraq to protect America`s freedom, to protect us from, well, something dark, and sinister, and deadly. When in fact, they`re not. Not even close.

The truth is, we were never under threat from Iraq. There were never any WMDs, and Bush knew it. Our military is protecting nothing so much as our access to future stores of petroleum, nothing so much as helping set up a giant police station in Iraq to ensure surrounding nations don`t get all uppity about just who controls the rights to those oil fields.

So let`s get honest and just ask it outright: Is this a worthy use of the massive bloated machine that is the U.S. military? Of the largest and most advanced fighting force in the world? To protect the flow of oil to the most gluttonous and wasteful and least accountable developed nation on the planet? Is this worth so many young American lives?

You already know the answer. Ask any oil exec. Any government economist. Any BushCo war hawk or auto manufacturer or the leaders of any major manufacturing industry. Ask the president himself. They all say the same thing: You`re goddamn right it is.

Here, then, is the warped, convoluted irony: We went to war under the lie of a Saddam-fueled terrorism threat that never existed. We are at war, instead, to protect our oil and to establish regional control, an act that, in turn, has destabilized the Middle East even further and is actually inciting much of the very terrorism we were ostensibly there to battle in the first place, thus producing a level of anti-U.S. hatred not even a (still alive and apparently very chipper) Osama bin Laden could have wet dreamed. Isn`t democracy fun?

We are not "spreading democracy" by invading Iraq. We are not giving a gift of a more peaceable Iraq to a grateful world. That is merely insidious Republican PR spin. Right now, the U.S. military is, in short, protecting your right to a $3 gallon of gas, which will soon be $4 and then maybe $5 and $6 as we are running out of the stuff faster than anyone thought and the fight for that which remains will only turn uglier and more violent and so I have to ask again, do you feel safer?

Because if you say yes, you are, quite simply, lying. Or delusional. Or you have had your brain edited by BushCo. Or those are some mighty powerful drugs you are obviously taking and you might wish to consider switching to aspirin and wine and Fleshbot.com.

They say that violence is the last refuge of a desperate nation. And violence under the guise of secrecy and outright lie such as BushCo has foisted upon the nation is the last refuge of a nation of thugs. Yes, I`m looking at you, Rummy. I`m looking at you, Cheney. I`m not looking at you, Karl Rove, because looking at you makes my colon clench and looking at you makes birds die and looking at you makes small children feel hopeless and lost, like the world is full of black venomous hate and bilious condescension that is aimed squarely at their heads, like a gun.

It`s true. We are living in a nation run by overprivileged alcoholic frat boys and power-mad thugs. This much we know. This much we need to be reminded of, over and over again, until we finally wake up.

Ah, but there is good news. There is always good news. The good news is, they are now confiscating all cigarette lighters at the airport. In the name of safety. In the name of homeland security. In the name of America, apple pie, babies, puppies, Jesus and guns. Lighters are now forbidden on all air travel. I mean, thank God. I feel safer already.


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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Friday, April 22, 2005
War News for Friday, April 22, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, four wounded, in a suicide bomb attack aimed at Iyad Allawi’s convoy in Baghdad. Allawi escaped injury. At least two Iraqi civilians killed and eight wounded in three other bombings in the capital. US and Iraqi National Guard base in Ramadi attacked by two car bombs, no word on casualties.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, one wounded in roadside bombing north of Talafar. At least six other people, including three foreign civilians, killed in additional bombings and shootings in Ramadi and Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One Australian, one Canadian, and one US security guard killed in ambush on Baghdad’s airport road. (Note: These are likely the three foreign civilians referenced in the post above.)

Bring ‘em on: Bodies of 19 executed Iraqi soldiers found near Beiji and it is reported that two other soldiers had been shot to death when the 19 were taken hostage three or four days ago. (Note: This appears to be a different incident than the one reported a few days ago of 19 Iraqi soldiers executed in a soccer stadium in Haditha.) Four Iraqi border guards, including a colonel, wounded in a roadside bombing near Basra. Two US Marines killed in bombing in Al-Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Ten Iraqi civilians dead and 15 wounded in car bombing of a Shiite mosque in Baghdad. Two interior ministry employees and one police officer killed, one police officer and two civilians wounded in suicide car bombing of an Iraqi police checkpoint in Baghdad


If you’re not happy with the reality you have just pull a new one out of your butt: Despite a two-week upswing in the level of violence, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said Thursday the average number of attacks remained inferior to those before the United States returned sovereignty to Iraqis in June.

"The commanders wonder whether (the insurgents) are marshalling their dwindling capacity on being able to conduct ... what appears to be better coordinated attacks -- more spectacular and perhaps fewer more spectacular attacks," he said.

"But the fact is that the security and coalition are developing some capacity to interrupt these things or to stop them before they cause real damage," he added.

The upbeat assessment followed a week of multiple car bombings, an assassination attempt against outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, killings of top Iraqi officers and reports of dozens of bodies pulled from the Tigris river.


The price of money: Six Blackwater bodyguards were among 11 civilians killed Thursday when a helicopter was shot down about 12 miles north of Baghdad. A seventh Blackwater guard was killed near Ramadi the same day, when a bomb exploded next to one of the company`s armored personnel carriers.

It was the largest toll in a single day for the military contractor since its armed guards entered Iraq to protect American diplomats.

At least 18 Blackwater guards have died in Iraq, including four whose slaying and mutilation in Fallujah made international news in March 2004. Two of the corpses were hung from a bridge, triggering a bloody three-week siege of the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad


If the Iraqis don`t need `em, I bet they can find work at Guantanamo: Iraqi leaders trying to rebuild the country`s government are struggling over whether to enlist some of Iraq`s most experienced intelligence operatives.

The problem is that the officers` training comes from working at the fear-inspiring agencies once run by Saddam Hussein`s ruling party.

"There is a fear among some Iraqis that I talk to that ex-Baathists are burrowing into these organizations with the express purpose of waiting for the opportune moment, such as when the U.S. leaves, to use these security organizations to make a big move," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert with the Congressional Research Service, which provides analysis to lawmakers.

He said he believes the fears are well founded.


Maybe they could interrogate this guy - again: Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a little-publicized lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of an Iraqi immigrant falsely imprisoned by U.S. officials. The story of Abdul Ameer Yousef Habeeb has largely escaped the public’s eye, but it speaks volumes about the real cost of the United States’ ongoing war on terrorism.

Habeeb fled his native country in 2002, gaining refugee status in the U.S. after years of persecution under Saddam Hussein. While traveling by train from Seattle to Washington, D.C., in April 2003, Habeeb was confronted by U.S. Border Patrol agents at a stop in northern Montana. After brief questioning, he was arrested and charged with failing to comply with U.S. requirements that nonimmigrants from certain countries be photographed and fingerprinted. U.S. officials began deportation proceedings within 24 hours, and Habeeb spent the next eight days behind bars.

By all indications, Habeeb’s only crimes that day were his broken English and Arab appearance.

The case might not be the most egregious example of the war on terrorism trampling the very freedoms it aims to protect, but it does have an ugly irony that should make U.S. officials cringe. Habeeb was imprisoned twice under Saddam and has the scars to prove it. So April 1, 2003, while U.S. troops were advancing toward Baghdad in a campaign to liberate Iraqis from tyranny, zealous Border Patrol agents were stripping Habeeb of his hard-won civil liberties.


Marla Ruzicka’s last: In my two years in Iraq, the one question I am asked the most is: "How many Iraqi civilians have been killed by American forces?" The American public has a right to know how many Iraqis have lost their lives since the start of the war and as hostilities continue.

In a news conference at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in March 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks said, "We don`t do body counts." His words outraged the Arab world and damaged the U.S. claim that its forces go to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties.

During the Iraq war, as U.S. troops pushed toward Baghdad, counting civilian casualties was not a priority for the military. However, since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations over and the U.S. military moved into a phase referred to as "stability operations," most units began to keep track of Iraqi civilians killed at checkpoints or during foot patrols by U.S. soldiers.

Here in Baghdad, a brigadier general commander explained to me that it is standard operating procedure for U.S. troops to file a spot report when they shoot a non-combatant. It is in the military`s interest to release these statistics.


Casualty Reports

Local story: Fountain, CO, contractor working for Blackwater killed outside of Baghdad.

Local story: Danville, KY, contractor working for Blackwater killed outside of Baghdad.

Local story: Lexington, KY, contractor killed on Baghdad’s airport road.



# posted by matt : 10:32 AM
Comment (0) | Trackback (0)
Thursday, April 21, 2005
The Lancet Study

Via Chicken Yogurt there’s an interesting blog discussion developing here and here concerning the Lancet study and an earlier study by the New England Journal of Medicine which is [urlhere.]http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/1/13[/url]

Quite extraordinary. He refers to this article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which finds (Table 2) that in a survey of 894 US Army soldiers, 116 of them (out of 861 who responded to the survey question) regarded themselves as having been personally responsible for the death of a noncombatant. That’s 13.47% (I don’t know why the NEJM rounds it to 14% and suspect someone has made a transcription error).

I think that the most sensible way to extrapolate from this (which is not to say that this is a legitimate calculation; call it the least bad way to create a number) is to say that, given that it was an eight month tour of duty, we got 116 noncombatant deaths in about 215000 troop-days. There were 250,000 US and 45,000 British troops (plus other coalition forces) in the initial assault on Iraq and about 130k US and 20K coalition troops by December. I’m guessing that this gives us 3 months of 300k troops and 5 months of 150k troops. That would be roughly 50m troop-days in the eight months of the tour of duty of the troops surveyed.

50,000,000 x (116/215,000) = about 27,000 civilian deaths. Note that UK troops would have seen fewer noncombatant deaths per troop-day, but units like the 815 US Marines surveyed saw twice the rate of the regular Army units – also, I am not allowing for the fact that some soliders might have been responsible for multiple noncombatant deaths.

This is really quite consistent with the Lancet study; if you crudely scale it up from eight months to eighteen you get 60,000 deaths, which is significantly more than the Lancet team would have attributed to coalition troops. I think that the evidence is getting really rather strong that something has gone very badly wrong with this war.


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Tomgram:
Bacevitch on the Neocon Revolution and Militarism
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2337

On Wednesday, I posted The Normalization of War, the first of two excerpts from a remarkable new book -- Andrew J. Bacevitch`s The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War. In the second excerpt, Bacevitch takes up the subject of neoconservatism, which he terms "a singularly inapt label that suggests an ideological rigor that neocons have never demonstrated nor perhaps even sought." Speaking of the early neocons, including figures like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, he points out that, "from the outset, the neoconservative identification with the post-Vietnam Right was a marriage of convenience rather than a union of kindred spirits."

Below, in an excerpt adapted from the book and posted with the kind permission both of the author and of his publisher, Oxford University Press, Bacevitch takes up the second generation of neocons, the new boys who moved to Washington and, from various think tanks and front groups, laid siege to governmental policy-making. Though the label neocon has increasingly become one of opprobrium, Bacevitch suggests that "the heat generated by the term also stands as a backhanded tribute, an acknowledgement that the neoconservative impact has been substantial." As indeed it has – to the misfortune of us all. He suggests as well that "one aspect of the neoconservative legacy has been to foster the intellectual climate necessary for the emergence of the new American militarism." His discussion of that legacy follows.
Tom

New Boys in Town
The Neocon Revolution and American Militarism
By Andrew J. Bacevich

In our own time -- and especially since the ascendancy of George W. Bush to the presidency -- "neoconservative" has become a term of opprobrium, frequently accompanied by ad hominem attacks and charges of arrogance and hubris. But the heat generated by the term also stands as a backhanded tribute, an acknowledgment that the neoconservative impact has been substantial. It is today too soon to offer a comprehensive assessment of that impact. The discussion of neoconservatism offered here has a more modest objective, namely, to suggest that one aspect of the neoconservative legacy has been to foster the intellectual climate necessary for the emergence of the new American militarism.

As a practical matter, the task of reinventing neoconservatism for a post-Communist world -- and of spelling out an "imperial self-definition" of American purpose -- fell to a new generation. To promote that effort, leading members of that new generation created their own institutions.

The passing of the baton occurred in 1995. That year, Norman Podhoretz stepped down as editor of Commentary. That same year, William Kristol founded a new journal, the Weekly Standard, which in short order established itself as the flagship publication of second-generation neoconservatives. Although keeping faith with neoconservative principles that Commentary had staked out over the previous two decades -- and for a time even employing Norman`s son John Podhoretz in a senior editorial position -- the Standard was from the outset an altogether different publication. From its founding, Commentary had been published by the American Jewish Committee, an august and distinctly nonpartisan entity. The Weekly Standard relied for its existence on the largesse of Rupert Murdoch, the notorious media mogul. Unlike Commentary, which had self-consciously catered to an intellectual elite, the Standard -- printed on glossy paper, replete with cartoons, caricatures, and political gossip -- had a palpably less lofty look and feel. It was by design smart rather than stuffy. Whereas Commentary had evolved into a self-consciously right-wing version of the self-consciously progressive Dissent, the Standard came into existence as a neoconservative counterpart to the neoliberal New Republic. Throughout Norman Podhoretz`s long editorial reign, Commentary had remained an urbane and sophisticated journal of ideas, aspiring to shape the terms of political debate even as it remained above the muck and mire of politics as such. Beginning with volume 1, number 1, the editors of the Standard did not disguise the fact that they sought to have a direct and immediate impact on policy; not ideas as such but political agitation defined the purpose of this new enterprise.

Better than anything else, location told the tale. Commentary`s editorial offices were on Manhattan`s East Side; for first-generation neoconservatives, the East River on one side and the Hudson on the other defined the universe. In contrast, the Standard set up shop just a few blocks from the White House; for William Kristol and his compatriots, the perimeter of the Washington Beltway delineated the world that mattered.

The Power of Positive Thinking

What emerged as the hallmarks of this post–Cold War variant of neoconservatism? Unlike their elders, second-generation neoconservatives did not define themselves in opposition -- to Communism, to the New Left, or to the sixties. Theirs was no longer an "ideology of anti-ideology." Rather, they were themselves advocates of a positive ideological agenda, a theology that brought fully into view the radical implications -- in John Judis`s formulation, the "inverted Trotskyism" -- embedded within the neoconservative insurgency from the outset.

Fearing the implications certain to flow from an America that was weak or tormented by self-doubt, the elder statesmen of the neoconservative movement had labored to restore to the idea of American power the legitimacy that it had possessed prior to the sixties. With American power now fully refurbished -- and seemingly vindicated by the outcome of the Cold War -- the second generation went a step further, promulgating the notion that the moment was now ripe for the United States to use that power -- especially military power -- to achieve the final triumph of American ideals. In this sense, the neoconservatives who gravitated to the Weekly Standard showed themselves to be the most perceptive of all of Woodrow Wilson`s disciples. For the real Wilson (in contrast to either the idealized or the demonized Wilson) had also seen military power as an instrument for transforming the international system and cementing American primacy.

Efforts to promote "a neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence" found expression in five convictions that together form the foundation of second-generation neoconservative thinking about American statecraft.

First was the certainty that American global dominion is, in fact, benign and that other nations necessarily see it as such. Thus, according to Charles Krauthammer, a frequent contributor to the Weekly Standard, "we are not just any hegemon. We run a uniquely benign imperium. This is not mere self-congratulation; it is a fact manifest in the way others welcome our power."

However much they might grumble, the baby-boomer neocons believed, other nations actually yearned for the United States to lead and, indeed, to sustain its position as sole superpower, seeing American dominance as both compatible with their own interests and preferable to any remotely plausible alternative. Despite "all bleating about hegemony, no nation really wants genuine multipolarity," Robert Kagan observed in this regard. "Not only do countries such as France and Russia shy away from the expense of creating and preserving a multipolar world; they rightly fear the geopolitical consequences of destroying American hegemony." According to Kagan, the cold hard reality of U.S. supremacy was sure to have "a claming effect on the international enviroment, inducing other powers to focus their energies and resources elsewhere." Joshua Muravchik concurred; rather than eliciting resistance, American dominance could be counted on to "have a soothing effect on the rest of the world." With the passing of the Cold War, wrote Charles Krauthammer, "an ideologically pacified North seeks security and order by aligning its foreign policy behind that of the United States… [This] is the shape of things to come."

Failure on the part of the United States to sustain its imperium would inevitably result in global disorder, bloody, bitter, and protracted: this emerged as the second conviction animating neoconservatives after the Cold War. As a result, proposals for organizing the world around anything other than American power elicited derision for being woolly-headed and fatuous. Nothing, therefore, could be allowed to inhibit the United States in the use of that power.

On this point no one was more emphatic than Krauthammer. "Collective security is a mirage," he wrote. For its part, "the international community is a fiction." "‘The allies` is a smaller version of ‘the international community`--and equally fictional." "The United Nations is guarantor of nothing. Except in a formal sense, it can hardly be said to exist." As a result, "when serious threats arise to American national interests… unilateralism is the only alternative to retreat."

Or more extreme still, "The alternative to unipolarity is chaos." For Krauthammer the incontrovertible fact of unipolarity demanded that the United States face up to its obligations, "unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them." The point was one to which younger neoconservatives returned time and again. For Kristol and Robert Kagan, the choice facing Americans was clear-cut. On the one hand loomed the prospect of "a decline in U.S. power, a rise in world chaos, and a dangerous twenty-first century"; on the other hand was the promise of safety, achieved through "a Reaganite reassertion of American power and moral leadership." There existed "no middle ground."

A Military Transformation of the International Order

The third conviction animating second-generation neoconservatives related to military power and its uses. In a nutshell, they concluded that nothing works like force. Europeans, wrote Robert Kagan, might imagine themselves "entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant`s ‘Perpetual Peace.`" Americans of a neoconservative bent knew better. In their judgment, the United States remained "mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might." Employing that military might with sufficient wisdom and determination could bring within reach peace, prosperity, democracy, respect for human rights, and American global primacy extending to the end of time.

The operative principle was not to husband power but to put it to work -- to take a proactive approach. "Military strength alone will not avail," cautioned Kagan, "if we do not use it actively to maintain a world order which both supports and rests upon American hegemony." For neoconservatives like Kagan, the purpose of the Defense Department was no longer to defend the United States or to deter would-be aggressors but to transform the international order by transforming its constituent parts. Norman Podhoretz had opposed U.S. intervention in Vietnam "as a piece of arrogant stupidity" and had criticized in particular the liberal architects of the war for being "only too willing to tell other countries exactly how to organize their political and economic institutions." For the younger generation of neoconservatives, instructing others as to how to organize their countries -- employing coercion if need be -- was not evidence of arrogant stupidity; it was America`s job.

By implication, neoconservatives were no longer inclined to employ force only after having exhausted all other alternatives. In the 1970s and 1980s, the proximate threat posed by the Soviet Union had obliged the United States to exercise a certain self-restraint. Now, with the absence of any counterweight to American power, the need for self-restraint fell away. Indeed, far from being a scourge for humankind, war itself -- even, or perhaps especially, preventive war -- became in neoconservative eyes an efficacious means to serve idealistic ends. The problem with Bill Clinton in the 1990s was not that he was reluctant to use force but that he was insufficiently bloody-minded. "In Haiti, in Somalia, and elsewhere" where the United States intervened, lamented Robert Kagan, "Clinton and his advisers had the stomach only to be halfway imperialists. When the heat was on, they tended to look for the exits." Such halfheartedness suggested a defective appreciation of what power could accomplish. Neoconservatives knew better. "Military conquest," enthused Muravchik, "has often proved to be an effective means of implanting democracy." Michael Ledeen went even further, declaring that "the best democracy program ever invented is the U.S. Army." "Peace in this world," Ledeen added, "only follows victory in war."

By their own lights, the neoconservatives of the 1990s did not qualify as warmongers, but once having gotten a whiff of gunpowder during the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91, they developed a hankering to repeat the experience. The neoconservative complaint about Operation Desert Storm was that President George H. W. Bush and his commanders had failed to press the attack. In their eyes, the war demonstrated that the U.S. military was a superb instrument wielded by excessively timid officers, of whom General Colin Powell was the ultimate embodiment. "One of the [Gulf] war`s important lessons," wrote one neoconservative, "is that America`s military leadership is far too cautious… Now the success of that campaign has had the effect of enhancing the prestige of our military leadership while doing little or nothing to change its underlying attitude to fighting. Thus today and tomorrow it may feel even less inhibited in opposing the use of force than it did before the Gulf war." Indeed, promoting the assertive use of American military power became central to the imperial self-definition devised by second-generation neoconservatives.

Using force to advance the prospects of peace and democracy implied that the United States ought to possess military power to spare. The fourth conviction animating second-generation neoconservatives was a commitment to sustaining and even enhancing American military supremacy. Recall that throughout the 1990s, even before Osama bin Laden declared his jihad against America, U.S. defense spending remained at Cold War levels despite the absence of the Cold War. Even so, neoconservatives assessed the Pentagon`s budget as completely inadequate and pressed for more. Highly respected historians of a neoconservative persuasion even charged that the United States was repeating the folly of Great Britain in the period between the world wars: engaging in de facto unilateral disarmament. With the Cold War now history, it seemed, the world was becoming even more dangerous, and the United States therefore needed more military power than ever before. Whether or not a proximate threat existed, it was incumbent upon the Pentagon to maintain the capability "to intervene decisively in every critical region" of the world.

To alarmists, the prospect of conflict without end beckoned. Surveying the world, Frederick W. Kagan, brother of Robert, concluded in 1999 that "America must be able to fight Iraq and North Korea, and also be able to fight genocide in the Balkans and elsewhere without compromising its ability to fight two major regional conflicts. And it must be able to contemplate war with China or Russia some considerable (but not infinite) time from now." The peace that followed victory was to be a long time coming.

Dealing with the "Professional Pessimists"

The fifth and final conviction that imparted a distinctive twist to the views of second-generation neoconservatives was their hostility toward realism, whether manifesting itself as a deficit of ideals (as in the case of Henry Kissinger) or an excess of caution (as in the case of Colin Powell). As long as the Cold War had persisted, neoconservatives and realists had maintained an uneasy alliance, based on their common antipathy for the Soviet Union. But once the Cold War ended, so too did any basis for cooperation between the two groups. From the neoconservative perspective, realism constituted a problem. Realism was about defending national interests, not transforming the global order. Realists had a marked aversion to crusades and a marked respect for limits. In the neoconservative lexicon, the very notion of "limits" was anathema. To the extent that realists after the Cold War retained influence in foreign policy circles, they were likely to obstruct neoconservative ambitions. So second-generation neocons trained their gunsights on realism and shot to kill.

The problem with realists, complained Robert Kagan, was that they were "professional pessimists." In that regard there had always been "something about realism that runs directly counter to the fundamental principles of American society." The essential issue, according to Kagan, was this: "if the United States is founded on universal principles, how can Americans practice amoral indifference when those principles are under siege around the world? And if they do profess indifference, how can they manage to avoid the implication that their principles are not, in fact, universal?" To Kagan and other neoconservatives the answer was self-evident: indifference to the violation of American ideals abroad was not simply wrong; it was un-American. Worse, such indifference pointed inevitably down a slippery slope leading back toward the 1960s or even the 1930s. An authentically American foreign policy would reject amorality and pessimism; it would refuse altogether to accept the notion of limits or constraints.

As the 1990s unfolded, neoconservatives pressed their case for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity," emphasizing the use of armed force to promulgate American values and perpetuate American primacy. Most persistently, even obsessively, neoconservatives throughout the Clinton years lobbied for decisive U.S. action to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. From a neoconservative perspective, the Iraqi dictator`s survival after Desert Storm exposed as nothing else the cynicism and shortsightedness of the realists who had dominated the administration of George H. W. Bush and who had prevented the American army from completing its proper mission -- pursuing the defeated Iraqi army all the way to Baghdad. Topping the agenda of the second-generation neoconservatives was a determination to correct that error, preferably by mobilizing America`s armed might to destroy the Baathist regime. "Bombing Iraq Isn`t Enough," declared the title of one representative op-ed published by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in January 1998. It was time for the gloves to come off, they argued, "and that means using air power and ground forces, and finishing the job left undone in 1991."

Neocons yearned to liberate Iraq, as an end in itself but also as a means to an eminently larger end. "A successful intervention in Iraq," wrote Kagan in February 1998, "would revolutionize the strategic situation in the Middle East, in ways both tangible and intangible, and all to the benefit of American interests." A march on Baghdad was certain to have a huge demonstration effect. It would put dictators around the world on notice either to mend their ways or share Saddam`s fate. It would silence doubters who questioned America`s ability to export its values. It would discredit skeptics who claimed to see lurking behind neoconservative schemes the temptations of empire, the dangers of militarism, and the prospect of exhaustion and overstretch.

Above all, forcibly overthrowing Saddam Hussein would affirm the irresistibility of American military might. As such, the armed liberation of Iraq would transform U.S. foreign policy; not preserving the status quo but promoting revolutionary change would thereafter define the main purpose of American statecraft. After all, wrote Michael Ledeen well before 9/11, stability was for "tired old Europeans and nervous Asians." The United States was "the most revolutionary force on earth," its "inescapable mission to fight for the spread of democracy." The operative word was fight. According to Ledeen, Mao was precisely correct: revolution sprang "from the barrel of a gun." The successful ouster of Saddam Hussein could open up whole new vistas of revolutionary opportunity.

The Neoconservatives Become the Establishment

What did all of this expenditure of intellectual energy actually yield? During the decade between the end of the Cold War and the onset of the global war on terror, the achievements of second-generation neoconservatives compare favorably with those of the anti-Communist liberals who in the immediate aftermath of World War II created the ideological foundation for what became a durable postwar foreign policy consensus. Through argument, organization, and agitation, leading liberal intellectuals of the 1940s such as the historian Arthur Schlesinger and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr imbued the muscular, implacably anti-Stalinist internationalism that they favored with the appearance of offering the only acceptable basis for U.S. foreign policy. To diverge from this "the vital center" of American politics, which they themselves defined and occupied, as Senator Robert Taft on the right and former vice president Henry Wallace on the left proposed to do, became almost by definition perverse.

When deciding how to respond to growing Communist influence in Western Europe or to the invasion of South Korea, President Harry S. Truman did not necessarily pause to consult the latest scribblings of Schlesinger or Niebuhr. The influence of intellectuals on policy is seldom that straightforward. Indirectly, however, these Cold War liberals helped to lend respectability to certain propositions that in the 1930s might have seemed outlandish -- for example, the decision to permanently station U.S. troops in Europe and to create the apparatus of the national security state. In short, they fostered a climate congenial to Truman`s pursuit of certain hard-line anti-Communist policies and increased the political risks faced by those inclined to question such policies.

During the 1990s, the intellectual offspring of Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz repeated this trick. By the end of that decade, neoconservatives were no longer insurgents; they had transformed themselves into establishment figures. Their views entered the mainstream of public discourse and became less controversial. Through house organs like the Standard, in essays published by influential magazines such as Foreign Affairs, through regular appearances on TV talk shows and at conferences sponsored by the fellow-traveling American Enterprise Institute, and via the agitprop of the Project for the New American Century, they warned of the ever-present dangers of isolationism and appeasement, called for ever more munificent levels of defense spending, and advocated stern measures to isolate, punish, or overthrow ne`er-do-wells around the world.

As a mark of the growing respectability of such views, each of the three leading general-interest daily newspapers in the United States had at least one neocon offering regular foreign policy commentary -- Max Boot writing for the Los Angeles Times,, David Brooks for the New York Times, and both Charles Krauthammer and Robert Kagan for the Washington Post. Neoconservative views also dominated the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. As a direct consequence of this determined rabble-rousing, neocon views about the efficacy of American military power and the legitimacy of its use gained wide currency. On issues ranging from ethnic cleansing in Bosnia to the "rise" of China to the proper response to terror, neoconservatives recast the public policy debate about the obligations imposed upon and prerogatives to be claimed by the sole superpower. They kept the focus on the issues that they believed mattered most: an America that was strong, engaged, and even pugnacious.

Ideas that even a decade earlier might have seemed reckless or preposterous now came to seem perfectly reasonable. A good example was the issue of regime change in Iraq. On January 26, 1998, William Kristol and Robert Kagan along with more than a dozen other neoconservative luminaries sent a public letter to President Bill Clinton denouncing the policy of containing Iraq as a failure and calling for the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein. To persist in the existing "course of weakness and drift," the signatories warned ominously, was to "put our interests and our future at risk." Nine months later, Clinton duly signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, passed by large majorities in both houses of Congress. That legislation declared that it had now become the policy of the United States government to "remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein," with legislators authorizing the expenditure of $99 million for that purpose. Clinton showed little enthusiasm for actually implementing the measure, and most of the money remained unspent. But neoconservative efforts had done much to create a climate in which it had become impolitic to suggest aloud that publicly declaring the intent to overthrow regimes not to the liking of the United States might be ill-advised. At the end of the 1940s, thanks to the Cold War liberals, no politician with the slightest interest in self-preservation was going to risk even the appearance of being soft on the Soviet Union. At the end of the 1990s, thanks to the neoconservatives, no politician was going to take the chance of being tagged with being soft on Saddam.

In fact, the grand vision entertained by second-generation neoconservatives demanded that the United States shatter the status quo. New conditions, they argued, absolved Americans from any further requirement to adhere to the norms that had defined the postwar international order. Osama bin Laden and the events of 9/11 provided the tailor-made opportunity to break free of the fetters restricting the exercise of American power.

Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran, he has a doctorate in history from Princeton and was a Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is the author of several books, including the just published The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War.

Copyright 2005 Andrew J. Bacevich

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War, copyright © 2005 by Andrew J. Bacevich. Used by permission of the author and Oxford University Press, Inc.

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posted April 22, 2005 at 10:23 am

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The new McCarthyism
A witch hunt against a Columbia professor, and the New York Times` disgraceful support for it, represent the gravest threat to academic freedom in decades.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/04/22/mccarthy/pri…
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By Juan Cole
April 22, 2005 | A member of the U.S. Congress calls for an assistant professor at a major university to be summarily fired. The right-wing tabloid press runs a series of vicious attacks on him, often misquoting him and perpetuating previous misquotes. Opinion pieces attacking "tenured radicals" and questioning professors` patriotism use him as their centerpiece. All of these attacks are spurred by a propaganda film made by an advocacy group, in which anonymous accusations are made and the professor is not given an opportunity to respond to the allegations.

It is not 1953, the Congress member is not Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and the professor is not being accused of being a communist. No, it is 2005, the Congress member is Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., and the professor is being accused of being anti-Israel.

The lesson for academics, and American society as a whole: McCarthyism is unacceptable except when criticism of Israel is involved.

The targeted professor is Joseph Massad, of the Middle East Languages and Cultures Department at Columbia University. Massad is the author of "Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan" (Columbia University Press, 2001), and of a forthcoming book treating the sexual depictions of Arabs in colonial literature, "Desiring Arabs." He is well-published, and his first book received rave reviews in journals such as Choice and the American Historical Review. His career would have been no more controversial than that of any academic historian working on Argentina or Uganda, had he not been a Palestinian-American teaching about Israel and Palestine in New York City. Nor, had he been critical of Argentinean or Ugandan policies, would any eyebrows have been raised in the United States.

The attacks on Massad, and two other professors in the department, were led by off-campus right-wing Zionist organizations aligned with Israel`s Likud Party -- notably a murky Boston-based organization called "the David Project," which produced the film in which the accusations were made. (In fact, according to an in-depth report by Scott Sherman in the Nation, there is no single "film"; at least six versions exist, and it has never been screened for the public. When the Nation asked to view it, the David Project refused to make it available. Its head, Charles Jacobs, also refused to provide details to the Nation about the group`s financial backers or its ties to professional pro-Israel lobbyists.)

Almost none of the allegations against Massad (anti-Semitism, mistreatment of students, likening Israel to Nazi Germany) came from students who had taken his courses. In the most serious case, an allegation that Massad angrily told a student, "If you`re going to deny the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, then you can get out of my classroom," the charge was corroborated by one other student and one auditor, but three other individuals present said they had no recollection of the episode taking place, and it did not appear in Massad`s teaching evaluations.

Columbia president Lee Bollinger appointed an ad hoc faculty grievance committee to look into the accusations. After a lengthy investigation, the committee issued a report. It found Massad not guilty of anti-Semitism or of punishing pro-Israel students with poor grades. (Indeed, it singled him out for unequivocably denouncing anti-Semitism.) In the case of the incident described above, it found it credible that "Massad became angered at a question that he understood to countenance Israeli conduct of which he disapproved, and that he responded heatedly. While we have no reason to believe that Professor Massad intended to expel Ms. Shanker from the classroom (she did not, in fact, leave the class), his rhetorical response to her query exceeded commonly accepted bounds by conveying that her question merited harsh public criticism." In his response to the report, Massad denies that this incident took place, pointed out logical fallacies in the report`s reasoning, and criticized it for failing to connect the charges with the organized political campaign against him.

Although it was little noted in the press, the report did indeed acknowledge that Massad in particular and the department in general had been the target of an ongoing campaign of intimidation. It noted that for several years, after pieces appeared in the tabloid press blasting the department as anti-Israel, many non-students, clearly hostile and with ideological agendas, had been attending classes in the department, interrupting lectures with hostile asides and inhibiting classroom debate. One individual began filming a class without permission. Chillingly, the report noted, "Testimony that we received indicated that in February 2002 Professor Massad had good reason to believe that a member of the Columbia faculty was monitoring his teaching and approaching his students, requesting them to provide information on his statements in class as part of a campaign against him."

Whether the disputed charges against Massad, fomented by outside groups with obvious agendas, merited a major investigation by Columbia is a matter of debate. Many students and faculty at Columbia believe the investigation should never have been launched in the first place. Having undertaken the inquiry, however, the ad hoc committee rightfully understood that its charge was narrow -- that its mandate was to investigate "conduct": that is, behavior and "civility," not views. To prescribe some views and ban others would contravene the most deeply held values of academic life. As the report noted, "We are committed, individually and collectively, to the right of all members of the Columbia community to hold and espouse a range of opinions, including those that make others uncomfortable. We focused our attention on conduct, and on the relationship between that conduct and the obligation for all of us to maintain a civil and tolerant learning environment."

Even the narrow charge is problematic. The line separating "views" and "conduct" is difficult to demarcate in any objective way, and the place of "civility" in university teaching is not self-evident. In the film "The Paper Chase," John Houseman played the curmudgeonly Professor Kingsfield, who routinely used personal humiliation of first-year law students as a pedagogical tool. Whether one agrees that such a method is useful or valid, it is certainly the case that the Kingsfield character was modeled on real-life professors, some of whom inspired great loyalty in their students, who felt well-served by some sharp words when they were guilty of woolly thinking. The notion of an ad hoc grievance committee investigating John Houseman for suggesting that students` heads are full of mush is faintly ridiculous, but it is the sort of procedure to which Massad was subjected.

From all accounts, Massad is a passionate and outspoken but fair and dedicated teacher. The Nation quotes a doctoral student in Massad`s department as saying, "In Massad`s class, the most prolific contributors to class discussion were students who disagreed with him, and many did not hesitate to interrupt him to make their point." The ad hoc report noted: "Outside the classroom, there can be little doubt of Professor Massad`s dedication to, and respectful attitude towards, his students whatever their confessional or ethnic background or their political outlook. He made himself available to them in office hours and afterwards. One student, critical of other aspects of his pedagogy, praised his "warmth, dynamism and candor" and his unusual accessibility and friendliness. One of the group of students who questioned him regularly and critically in class told us of their friendly relations outside class where their discussions often continued. A student who has complained that he was mocked in class by Professor Massad in the spring of 2001, was still in email contact with him one year later."

One would have thought that the ad hoc report would have closed the door on this whole sorry affair. But almost worse than the McCarthyite accusations was the response of the New York Times. Incredibly, the Times slammed the ad hoc committee for not being inquisitorial enough. Not satisfied with an investigation of conduct or classroom civility, it wanted Massad`s views put under the microscope. The Gray Lady apparently wanted him sent for reeducation, for all the world as though he were a Right Deviationist during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and as though America`s newspaper of record were a Maoist inquisitor.

The Times` editorial read, "But in the end, the report is deeply unsatisfactory because the panel`s mandate was so limited. Most student complaints were not really about intimidation, but about allegations of stridently pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bias on the part of several professors. The panel had no mandate to examine the quality and fairness of teaching. That leaves the university to follow up on complaints about politicized courses and a lack of scholarly rigor as part of its effort to upgrade the department. One can only hope that Columbia will proceed with more determination and care than it has heretofore."

The New York Times editorial is among the more dangerous documents threatening higher education in America to have appeared in a major newspaper since the McCarthy period, when professors were fired for their views on economics. (At the University of Michigan in the 1950s, two professors were fired for belonging or having belonged to the Communist Party, and one professor was let go for favoring "Scandinavian economics.") "Quality of teaching" is one thing -- no one defends unqualified teachers or mere propagandists. But no substantive allegations regarding the poor quality of scholarship, or "lack of rigor" in the department, have been made against Columbia`s Middle East department -- for the simple reason that such claims have no foundation. The Times` invocation of "scholarly rigor" is really a thinly veiled demand that professors follow what it defines as an acceptable, "fair" pedagogical line.

But as soon as the "fairness" of views is made the criterion for retaining a teacher, the door is opened to witch hunts and chaos. No two students will agree on what is a "fair" view of a controversial issue. The substantial Arab-American community of Dearborn, Mich., not to mention many liberal American Jews, would probably find almost every course taught in political science departments in the United States on the Arab-Israeli conflict to be hopelessly biased against the Arabs and Palestinians. Why are they less worthy arbiters than the editorial board of the New York Times?

When I have taught the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict at the University of Michigan, I have had fair numbers of Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans and Jewish-Americans in my class. My class evaluations have overall been good to excellent, but I always have a handful complaints from both sides. Some Arab-Americans blast me for naively accepting key claims of Zionism when I argue for Israel`s right to exist. Some Jewish students stridently insist that Jerusalem belongs solely to Israel and that is that.

The fact is that you will never get agreement on such matters of opinion, and no university teacher I know seeks such agreement. The point of teaching a course is to expose students to ideas and arguments that are new to them and to help them think critically about controversial issues. Nothing pleases teachers more than to see students craft their own, original arguments, based on solid evidence, that dispute the point of view presented in class lectures. That is why the New York Times editorial is so wrong, and so dangerous. University teaching is not about fairness, and there is no body capable of imposing "fair" views on teachers. It is about provoking students to think analytically and synthetically, and to reason on their own. In the assigned texts, in class discussion, and in lectures, the students are exposed to a wide range of views, whether fair or unfair.

Elected bodies throughout the United States, dominated by the Christian right, are now considering radical programs such as imposing the teaching of "intelligent design" in biology classes, or abolishing academic tenure (the practice of not firing professors for their views). Even Congress has succumbed to the pressure: The House of Representatives passed an outrageous bill, HR 3077, mandating that area studies programs that receive federal money must "foster debate on American foreign policy from diverse perspectives" -- a heavy-handed attempt to mandate pedagogy that supports the American administration in power and supports Israeli policies uncritically.

The New York Times is a bastion of liberalism and Enlightenment values in an increasingly hysterical and intolerant time. But it has lent this burgeoning movement legitimacy by calling for official oversight of views in the classroom. Its editors should stop to consider that any society that censors Joseph Massad`s teaching is unlikely to stop there. The next step will be to censor the newspapers as well. "Unfair," "liberal" views such as those apparent in many New York Times articles and editorials may be put under scrutiny by the same sort of people who want a party line installed at Columbia.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Sacred Space and Holy War" (IB Tauris, 2002).


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http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8613.htm
Video Purports To Shows Execution Of Injured Survivor Of Downed Helicopter In Iraq

Video 1http://informationclearinghouse.info/video1/ogrish-dot-com-h…

These videos should only be viewed by a mature audience

04/21/05

- WARNING -

Unknown assailants brought down a Russian-made helicopter carrying 11 "civilians" with missile fire north of the capital Thursday and said they captured and shot to death the lone crew member who survived. The dead from the crash included six American bodyguards for U.S. diplomats.

This video shows the aftermath of the wreckage and includes images of dead passengers.

[urlVideo II Here Achtung brutal!]http://informationclearinghouse.info/video1/ogrish-dot-com-helicopter_downed2.wmv[/url]- Shows the murder of an injured and unarmed passenger who appears to have survived the crash.

The six Americans on board the downed helicopter were employed by Blackwater Security Consulting — a subsidiary of North Carolina-based security contractor Blackwater USA, which had four employees slain and mutilated in Fallujah a year ago.

“One of the crew members was captured and killed,” the statement said.

The man who was shot to death in a grassy field spoke English with an accent and was wearing a blue flight suit, indicating he was one of the three Bulgarian crew members. Two Fijian helicopter security guards were also on board the flight.

The Mi-8 helicopter was shot out of the air as growing numbers of contractors, diplomats and other civilian officials are turning to aircraft to avoid attacks on Iraq’s roads.

The six Americans were assisting the Bureau of Diplomatic Security in protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

Blackwater USA confirmed on Thursday the loss of seven security professionals in Iraq.

Six Blackwater personnel were passengers in a commercial helicopter owned and operated by Heli-Air Services, a Bulgarian subcontractor to SkyLink Air and Logistic Support under contract to Blackwater in support of a Department of Defense contract, the company said. The helicopter was on its way to Tikrit from Baghdad when it went down. The specifics of the crash are not yet known, the company said.

Blackwater Security Consulting is a strategic division of Blackwater USA, which was formed in 1996 by a former Navy SEAL and has subsequently trained more than 50,000 law enforcement and military personnel, according to its Web site.

In a separate incident Thursday, one Blackwater employee was killed when an improvised explosive device was detonated next to a Blackwater armored personnel carrier near Ramadi. Four security professionals were also injured in that attack. They, too, were working under a contract with the DOD.

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April 23, 2005
Four Top Officers Cleared by Army in Prison Abuses
By ERIC SCHMITT


WASHINGTON, April 22 - A high-level Army investigation has cleared four of the five top Army officers overseeing prison policies and operations in Iraq of responsibility for the abuse of detainees there, Congressional and administration officials said Friday.

Among the officers was Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who was the top commander in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004. He was the highest-ranking officer to face allegations of leadership failure in connection with the scandal, but he was not accused of criminal misconduct.

Barring new evidence, the inquiry, by the Army`s inspector general, effectively closes the Army`s book on whether the highest-ranking officers in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal should be held accountable for command failings described in past reviews.

Only one of the top five officers, whose roles the Senate Armed Services Committee had asked the Army to review, has received any punishment. That officer, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army Reserve officer who commanded the military police unit at the Abu Ghraib prison, was relieved of her command and given a written reprimand. She has repeatedly said she was made the scapegoat for the failures of superiors.

The findings, which provoked outrage from some civil rights groups and Democratic aides, came nearly a year after shocking photographs of American military police officers stacking naked Iraqi prisoners in a human pyramid and of other abuses first telecast nationally. Shortly afterward, an internal Army report chronicled the virtual collapse of the command structure at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, in the fall of 2003.

So far, only a small number of soldiers, mostly from the enlisted ranks, have faced courts-martial for their actions at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Dozens of others have faced administrative discipline for abusing captives at other detention sites and battlefield interrogation stations across Iraq.

An independent panel led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger concluded last August that General Sanchez had failed to make sure that his staff was dealing with Abu Ghraib`s problems. A separate Army investigation, called the Kern-Fay-Jones report, found that at one point General Sanchez approved the use of severe interrogation practices that led indirectly to some of the abuses.

The Schlesinger inquiry last summer also determined that General Sanchez`s deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, failed to act quickly enough to make urgent requests to higher levels for more troops at the understaffed prison.

But those inquiries were not empowered to impose any punishments; that was left up to the Army.

The new review, by the Army inspector general, Lt. Gen. Stanley E. Green, exonerated General Sanchez and General Wojdakowski of the allegations that were included in one or more of the 10 major investigations over the past year into detainee abuse.

It also found to be "unsubstantiated" allegations against Maj. Gen. Barbara G. Fast, the former chief intelligence officer in Iraq who oversaw the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib, and Col. Marc Warren, the command`s top legal officer. The Schlesinger panel said Colonel Warren had failed to report prisoner abuses witnessed by the Red Cross to his boss for more than a month, and that General Fast had failed to advise General Sanchez properly about the management of interrogations at the prison.

While General Sanchez and the other top officers may not have done everything right, the inquiry said, their failures came as they struggled to combat a fast-growing insurgency and a booming prison population, all with an understaffed headquarters.

But some Democratic aides on Capitol Hill, civil rights groups and lawyers for lower-ranking soldiers who have been disciplined voiced dismay on Friday at the findings, which they said would fuel the perception that the Army was trying to protect its senior leaders at the expense of junior officers and enlisted soldiers.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, denounced the findings and urged the Bush administration to appoint a special independent counsel to look up the military and Pentagon civilian chains of command. "This further underscores the military`s inability to look into allegations of torture and abuse," Mr. Romero said in a telephone interview. "It`s just another effort to paper over the scandal."

Guy Womack, a lawyer for the Army reservist who the government had called the ringleader in the abuse, Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr., said he had interviewed Generals Sanchez and Wojdakowski and agreed with the Army`s findings about them. But he said General Fast and Colonel Warren were more directly involved in overseeing detention policy and operations and should have been disciplined. "It`s a joke," he said.

Democratic aides, who along with their Republican counterparts were briefed this week on the Army inquiry`s findings, said Friday that they disagreed with the conclusions and would review the full investigation before determining their next step.

Army officials defended the investigation as an exhaustive inquiry that included a review of the 10 major inquiries so far, sworn statements from 37 senior officials, including L. Paul Bremer III, the former top civilian administrator in Iraq, as well as information gathered from dozens of criminal investigations and courts-martial.

"The recommendations and decisions are consistent with, and appropriate to, the findings of these very thorough investigations," Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the Army`s top spokesman, said in a statement.

Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, declined in a statement to comment directly on the Army`s findings, but signaled he would call a hearing on senior officer accountability in the detainee abuse scandal. A spokesman for Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee`s ranking Democrat, declined to comment.

As a result of the findings of the Schlesinger panel and other military inquiries, Mr. Warner`s committee directed the Army in September to review the cases of General Sanchez and at least four other senior officers in Iraq to determine if any should be held accountable and disciplined.

The Army expanded that inquiry to 12 officers of the rank of colonel or higher, including anyone of that rank who was criticized in at least one of the 10 major investigations.

Four senior Defense Department officials, who provided details about the inquiry on the condition of anonymity because several members of Congress had not been fully briefed, declined to identify the officers under scrutiny, although the five whom Congress has focused on were well known. Nor did they say whether any of seven other officers under scrutiny were disciplined. Congressional aides said they had not yet been briefed on those cases.

The 12 officers under scrutiny by the inspector general do not include the top two military intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas M. Pappas and Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan. Senior military officials said they were being examined by separate investigations that could lead to criminal charges.

General Green, the inspector general, has completed his review of allegations against 11 of the 12 officers, officials said. If the allegations were not substantiated, no action was taken. If they were, the files were forwarded to the Army judge advocate general, the senior military lawyer, Maj. Gen. Thomas Romig, who could recommend a wide range of disciplinary options, from no action to counseling to a career-killing reprimand. The 12 officers had the right to respond to the findings before any disciplinary action were taken.

A senior military official said there were no criminal allegations against any of the 12 officers.

General Sanchez, once considered for promotion to be the four-star commander of military operations in Latin America, remains the head of the Army`s V Corps, based in Germany. It is unclear whether he will be given a new assignment when his command ends this summer or whether he will retire.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 23, 2005
Rice Ordered Release of German Sent to Afghan Prison in Error
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/politics/23detain.html?

WASHINGTON, April 22 - A German citizen detained for five months in an Afghan prison was released in May 2004 on direct orders from Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned the man had been mistakenly identified as a terror suspect, government officials said Friday.

The officials, who confirmed an account of Ms. Rice`s decision that was first reported by NBC News, said that when Khaled el-Masri was taken from a bus on the Serbian-Macedonian border on Dec. 31, 2003, the Macedonian and the American authorities believed he was a member of Al Qaeda who had trained at one of Osama bin Laden`s camps in Afghanistan.

But within several months they concluded he was the victim of mistaken identity, the officials said. His name was similar to a Qaeda suspect on an international watch list of possible terrorist operatives, they said.

By then, Mr. Masri, 41, a car salesman who lives in Ulm, Germany, had been flown on a C.I.A.-chartered plane to the prison under a secret American program of transferring terror suspects from country to country for interrogation, officials said. At the prison in Kabul, Mr. Masri said, he was shackled, beaten, photographed nude and injected with drugs by interrogators who pressed him to reveal ties to Al Qaeda.

For reasons that are unclear, he remained for months at a prison known locally as the "Salt Pit." The case reached Ms. Rice in May 2004, officials said, and twice, over several weeks, she ordered him immediately freed. He was released in Albania on May 29, 2004.

The American officials acknowledged Friday that the detention had been a serious mistake and that he had been held too long after American officials realized their error.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Masri said that he was gratified that "the truth has finally come out" and that he expected an apology. "I hope that America will in the future respect the rights of people," he said.

The disclosure of the decision to free Mr. Masri shed new light on the transfer of suspected Qaeda operatives around the world. Until now, it was believed that the transfers were carried out by the C.I.A. under presidential directives issued after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Ms. Rice`s involvement suggests that the White House may have played a more hands-on role than was previously known. The officials who discussed the matter on Friday suggested that she had intervened as needed, but would not describe the extent to which national security officials at the White House were in charge.

In January, Mr. Masri`s account of his ordeal was the subject of an article in The New York Times. At the time, officials at the C.I.A. and F.B.I. would not confirm or deny the details of his case, although they acknowledged that they had been contacted by the German authorities investigating his allegations of mistreatment.

Don Van Natta contributed reporting from London for this article, and Souad Mekhennet from Frankfurt.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Fett ist nett! Kauft Fast Food Aktien.
Die Studie ist kein Joke.

April 23, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Fat and Happy
By JOHN TIERNEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/opinion/23tierney.html

Porkers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your diets!

But don`t start wearing spandex just yet.

For those of us lacking six-pack abs, this week`s report that the overweight live longer is the greatest medical news in history. The authors of this study deserve a Nobel, not just for medicine, but for peace, too.

They have taken away the favorite cudgel of the scolds who used the "obesity epidemic" as an excuse to attack the flabby. The supposedly deadly consequences of fat provided the scientific rationale for the last politically correct form of prejudice.

The fatophobes are fighting on, disputing the new study and arguing that it still shows the fatal dangers of being seriously obese. But they have lost the scientific high ground. Not only do people of "normal" weight die younger than the moderately overweight, the study shows, but thin people die even younger than those of normal weight.

After decades of listening to emaciated ascetics lecture us about diet and exercise, it`s tempting to return the favor. We could turn into activists ourselves and stand in picket lines outside gyms with signs proclaiming, "StairMaster = Death."

We could denounce the dangerous role models provided by the zero-body-fat actresses on "Desperate Housewives," or go to Vogue`s offices for an intervention with its social X-ray of an editor, Anna Wintour.

"Anna, we want you to put Kirstie Alley on the cover, but that`s not why we`re here. We`re here because we love you and we don`t want to lose you. Now, please, for our sake, try this crème brûlée."

But we need to be realistic. One study will not change people`s minds, because the crusade against fat was never just about science.

The activists fighting the evil junk-food industry always had a streak of neo-puritanism in them. They cited scientific research to justify their battle against fatty foods, but then campaigned hysterically against Olestra, the calorie-free fat substitute.

Despite the research showing Olestra to be generally safe, the prospect of Americans enjoying fat-free junk food was just too sinful to allow. So was the prospect of calorie-free colas. When soft-drink companies replaced sugar with aspartame, the food police again ignored the research and kept imagining dangers.

It never made scientific sense to terrify women about having flabby hips or thighs, because it was recognized long before this week`s study that lower-body fat was medically benign by comparison with the fat at the waist - the kind in the beer guts of men at risk for heart attacks.

In four-fifths of the societies studied by anthropologists, people have sensibly considered a plump pear-shaped body to be the female ideal. Subcutaneous fat was traditionally a sign of fertility and health, a status indicator showing that a woman was not too poor to afford food.

But as food became cheaper and more available, the ideal changed. Avoiding temptation in the midst of plenty became a virtue and a status symbol of the rich. Thinness became a form of conspicuous consumption, what might be called conspicuous conservation.

George Armelagos, an anthropologist at Emory University, calls this shift the King Henry VIII and Oprah Winfrey Effect. In Tudor England, it took hundreds of gardeners, farmers, hunters and butchers to keep Henry VIII fat. In America today, anyone can bulk up without help, but it takes a new set of vassals - personal trainer, nutritionist, private chef - to keep Oprah from looking like Henry VIII.

As long as it`s more expensive to be thin, fat will not be fashionable, no matter what scientists find. The survival-of-the-flabbiest theory will not make jiggly hips hip or love handles lovable, so spandex and tube tops are still out of the question.

But the new study does give us ammunition for the beach this summer. The trick is to be subtle when confronted with glistening hardbodies. Don`t insult them. Gaze admiringly, and bemoan your own paunch. Then sigh and talk about the future responsibilities you have - children to raise, the mortgage to pay off, the relatives to support.

When the hardbody looks confused, stop and gaze admiringly again before continuing: "God, I wish had your body - and your courage. Good for you! Don`t listen to those medical nerds. Go for it! Live lean, die young, leave a beautiful corpse."

For Further Reading:

The Anti-Pleasure Principle: The "food police" and the pseudoscience of self-denial by Jacob Sullum. Reason magazine, July 2003.

Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating by Peter Farb and George J. Armelagos. HoughtonMifflin, 279 pp., 1980.

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Für alle, die mehr fundierte Papstkritik lesen wollen, hier ein Artikel in Deutsch: [urlEin Münchner (Erzbischof) im Himmel]http://www.zmag.de/artikel.php?id=1407&PHPSESSID=cc1fdec0edc28370859af3fdd0e0a661[/url]

April 23, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Uncle Dick and Papa
By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/opinion/23dowd.html

It was a move so smooth and bold, accomplished with such backstage bureaucratic finesse, that it was worthy of Dick Cheney himself.

The éminence grise who had long whispered in the ear of power and who had helped oversee the selection process ended up selecting himself. In Cheneyesque fashion, he searched far and wide for a pope by looking around the room and swiftly deciding he was the best man for the job.

Just like Mr. Cheney, once the quintessentially deferential staff man with the Secret Service code name "Back Seat," the self-effacing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has clambered over the back seat to seize the wheel (or Commonweal). Mr. Cheney played the tough cop to W.`s boyish, genial pol, just as Cardinal Ratzinger played the tough cop to John Paul`s gentle soul.

And just like the vice president, the new pope is a Jurassic archconservative who disdains the "if it feels good do it" culture and the revolutionary trends toward diversity and cultural openness since the 60`s.

The two leaders are a match - absolutists who view the world in stark terms of good and evil, eager to prolong a patriarchal society that prohibits gay marriage and slices up pro-choice U.S. Democratic candidates.

The two, from rural, conservative parts of their countries, want to turn back the clock and exorcise New Age silliness. Mr. Cheney wants to dismantle the New Deal and go back to 1937. Pope Benedict XVI wants to dismantle Vatican II and go back to 1397. As a scholar, his specialty was "patristics," the study of the key thinkers in the first eight centuries of the church.

They are both old hands at operating in secrecy and using the levers of power for ideological advantage. They want to enlist Catholics in the conservative cause, turning confession boxes into ballot boxes with the threat that a vote for a liberal Democrat could lead to eternal damnation.

Unlike Ronald Reagan and John Paul II, the vice president and the new pope do not have large-scale charisma or sunny faces to soften their harsh "my way or the highway" policies. Their gloomy world outlooks and bullying roles earned them the nicknames Dr. No and Cardinal No. One is called Washington`s Darth Vader, the other the Vatican`s Darth Vader.

W.`s Doberman and John Paul`s "God`s Rottweiler," as the new pope was called, are both global enforcers with cult followings. Just as the vice president acted to solidify the view of America as a hyperpower, so the new pope views the Roman Catholic Church as the one true religion. He once branded other faiths as deficient.

Both like to blame the media. Cardinal Ratzinger once accused the U.S. press of overplaying the sex abuse scandal to hurt the church and keep the story on the front pages.

Dr. No and Cardinal No parted ways on the war - though Cardinal Ratzinger did criticize the U.N. But they agree that stem cell research and cloning must be curtailed. Cardinal Ratzinger once called cloning "more dangerous than weapons of mass destruction."

As fundamentalism marches on - even Bill Gates seems to have caved to a preacher on gay rights legislation because of fear of a boycott - U.S. conservatives are thrilled about the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger, hoping for an unholy alliance. They hope this pope - who seems to want a smaller, purer church - encourages a militant role for Catholic bishops and priests in the political process.

Cardinal Ratzinger did not shrink from advising American bishops in the last presidential election on bringing Catholic elected officials to heel. He warned that Catholics who deliberately voted for a candidate because of a pro-choice position were guilty of cooperating in evil, and unworthy to receive communion. Vote Democratic and lose your soul. "Panzerkardinal," as he was known, definitely isn`t a man who could read Mario Cuomo`s Notre Dame speech urging that pro-choice politicians be allowed in the tent and say, "He`s got a point."

The Republicans can build their majority by bringing strict Catholics and evangelicals - once at odds - together on what they call "culture of life" issues.

But there`s a risk, as with Tom DeLay, Dr. Bill Frist and other Republicans, that if the new pope is too heavy-handed and too fundamentalist, his approach may backfire.

Moral absolutism is relative, after all. As Bruce Landesman, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, pointed out in a letter to The Times: "Those who hold `liberal` views are not relativists. They simply disagree with the conservatives about what is right and wrong."

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washingtonpost.com
Private Security Workers Living On Edge in Iraq
Downing of Helicopter Shows Heightened Risks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10547-2005Apr…

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- Cruising toward Baghdad in the belly of a Spanish turboprop plane with a dozen other private security contractors from Blackwater USA, Rich, a 43-year-old former Navy commando, squinted out the window at the Euphrates River.

The Casa 212 dove 12,000 feet toward Baghdad airport in a drunken, corkscrew landing. A short while later, Rich was riding shotgun in the back of one of Blackwater`s South African-made armored Mamba vehicles along the main highway to the capital, one of the most dangerous roads in Iraq.

"I like being some place where stupidity can be fatal, because here you work with people who think about their actions," said Rich, who asked for security reasons that only his first name be used. He and his colleagues voice disdain for what they consider the soft, even pampered lives of most Americans in a society he sums up as one that "puts warnings on coffee cups."

Rich is typical of the men drawn to Blackwater USA and scores of other private security firms now doing a booming business in Iraq. They`re driven by money and a lust for life on the edge, but also by a self-styled altruism. Sporting blue jeans, wraparound sunglasses and big tattoos, they look the part of gun-slinging cowboys -- but most are experienced enough to know that a hot-dog attitude is the fastest way to get yourself and others killed.

With more hired guns in Iraq than in any other U.S. conflict since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Rich and other armed contractors also admit their role is cloudy and controversial. They do shoot to kill, but they aren`t legally considered combatants. U.S. military officials have expressed concern about violence in which the private contractors open fire. The contractors` mission is to protect the lives of individuals and cargo but not necessarily to support the broader interests of the U.S. counterinsurgency.

For more than a year now, Rich has traveled across Iraq, guarding the former U.S. occupation authority chief, L. Paul Bremer, and other high-ranking diplomats. He plans to make a career at Blackwater despite the fact that 18 of his close co-workers have now perished on the job, including two whose bodies were hung in Fallujah last March from what is now called Blackwater Bridge and six who were killed when a helicopter they were riding in was shot down outside Baghdad on Thursday.

Indeed, with an estimated 240 deaths among some 20,000 armed private security contractors in Iraq, Rich`s work is as risky or riskier than that of the U.S. military, as firms such as Blackwater take on an unprecedented role in the Iraq war. Blackwater has an average of 1,300 employees on a given day, spread out over seven countries, the firm says. That number includes hundreds in Iraq.

"We have to be willing to go abroad to fight, to go after these guys here so my family at home can stay safe," Rich said. He left the Navy SEALs in the mid-1990s to save his marriage, he said. But after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said he felt compelled to leave the Virginia cell phone company he worked for and put his military skills to use.
Making Hay

As the Blackwater convoy sped down the airport highway, John "Tool" Freeman, a red-headed ex-Marine, was at the wheel of the lead Mamba, a high-riding, $70,000 armored vehicle designed to withstand antitank mines.

Used by the South African military in Angola, the vehicle is Blackwater`s primary means of zipping State Department employees and other nations` diplomats to Baghdad`s fortified Green Zone. For additional protection, the convoys are shadowed by helicopters with armed guards perched at the open doors scanning for potential attackers.

Freeman, of Portsmouth, Va., said he joined Blackwater after seeing some Marines on television during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. "I`d been missing it for a while," he recalled. "I said `Man, I really need to get back into this.` " But with average pay of $500 to $600 a day, he said, the money was also a big draw for him and his buddies. He said he planned to work for Blackwater for three years to save up cash for retirement -- and a sailboat.

"Most of us have a plan -- it`s like, make hay while the sun shines," he said.

Freeman blasted the Mamba`s air-horn to force several Iraqi vehicles off the highway. "We beep the horn and flash the lights or push them off the shoulder to keep a buffer between us. Our main threat is the car bomb," he said, adding, "We`ve had cars cross three lanes of traffic to come after us."

In charge of the daily airport runs, Freeman studies military and private intelligence reports and maps the locations of attacks to look for patterns. He also videotapes the route and watches the tape later to look for possible threats he missed. Such precautions are necessary, private contractors say, as they become more frequent targets of insurgent attacks.

"We`re seeing personal security teams are getting hit more," said Richard Hicks, Blackwater`s operations manager in Baghdad. "There`s been a definite increase in attacks, to hit us where it hurts the most."

At the same time, Hicks said, contractors are under pressure to curb their aggressive methods, although they lack the firepower and backup enjoyed by the U.S. military. Early in the Iraq conflict and up until last year, "there were no rules" limiting contractors` use of force in Iraq, Hicks said. More recently, the State Department imposed restrictions discouraging the contractors from firing warning shots. There are still daily reports of contractors running Iraqis off the road or injuring or killing innocent people, he said.

"Now it`s all about accountability," he said at Blackwater`s Baghdad team house in the Green Zone, not far from the crossed-sabers archway, a symbol of the era of ousted president Saddam Hussein.
On Their Own

At the team house, the large, comfortable, but simple home of a former Baath Party member, Blackwater employees relax in the evening, eating home-cooked meals of stuffed tomatoes, chicken or hamburgers prepared by an Iraqi staff. Unlike the U.S. military, Blackwater has a far smaller logistical support system and purchases food and other supplies directly from Iraqi sources.

Employees of Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., and other private security firms said they were more flexible, efficient and, in many cases, more experienced than U.S. military forces in Iraq. With many of their members former Navy SEALs or Army Green Berets, their teams are small, tight-knit and responsive both by choice and necessity -- if they get in a tough spot, they can`t depend on U.S. troops to come to their aid, they say.

Many recalled an incident in April 2004 when eight Blackwater employees fought off a major insurgent assault on the U.S. government compound in Najaf by the militia of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. Blackwater pilots flew in ammunition and evacuated the wounded without any U.S. military support, they said.

Rich and others said they were frequently fired upon by U.S. soldiers and Marines at checkpoints. "I`ve been shot at numerous times by our troops, and that`s in a black Suburban with American flags," Rich said. Still, they say cooperation with the U.S. military on the ground is largely positive and voiced sympathy for the far younger, low-paid U.S. servicemen, who they say regularly approach them asking about jobs at Blackwater.

Vetting for Blackwater hires is rigorous, said Hicks, a former police chief in Pennsylvania. While the money was a key reason he joined, he said, "Once you get here the money isn`t really an issue, because you could be dead the next day."

At the Bristol Hotel in Amman, Jordan, where Blackwater employees transit to and from Iraq, J.D. Stratton, a burly company manager, said 10 percent of Blackwater hires may be unqualified "chuckleheads" who just happen to make it through the screening.

"But they`ll eventually be caught," said Stratton, whose nickname is "Terminator" because it is his job to dismiss those who don`t work out. "If I show up at your doorstep, you are out of there," he said.

Alcohol abuse and a defiant attitude tend to be the main reasons people are fired, he said, relaxing with other employees at Harry`s Jazz Bar. "You have to be disciplined to do this job. If any one of them is a cowboy he will . . . get everyone killed."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Das Blutgeld der Bush Familie. Seit über 70 Jahren immer auf der richtigen Seite. Gründer und Erben aber immer ohne Skrupel.
Viel Spaß bei den Quellen.

Gut Check
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8614.htm

By Chris Floyd

04/22/05 "Moscow Times" - - With fresh indictments last week, the UN oil-for-food scandal took an unexpected turn into the Labyrinth -- the tangled skein of war profiteering and state terrorism that has seen the Bush Family`s lust for blood money emerge in three of the darkest criminal episodes in modern American history: Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and the BCCI affair.

Texas oil baron David Chalmers of Bayoil and his partners were hit with criminal charges for allegedly cutting deals with Saddam Hussein in the notorious skim operation that outflanked UN sanctions and diverted funds intended for humanitarian relief. Prosecutors were shocked -- shocked! -- to find such collusion and corruption in the oil business.

Of course, the fact that three U.S. presidents -- the two George Bushes and their new best pal, Bill Clinton -- actually brokered massive backroom oil deals for Saddam that dwarfed Bayoil`s petty chiseling, plus the fact that Saddam`s nation-strangling thievery has since been eclipsed by the epic rapine of Bush II`s Babylonian Conquest, in no way mitigates the seriousness of the Chalmers indictment. But somehow we doubt you`ll be seeing those august statesmen sharing leg irons with old Davy anytime soon.

Chalmers is a longtime denizen of the Labyrinth. In the mid-1980s, he joined up with Chilean gun-runner Carlos Cardoen, the Financial Times reported. Cardoen was a CIA frontman used by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush I to funnel cluster bombs and other weapons secretly to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. At Reagan`s direct order, Saddam received U.S. military intelligence, billions of dollars in credits and a steady supply of covert "third-country" arms to sustain his war effort, even though the White House was fully aware of Saddam`s "almost daily use" of illegal chemical weapons, The Washington Post reported. Later, Bush I, as president, would also mandate the sale of WMD material to Saddam, including anthrax -- long after Saddam notoriously "gassed his own people" at Halabja.

As in the present UN scandal, Saddam paid for his covert cluster bombs with oil. Chalmers would move the actual black stuff and broker its sale for the CIA and Cardoen, taking a cut in the process. Since 1999, Chalmers has been doing the same thing on behalf of Italtech, owned by another crony in the old Cardoen gun-running scheme. The Texas baron must be aghast to find himself in hot water for an activity that was once blessed at the highest levels. Perhaps he neglected to cross the requisite Bushist palms with sufficient silver -- or else, as with many a Bush minion, he`s just been tossed overboard as chum for the sharks when he`s no longer of any use.

But let`s be fair. Helping Saddam kill people with chemical gas was not the only reason why Reagan and Bush I aided their favorite dictator. They had bigger fish to fry -- using the Constitution as kindling for the feast.

In 1986, George Bush I visited the Middle East with a secret message to be passed to Saddam via Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: "Drop more bombs on Iran`s cities." How do we know this? From the sworn testimony of Howard Teicher, the National Security Council official who accompanied Bush and wrote the official "talking points" for the trip. Ostensibly, Bush urged this mass killing of civilians as a strategy to halt Iran`s gains at the front. But as The New Yorker reported -- 13 years ago -- there was another layer to this covert plot.

A fierce aerial offensive by Saddam would force Iran to seek more spare parts for its U.S.-made planes and anti-aircraft weapons, inherited from the ousted Shah. Bush was already waist-deep in the Iran-Contra scam, which involved selling Tehran U.S. military goods through back channels, then funneling the secret profits to the Contras, the gang of right-wing insurgents and CIA-trained terrorists in Nicaragua. Congress had forbidden U.S. aid to the Contras, so Reagan and Bush used the mullahs (and Central American drug lords) to run their illegal terrorist war. More innocent deaths in Iran meant more backdoor cash for the Contras. A win-win situation!

When Bush I became president, he clasped Saddam even closer, sending him billions in U.S.-backed "agricultural credits" through BNL, an Italian bank tied up with BCCI -- the international "financial consortium" that was actually "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history," according to the U.S. Senate. BCCI laundered money and financed arms dealing, terrorism, smuggling and prostitution, while corrupting government officials worldwide with bribes and extortion.

As Bush well knew, Saddam was using the BNL cash for arms, not food; indeed, that was the point of the exercise. When some honest U.S. officials threatened to unravel the BNL gun-running scam, Bush appointed Cardoen`s own lawyer to a top Justice Department post -- overseeing the investigation of his former boss. Under heavy White House pressure, the case was quickly whittled down to the usual "bad apple" underlings carrying out some minor fraud.

But perhaps Papa Bush was just being fatherly. Earlier, another BCCI offshoot bank had bailed out one of Bush Junior`s many business failures with $25 million in cash. That deal had been brokered by mysterious Arkansas tycoon Jackson Stephens, one of the Bush family`s biggest campaign contributors. Curiously enough, Stephens was also a top moneyman for another leading politician: Bill Clinton. When Clinton took office, he obligingly deep-sixed the continuing probes into BCCI, Iraqgate and Iran-Contra.

That`s how the system really works. All the guff about law, democracy and morality is just cornball for the yokels back home -- and for the cannon fodder sent off to die in the elite`s commercial and dynastic wars. The Labyrinth -- that knotted gut of blood and bile -- has poisoned us all.

Annotations

[urlAmerican Indicted In Iraq Oil Probe]http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54645-2005Apr14?language=printer[/url]
Washington Post, April 15, 2005

[urlDealing With Saddam`s Regime (Bayoil)]http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/oilforfood/2004/0407dealing.htm[/url]
Financial Times, April 7, 2004

[urlAnnan Says US, UK Allowed Iraq Oil Scam]http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1461176,00.html[/url]
The Guardian, April 16, 2005

[urlHoward Teicher Affadavit: Iraqgate]http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/hidden/teicher.htm[/url]
United States District Court, Southern District, Florida, Jan. 31, 1995
Iraq Could Become The Biggest Corruption Scandal in History
Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 2005

[urlIraqgate: Confession and Coverup]http://www.fair.org/extra/9505/iraqgate.html[/url]
Consortiumnews.com, May/June 1995

[urlA Gift for George]http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/ND93/pizzo.html[/url]
Mother Jones, 1993

[urlJackson Stephens: The Man and the Myth]http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a37d95a0809ce.htm[/url]
Free Republic, Sept. 10, 1999
U.S. Treasury`s Role in Illicit Iraq Oil Sales Cited
Washington Post, Feb. 17, 2005

[urlThe Oil-For-Food Scandal is a Cynical Smokescreen]http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=592306[/url]
The Independent, Dec. 12, 2004

[urlUS Had Key Role in Iraq Build-Up]http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=printer[/url]
Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2002
Missing U.S.-Iraq History
In These Times, Dec. 16, 2002

[urlRow Deepens Over Iraq Oil Scandal]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4448775.stm[/url]
BBC, April 15, 2005
Cashing in on the Bush Doctrine
Antiwar.com, April 15, 2005

[urlTexan is Indicted in Iraq Oil Sales by Hussein Aides]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/international/middleeast/15food.html?ei=5094&en=11b9eaf37fdd2318&hp=&ex=1113624000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=[/url]
New York Times, April 15, 2005

[urlThe Deep Politics of Regime Removal in Iraq]http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin112102/chin112102.html[/url]
Online Journal, Nov. 21. 2002
Rumsfeld `Offered to Help Saddam`
The Guardian, Dec. 31, 2002

[urlCheney Led Halliburton to Feast at Federal Trough]http://darrendixon.supanet.com/cheneyoil.htm[/url]
Center for Public Integrity, August 2000

[urlA Tangled Web: A History of CIA Complicity in International Drug Trafficking]http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r105:1:./temp/~r105pR7tAY:e94261[/url]
Intelligence Authorization Act, U.S. House of Representatives, May 7, 1998
The BCCI Affair
Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Dec. 1992

[urlIraqgate]http://www.cjr.org/year/93/2/iraqgate.asp[/url]
Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1993

[urlBin Laden Money Flow Leads to Midland, Texas]http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml[/url]
In These Times, October 2001
Iraqi WMD: Made in America
The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Feb. 25, 1998,

[urlA CIA Officer`s Calamitous Choices]http://consortiumnews.com/2003/051503a.html[/url]
Consortiumnnews.com, May 15, 2003

[urlBush Administration Uses CIA to Stonewall Iraqgate Investigation]http://mediafilter.org/MFF/BushCIAstonewall.html[/url]
Covert Action Quarterly, 1992

[urlThe BCCI Affair: Matters for Further Investigation]http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm[/url]
Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Dec. 1992
Kissinger, Scowcroft and Arming Iraq
Scoop, Jan. 28, 2003

[urlOfficers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in Time of War Despite Use of Gas]http://commondreams.org/headlines02/0818-02.htm[/url]
New York Times, Aug. 18, 2002

[urlA Tainted Deal: CIA and Drugs]http://www.motherjones.com/sideshow/cia.html[/url]
Mother Jones, June 16, 1998

[urlCIA Admits `Tolerating` Contra Drug Trafficking]http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html[/url]
Consortiumnews.com, June 8, 2000
Wackenhut: Inside the Shadow CIA
Spy Magazine, Sept. 1992
Firewall: Inside the Iran-Contra Coverup
Consortiumnews.com, 1997
U.S. Documents Show Embrace of Saddam Despite WMD, Aggressio…
National Security Archive, Feb. 23, 2003

[urlCIA Worked in Tandem With Pakistan to Create Taliban]http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/taliban.htm[/url]
The Times of India, March 7, 2001
U.S Army Gave Bio-Chem Training to Iraq
Government Executive Magazine, Jan. 28, 2003

[urlThe BCCI Affair: Matters for Further Investigation]http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm[/url]
Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Dec. 1992

Copyright © 2005 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

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"The Gestapo of government."
-- Tom DeLay on the EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency)

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The Independent
I may not be sure about God or the Devil, but I still believe in the United Nations
Saturday, 23rd April 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=632…


What if Indian and Nepalese troops rather than Americans had been moving up the Tigris?

There were bagpipers in Scottish tartan, hundreds of soldiers coming to attention with all the snap of Sandhurst and a banner proclaiming "Duty Unto Death", which could have been a chapter title in the dreadful old G A Henty novels of empire that my parents once forced me to read. I had to pinch myself to remember yesterday that this corner of the British Empire was actually southern Lebanon. But there was nothing un-British about the Assam Regiment, whose battle honours go back to 1842 and whose regimental silver still bears the names of Victorian colonels of the Raj. It was Malcolm Muggeridge who once observed that the only Englishmen left were Indians.

The Assam Regiment’s 15th battalion is India’s contribution to the United Nations’ peacekeeping force along the Israeli border - Israel’s listening posts were stitched across the brown snows of Golan high above us yesterday - and its soldiers, from the seven north-eastern states of India, have turned out to be among the most popular of UN units for two simple reasons. They help with much of the veterinary work among the poor farmers and - shades, here, I suppose, of the new hi-tech city of Hyderabad - they repair all the computers in local schools. But there was one salient feature of the battalion’s UN medal parade yesterday; the other units which had sent their officers were almost all non-Western.

There were Fijians and Nepalese and Ghanaian soldiers but only a smattering of French and the odd Australian UN observer. When the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon - Unifil - was at its height during the Israeli occupation, its soldiers tended to come from richer countries, from Ireland, Norway, Finland and France. Now it is the poorer countries whose soldiers are spread across the hills between Tyre and Golan.

India’s army can also be found on duty in the Democratic Republic of Congo and, shortly, in the Sudan and Ethiopia. Almost all of them have fought in Kashmir - most of the 15th battalion’s men were wearing the red and green medal of Kashmir on their chests yesterday although this was not officially pointed out. After all, most Lebanese are Muslims.

The UN’s global reach seems thus to be revolving more and more around non-Nato forces. Our superior Western armies, I suspect, are much happier in Bosnia or illegally invading Iraq. Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara is not going to waste his men on the Israeli border. Cyprus is quite enough for the British.

But all this does raise an important question. Do nations which we once called "Third World" make better peacekeepers? Would it not be more appropriate - if this is not already happening - to have soldiers who understand poverty keeping the peace in lands of poverty?

When the Irish first deployed to Lebanon in 1978, Ireland was still a comparatively poor nation, and its soldiers instantly formed great affection for the Shia Muslim farmers and their families who lived off their smallholdings in the stony hills and valleys. Ireland, I have to remind myself, now fields a full battalion in Liberia, and Irish troops can be found in Kabul, Pristina and Monrovia.

And as the Indians were addressed by their commanders yesterday, there came the names of Somalia, Cambodia and Angola. I can remember now, amid the corruption and terrors of the Bosnian and Croatian wars, how the smartest and the most disciplined contingent turned out to be not the French or the Canadians but the Jordanian battalion on the Serb border.

There was a time, back in 2002, when George W Bush was threatening the United Nations - just as he still is with his idiotic choice of John Bolton as the next American ambassador to the UN - when I was asked in New York if I "believed in the UN". It was a bit like being asked if one believed in God or the Devil, which I’m sure George Bush does. But I have to admit that while I’m not at all sure about God - or at least Bush’s version of him - I did reply that, yes, I believed in the UN. And I still do.

It was in Bosnia that I had a long discussion with a Canadian UN officer about the worth of the United Nations. We were under quite a lot of shellfire, so this probably concentrated our minds. His theory was quite simple. If we’d had a United Nations in 1914, it might have stopped the First World War. "I don’t think there would have been a Somme or Verdun if the UN had been there," he said. "And despite everything that’s gone wrong in Bosnia, it would have been far worse - much more like the Second World War - if the UN wasn’t here."

The débâcle in Somalia hardly supports this view, but have the Americans done any better in Iraq? Once the UN was discarded, in went the US army and Lord Blair’s lads and now they’ve got an insurgency on their hands which is growing in intensity and where no Westerner - or Iraqi for that matter - can walk or drive the streets of Baghdad without fear of instant death.

Duty Unto Death might suit the Indian battalion in Lebanon but I doubt if many US troops would adopt this as their regimental motto. For some reason, we believe that our Western armies do the toughest fighting, but I’m not sure that’s true. The Indian army served in Sri Lanka, whose suicide bombers would make even Iraq’s killers look tame. "You had to drive everywhere at a hundred miles an hour," one of India’s Sri Lanka veterans once told me. "I don’t think I’ve ever fought a force like theirs."

So here’s a satanic question. What if the UN had sent a multinational force into Iraq in the early spring of 2003? What if we could have had Indian troops and Nepalese soldiers rather than the American First Infantry Division moving up the Tigris and Euphrates under a blue banner? Could it have been a worse mess than we have in Iraq today?

If Saddam Hussein could have his weapons of mass destruction destroyed by the UN - and they were destroyed by the UN, were they not, because we know that there weren’t any there when we invaded? - might the UN not also have been able to insert military units after forcing Saddam to disband his regime?

No? Well, in that case, how come Syria’s regime in Lebanon is crumbling under UN Security Council Resolution 1559? Yesterday, even Jamil Sayyed - the pro-Syrian head of Lebanon’s General Security, a figure more powerful and very definitely more sinister than the Lebanese president - stepped aside, along with one of his equally pro-Syrian underlings.

True, it was the French and the Americans who pushed for resolution 1559. But how many of us will stand up today and admit that the UN is doing in Lebanon what the United States has failed to do in Iraq?

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Saturday, April 23, 2005
War News for Saturday, April 23, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Nine Iraqi soldiers killed, 20 wounded by roadside bomb near Abu Ghraib.

Bring ‘em on: Eight Iraqis killed, 26 wounded in mosque bombing in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis wounded by two car bombings in Basra.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi policemen wounded by roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi killed, seven wounded by roadside bomb on Baghdad airport road.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi killed by roadside bomb near Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi soldiers wounded by roadside bomb near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqis killed in two bombings in Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi civilians killed in car bomb attack on US patrol in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi soldier killed, two wounded by roadside bomb near Yusufiyah.

Command Responsibility. “An Army inspector general`s report has cleared senior Army officers of wrongdoing in the abuse of military prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere, government officials familiar with the findings said yesterday. The only Army general officer recommended for punishment for the failures that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan is Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who was in charge of U.S. prison facilities in Iraq as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade in late 2003 and early 2004. Several sources said Karpinski is expected to receive an administrative reprimand for dereliction of duty.” General Peers would be so proud (not).

Gen. Myers gets kicked to the curb. “In April 2003, as U.S. troops were entering Baghdad and looters roamed the streets, Gen. Peter Pace was asked in a television interview what the U.S. military could do to help democracy take root in Iraq. ‘What we can help do,’ Pace replied, ‘is provide a stable environment inside of which you can rebuild your schools, you can have your electricity turned back on, the water and humanitarian aid can continue to flow, and the people can meet publicly and decide for themselves what kind of government they want.’ That was a precise description of the Bush administration`s hopes for quick results in Iraq, delivered with utter confidence by a Marine who looks as if he came from Central Casting. Two years later, stability is still elusive for the military in Iraq, but Pace`s effectiveness as a communicator who sticks to the administration`s message is one of the factors that led President George W. Bush to nominate him Friday to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” Fuck up and move up.

$81 billion supplemental. “The US Senate on Thursday passed an $81.3bn spending bill to keep US combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan running and to provide additional help to last December’s tsunami victims. By a vote of 99-0, the Senate passed the emergency spending bill that also funds some new domestic security measures, including hiring of additional border agents.” Bush`s war, which Wolfowitz told Congress would pay for itself, has now cost over $300 billion.

Will Aegis get a cut? “A controversial British firm responsible for a $293 million U.S. Army security contract in Iraq could not prove that its armed employees received proper weapons training or that it had vetted Iraqi employees to ensure they did not pose a threat, according to a government audit released yesterday. In addition to criticizing Aegis Defence Services Ltd., the audit took aim at the Army`s contracting office in Iraq for poor oversight. It reported that the official who was supposed to keep watch over Aegis`s contract had not been trained in either monitoring contracts or security. The office was also severely short-staffed: At the time of the audit, 41 officials were administering 6,500 contracts and task orders.”

Cheneyburton update. “The Halliburton corporation, already the Iraq war`s poster child for ‘waste, fraud and abuse’, has been hit with a new double whammy. A report from the US State Department accuses the company of "poor performance" in its US$1.2 billion contract to repair Iraq`s vital southern oilfields. And a powerful California congressman is charging that Defense Department audits showing additional overcharges totaling $212 million were concealed from United Nations monitors by the administration of President George W Bush. The new overcharges bring to $2 billion, or 42% of the contract amounts, the grand total of questionable bills from Halliburton.”

Home of the Whopper. “The Army and Air Force Exchange Service’s newest Burger King in Iraq opened in the International Zone last week. The post exchange food courtyard also has a Pizza Inn, Gyro King and coffee shop, according to an AAFES press release.”

Commentary

Analysis: “There is also a blind alley we must avoid turning in to. The combination of low-profile U.S. forces taking few casualties with a continuing insurgency that inflicts heavy and systematic losses on Iraqi government forces and civilians could ultimately place the United States in the worst of all possible situations in Iraq. We would then be in the position of being still perceived and resented by most Iraqis as an occupying military force, yet at the same time their anger against the U.S. would mount for not doing enough to quell the insurgency and protect the people it supposedly entered Iraq to liberate. Only by being aware of that risk will Washington be able to preclude it. In fact, the Pentagon is planning for possible significant U.S. troop reductions early next year - perhaps drawing down American forces from over 140,000 now to 105,000.”

Analysis:

This new American militarism manifests itself in several different ways. It does so, first of all, in the scope, cost, and configuration of America`s present-day military establishment.

Through the first two centuries of US history, political leaders in Washington gauged the size and capabilities of America`s armed services according to the security tasks immediately at hand. A grave and proximate threat to the nation`s well-being might require a large and powerful military establishment. In the absence of such a threat, policymakers scaled down that establishment accordingly. With the passing of crisis, the army raised up for the crisis went immediately out of existence. This had been the case in 1865, in 1918, and in 1945.

Since the end of the Cold War, having come to value military power for its own sake, the United States has abandoned this principle and is committed as a matter of policy to maintaining military capabilities far in excess of those of any would-be adversary or combination of adversaries. This commitment finds both a qualitative and quantitative expression, with the US military establishment dwarfing that of even America`s closest ally. Thus, whereas the US Navy maintains and operates a total of 12 large attack aircraft carriers, the once-vaunted Royal Navy has none - indeed, in all the battle fleets of the world there is no ship even remotely comparable to a Nimitz-class carrier, weighing in at some 97,000 tons fully loaded, longer than three [US] football fields, cruising at a speed above 30 knots, and powered by nuclear reactors that give it an essentially infinite radius of action. Today, the US Marine Corps possesses more attack aircraft than does the entire Royal Air Force - and the United States has two other even larger "air forces", one an integral part of the navy and the other officially designated as the US Air Force. Indeed, in terms of numbers of men and women in uniform, the US Marine Corps is half again as large as the entire British army - and the Pentagon has a second, even larger "army" actually called the US Army - which in turn also operates its own "air force" of some 5,000 aircraft.



Casualty Reports

Local story: Oregon soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Arizona Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: New York Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Arizona soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: North Carolina contractor killed in Iraq.

Local story: Nevada contractor killed in Iraq.
# posted by yankeedoodle : 5:38 AM
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Latest Fatality: Apr 22, 2005

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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[urlEine Seite für Wolfie]http://www.micom.net/oops/[/url]

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April 24, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A High-Tech Lynching in Prime Time
By FRANK RICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/opinion/24rich.html?hp

Whatever your religious denomination, or lack of same, it was hard not to be swept up in last week`s televised pageantry from Rome: the grandeur of St. Peter`s Square, the panoply of the cardinals, the continuity of history embodied by the joyous emergence of the 265th pope. As a show of faith, it`s a tough act to follow. But that has not stopped some ingenious American hucksters from trying.

Tonight is the much-awaited "Justice Sunday," the judge-bashing rally being disseminated nationwide by cable, satellite and Internet from a megachurch in Louisville. It may not boast a plume of smoke emerging from above the Sistine Chapel, but it will feature its share of smoke and mirrors as well as traditions that, while not dating back a couple of millenniums, do at least recall the 1920`s immortalized in "Elmer Gantry." These traditions have less to do with the earnest practice of religion by an actual church, as we witnessed from Rome, than with the exploitation of religion by political operatives and other cynics with worldly ends. While Sinclair Lewis wrote that Gantry, his hypocritical evangelical preacher, "was born to be a senator," we now have senators who are born to be Gantrys. One of them, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, hatched plans to be beamed into tonight`s festivities by videotape, a stunt that in itself imbues "Justice Sunday" with a touch of all-American spectacle worthy of "The Wizard of Oz."

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Like the wizard himself, "Justice Sunday" is a humbug, albeit one with real potential consequences. It brings mass-media firepower to a campaign against so-called activist judges whose virulence increasingly echoes the rhetoric of George Wallace and other segregationists in the 1960`s. Back then, Wallace called for the impeachment of Frank M. Johnson Jr., the federal judge in Alabama whose activism extended to upholding the Montgomery bus boycott and voting rights march. Despite stepped-up security, a cross was burned on Johnson`s lawn and his mother`s house was bombed.

The fraudulence of "Justice Sunday" begins but does not end with its sham claims to solidarity with the civil rights movement of that era. "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias," says the flier for tonight`s show, "and now it is being used against people of faith." In truth, Bush judicial nominees have been approved in exactly the same numbers as were Clinton second-term nominees. Of the 13 federal appeals courts, 10 already have a majority of Republican appointees. So does the Supreme Court. It`s a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the "left`s last legislative body," and that Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, is the poster child for "outrageous" judicial overreach. Our courts are as highly populated by Republicans as the other two branches of government.

The "Justice Sunday" mob is also lying when it claims to despise activist judges as a matter of principle. Only weeks ago it was desperately seeking activist judges who might intervene in the Terri Schiavo case as boldly as Scalia & Co. had in Bush v. Gore. The real "Justice Sunday" agenda lies elsewhere. As Bill Maher summed it up for Jay Leno on the "Tonight" show last week: " `Activist judges` is a code word for gay." The judges being verbally tarred and feathered are those who have decriminalized gay sex (in a Supreme Court decision written by Justice Kennedy) as they once did abortion and who countenance marriage rights for same-sex couples. This is the animus that dares not speak its name tonight. To paraphrase the "Justice Sunday" flier, now it`s the anti-filibuster campaign that is being abused to protect bias, this time against gay people.

Anyone who doesn`t get with this program, starting with all Democrats, is damned as a bigoted enemy of "people of faith." But "people of faith," as used by the event`s organizers, is another duplicitous locution; it`s a code word for only one specific and exclusionary brand of Christianity. The trade organization representing tonight`s presenters, National Religious Broadcasters, requires its members to "sign a distinctly evangelical statement of faith that would probably exclude most Catholics and certainly all Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist programmers," according to the magazine Broadcasting & Cable. The only major religious leader involved with "Justice Sunday," R. Albert Mohler Jr. of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has not only called the papacy a "false and unbiblical office" but also told Terry Gross on NPR two years ago that "any belief system" leading "away from the cross of Christ and toward another way of ultimate meaning, is, indeed, wicked and evil."

Tonight`s megachurch setting and pseudoreligious accouterments notwithstanding, the actual organizer of "Justice Sunday" isn`t a clergyman at all but a former state legislator and candidate for insurance commissioner in Louisiana, Tony Perkins. He now runs the Family Research Council, a Washington propaganda machine devoted to debunking "myths" like "People are born gay" and "Homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals are." It will give you an idea of the level of Mr. Perkins`s hysteria that, as reported by The American Prospect, he told a gathering in Washington this month that the judiciary poses "a greater threat to representative government" than "terrorist groups." And we all know the punishment for terrorists. Accordingly, Newsweek reports that both Justices Kennedy and Clarence Thomas have "asked Congress for money to add 11 police officers" to the Supreme Court, "including one new officer just to assess threats against the justices." The Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy-making body for the federal judiciary, has requested $12 million for home-security systems for another 800 judges.

Mr. Perkins`s fellow producer tonight is James Dobson, the child psychologist who created Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs media behemoth most famous of late for condemning SpongeBob SquarePants for joining other cartoon characters in a gay-friendly public-service "We Are Family" video for children. Dr. Dobson sees same-sex marriage as the path to "marriage between a man and his donkey" and, in yet another perversion of civil rights history, has likened the robed justices of the Supreme Court to the robed thugs of the Ku Klux Klan. He has promised "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if he doesn`t get the judges he wants.

Once upon a time you might have wondered what Senator Frist is doing lighting matches in this tinderbox. As he never ceases to remind us, he is a doctor - an M.D., not some mere Ph.D. like Dr. Dobson - with an admirable history of combating AIDS in Africa. But this guy signed his pact with the devil even before he decided to grandstand in the Schiavo case by besmirching the diagnoses of neurologists who, unlike him, had actually examined the patient.

It was three months earlier, on the Dec. 5, 2004, edition of ABC News`s "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," that Dr. Frist enlisted in the Perkins-Dobson cavalry. That week Bush administration abstinence-only sex education programs had been caught spreading bogus information, including the canard that tears and sweat can transmit H.I.V. and AIDS - a fiction that does nothing to further public health but is very effective at provoking the demonization of gay men and any other high-risk group for the disease. Asked if he believed this junk science was true, the Princeton-and-Harvard-educated Dr. Frist said, "I don`t know." After Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed him three more times, this fine doctor theorized that it "would be very hard" for tears and sweat to spread AIDS (still a sleazy answer, since there have been no such cases).

Senator Frist had hoped to deflect criticism of his cameo on "Justice Sunday" by confining his appearance to video. Though he belittled the disease-prevention value of condoms in that same "This Week" interview, he apparently now believes that videotape is just the prophylactic to shield him from the charge that he is breaching the wall separating church and state. His other defense: John Kerry spoke at churches during the presidential campaign. Well, every politician speaks at churches. Not every political leader speaks at nationally televised political rallies that invoke God to declare war on courts of law.

Perhaps the closest historical antecedent of tonight`s crusade was that staged in the 1950`s and 60`s by a George Wallace ally, the televangelist Billy James Hargis. At its peak, his so-called Christian Crusade was carried by 500 radio stations and more than 200 television stations. In the "Impeach Earl Warren" era, Hargis would preach of the "collapse of moral values" engineered by a "powerfully entrenched, anti-God Liberal Establishment." He also decried any sex education that talked about homosexuality or even sexual intercourse. Or so he did until his career was ended by accusations that he had had sex with female students at the Christian college he founded as well as with boys in the school`s All-American Kids choir.

Hargis died in obscurity the week before Dr. Frist`s "This Week" appearance. But no less effectively than the cardinals in Rome, he has passed the torch.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Für alle, die wissen wollen, woran Fischer und die 68er auch noch Schuld sind:[urlTurbulence on Campus in 60`s Hardened Views of Future Pope]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/international/worldspecial2/24ratzinger.html?hp&ex=1114315200&en=bf5a76a816b67676&ei=5094&partner=homepage[/url]
Ein Artikel der NYTimes written by Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Wakin.

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April 24, 2005
Bruce Almighty
By JON PARELES
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/arts/music/24pare.html

ASBURY PARK, N.J.

WHEN Bruce Springsteen talks about his new album, he can sound more like a preacher than a rock star. Soul and spirit, God and family; that`s what`s on his mind in the quiet, folky songs on "Devils & Dust" (Columbia). He sings, reverently, about Jesus and his mother, Mary; he also sings about a man with a hooker in a hotel room.

"I like to write about people whose souls are in danger, who are at risk," Mr. Springsteen said. At rehearsals for a solo tour that starts on Monday in Detroit, he and his crew were fine-tuning technical details here at the Paramount Theater, the faded movie palace at the Asbury Park Convention Hall.

"In every song on this record," he added, "somebody`s in some spiritual struggle between the worst of themselves and the best of themselves, and everybody comes out in a slightly different place. That thread runs through the record, and it`s what gives the record its grounding in the spirit."

In a way, "Devils & Dust" is Mr. Springsteen`s family-values album, filled with reflections on God, motherhood and the meaning of home. It arrives at a moment when pop is filled with shout-outs to God from rockers as diverse as U2, Los Lonely Boys, Ryan Cabrera and Prince, and when evangelical Christian conservatism seeks mainstream clout.

It might seem that with "Devils & Dust," Mr. Springsteen is making his own offering to an America in which the rhetoric of moral values has grown so vehement and divisive. He did, after all, back the losing candidate in the 2004 elections. Actually, most of the songs on "Devils & Dust" - even the jaunty "All the Way Home," which begins, "I know what it`s like to have failed, baby/With the whole world lookin` on" - were written nearly a decade ago, and Mr. Springsteen, 55, said he was working by instinct when he chose to resurrect them for this album. "It`s both not connected to the chronology, and yet it always is," he mused. "The canary in the coal mine - that`s a pretty good artistic model."

Mr. Springsteen`s last album was "The Rising," his response to Sept. 11. It re-established him as America`s conscience, questioner and consoler, and gave him his most resounding commercial success since the 1980`s. The album sold two million copies, and Mr. Springsteen and the E Street Band barnstormed arenas and stadiums, selling out nationwide.

All of that made Mr. Springsteen`s endorsement of Senator John F. Kerry for president more striking. Before the 2004 elections, Mr. Springsteen had supported causes rather than candidates: Vietnam veterans, food banks, the magazine DoubleTake. But with this election, Mr. Springsteen chose to spend some of the credibility he had built over a career of singing about people left out of the American dream, and burnished with "The Rising." He and his band not only headlined the Vote for Change tour in fall 2004; Mr. Springsteen also took his acoustic guitar and literally embraced Senator Kerry at 11th-hour campaign rallies. Then came George W. Bush`s re-election. "I had a couple of weeks where it was like, ah, Patti had to peel me off the wall," he said, referring to his wife, Patti Scialfa. "And then it was onward and upward. But it was something I was glad I did."

Was he worried about losing fans who disagreed with his politics? "That was a thing where you sort of let the chips fall where they may," he said. "And you get some nasty letters, and people get angry. But the fans that I`ve had over the years, well, I perceive it as a big relationship, and a flexible one."

The personal, political and spiritual merge in the new album`s title song. Mr. Springsteen wrote "Devils & Dust" shortly after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, and he considered using it to open his sets at the Vote for Change tour. (In the end, he decided to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" instead.)

The narrator of "Devils & Dust" could be a soldier in Iraq or America itself. He sings, "I got my finger on the trigger/But I don`t know who to trust," and "I got God on my side/I`m just trying to survive." Then he wonders: "What if what you do to survive/Kills the things you love." The music is a subdued cousin of songs like "Tougher Than the Rest," and while it`s easy to imagine a gleaming E Street Band arrangement, it`s also obvious why Mr. Springsteen chose to make his narrator sound so alone.

After each blockbuster in his career, Mr. Springsteen has made a shift from booming rock to somber storytelling, from extroverted to pensive. "I like writing pop songs, and I like the band playing loud, and I enjoy playing big places," he said. "But there`s something about when an audience comes in, and it`s just them, and it`s just you."

The direct forerunner of "Devils & Dust" is "The Ghost of Tom Joad," the album Mr. Springsteen recorded largely alone in 1995, full of Woody Guthrie-style ballads about immigrants and displaced workers. Many of the songs on "Devils & Dust" were written about the same time.

"Tom Joad" was downbeat, admirable for its terse, compassionate narratives but singlemindedly bleak. "Devils & Dust" allows itself good times as well as hard ones, love songs between tough predicaments, and it has touches of country along with the spirit of Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

The album`s songs don`t just observe characters; they reach inside. "Most of the songs on the record, you`re listening to someone think," Mr. Springsteen said. Where "Tom Joad" was full of reportorial detail, the songs on "Devils & Dust" dissolve into memories and visionary images. One, "Matamoros Banks," tells the story of a drowned illegal immigrant in reverse. Starting with his body floating in the river and ending with his eagerness to rejoin his lover, the song turns sorrow into hope.

The music shares that reflective tone. Mr. Springsteen recorded nearly all of the songs in a few days, nearly a decade ago, sitting with his guitar in the living room of his farmhouse in New Jersey, doing just a take or two. In the haunting "Silver Palomino," the death of a boy`s mother connects him to the apparition of a beautiful, untouchable horse; as in an old folk song, the song`s meter never settles on a steady beat. A second take might have pinned it down.

"The minute I get the essence of something, I try to stop," Mr. Springsteen said. "If I go back to re-record, sometimes I can hear the thinking a little more." Last year, he gathered the old recordings and worked with the producer Brendan O`Brien so that the accompaniments - a slide guitar, a string section, distant voices - float up from within like phantoms. The lead vocals are gentle, deliberately avoiding the heroic voice that Mr. Springsteen uses with the E Street Band. And in two songs, he switches to a voice he has used only fleetingly before: a ghostly falsetto.

Thoughts of redemption, moral choices and invocations of God have been part of Springsteen songs throughout his career, but they have grown stronger and more explicitly Christian on his 21st-century albums. "It was something I pushed off for a long time," he said, "but I`ve been thinking about it a lot lately." He has a trinity of reasons for his connection to Christian imagery and concepts: "Catholic school, Catholic school, Catholic school," he said. "You`re indoctrinated. It`s a none-too subtle form of brainwashing, and of course, it works very well."

Mr. Springsteen grew up half a block away from his Catholic church, convent and rectory. "I`m not a churchgoer," he said, "but I realized, as time passed, that my music is filled with Catholic imagery. It`s not a negative thing. There was a powerful world of potent imagery that became alive and vital and vibrant, and was both very frightening and held out the promise of ecstasies and paradise. There was this incredible internal landscape that they created in you."

"As I got older, I got a lot less defensive about it," he continued. "I thought, I`ve inherited this particular landscape and I can build it into something of my own. I`ve been back to the church on many occasions, and I have a lot of friendships with priests. And I`ve been to the convent where the nuns now give me beer, which they have in the refrigerator. I don`t think they had that when I was going to school there."

The album includes "Jesus Was an Only Son," a hymnlike song about Mary`s love that ends with Jesus consoling her, saying, "Remember the soul of the universe/Willed a world and it appeared." But "Devils & Dust" also includes "Reno," which has lyrics explicit enough to prompt a warning on the album package that it "contains some adult imagery." Its narrator visits a prostitute who resembles his ex-lover, only to feel more desolate afterward.

"He`s in this room with this proxy because he couldn`t handle the real thing," Mr. Springsteen said. "The physicality, the sexual content of the song was important, because casual sex is kind of closing the book of you. It`s ecstasy, and it`s release. Sex with somebody you love is opening the book of you, which is always a risky and frightening read."

The other kind of love on "Devils & Dust" is maternal and filial. Half the songs on the album, like "Jesus Was an Only Son," ponder relationships between mothers and sons. Mr. Springsteen has written often about his uneasy ties to his father, who died in 1998, but rarely about his mother, who is still, he said, "alive and kicking."

In "Black Cowboys," a ghetto teenager leaves his mother and her drug-dealer boyfriend and heads west; in "The Hitter," a broken-down boxer shows up at his mother`s door and begs her to let him in. And in "Long Time Comin,` " a man feels his pregnant wife`s belly and hopes, for his children, that "your mistakes would be your own/Yea your sins would be your own," once again connecting family and faith.

"Pete Townshend said that rock music was one of the big spiritual movements of the second half of the 20th century," Mr. Springsteen said. "It is medicinal and it does address your spirit, there`s no two ways about it. And it came out of the church. Who were the first frontmen? The preachers!"

Onstage at the Paramount, Mr. Springsteen ran through new songs and old ones as crew members tuned guitars, tinkered with reverb settings and made sure that the right harmonica was in the neck rack. A keyboardist named Fitz worked on sounds that would waft mysteriously through some of the songs. Guitar in hand, Mr. Springsteen started fingerpicking the introduction to "Black Cowboys." Looking out at the lone spectator, he said, "I tell a really touching story here," and chuckled, adding, "I hope."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 24, 2005
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
Democratic Moral Values?
By MATT BAI
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/magazine/24WWLN.html

You can forgive Democrats in Washington for feeling somewhat vindicated by the way the controversy over Terri Schiavo played out. For years, after all, they waited in vain for the moment when Republicans might trip over their own arrogance while crusading for moral values, and finally, if polls are to be believed, it happened. Spurred by opportunism and more than a little genuine religious fervor, the heirs to Goldwater and Reagan seemed to forget how they came to control the values debate in America in the first place: not by interfering in the moral choices of families but by promising to stop government from doing exactly that. In truth, it had been a long time since Republican leaders paid more than superficial tribute to their libertarian creed, but it was only now, in the battle over a dying woman`s wishes, that the public seemed to call them on it.

And yet, satisfying as it was for Democrats to watch Bill Frist and George W. Bush grow mute in the face of voter unease, they couldn`t escape from the fact that the Schiavo episode exposed something hollow in their party too. Far from having made a compelling case for euthanasia or against morality by fiat, Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, pretty much became bystanders to the whole unseemly affair. And while Republicans managed to further define themselves as a party that would even go to unpopular lengths to defend the sanctity of ravaged and unborn souls alike, Democrats were again left to ponder their own identity in an age in which religious values and scientific insight seem increasingly to be hurtling toward collision. Even in defeat, Republicans emerged as ``the party of life.`` And as one leading Democratic operative privately warned a roomful of allies, ``We can`t just be the party of death.``

Before Schiavo ever became the story of the moment, Democrats were wrestling over the meaning of moral values, with about as much clarity as you might expect from a bunch of cable-TV pundits debating superstring theory. There are two basic arguments being put forward by national Democrats on how to change their image, and at a breakfast for Democratic officials in Washington last month, I heard two of the party`s more serious thinkers lay them out. The first speaker, Harold Ford, the young representative from Tennessee, argued that Democrats needed to speak the same spiritual language as Republicans if they didn`t want to continue to be seen as godless elitists. ``We can separate church and state,`` Ford said in a preacherly cadence, ``but, by golly, we ought to be able to say that our spirit, our faith and our morals influence somewhat how we treat people and how we shape laws and how we implement policy.`` After Ford sat down, Howard Dean, the party`s new chairman, counseled that if Democrats really wanted to win back churchgoers, they had to make the case that traditionally liberal programs like health care and community-development block grants were moral values, too. ``I am tired of having decent Americans who don`t happen to wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves called immoral,`` Dean said.

There was something useful in each of these prescriptions, and yet each also sounded a little wishful; it`s not easy to imagine most Democrats credibly sermonizing, any more than it is to envision Southern congregations shouting hallelujahs at the mention of block grants. The deeper problem lies in the party`s positions, which have sent much of America a confusing and not especially credible message on questions of morality. While the Democratic Party traces its ideological lineage on economic issues to the New Deal, its DNA on social issues was created by the union of the two principal movements of the 1960`s: civil rights and the antiwar counterculture. The two are generally discussed as part of the same transformative social force of the era, but in fact, in the political arena, they reinforced very different instincts. The civil rights movement legitimized the idea of legislating and codifying morality. Where activist lawmakers or judges could find a constitutional rationale for overruling states and communities on a discriminatory social policy, Democrats came to believe that they had not just the right but also the responsibility to intervene. The counterculture, however, was all about radical individualism -- the attitude Republicans now snidely describe as ``if it feels good, do it.`` In the context of the time, these contradictory ideas weren`t hard to reconcile; to Democrats, and to most Americans, government`s integrating swimming pools seemed clearly to be right, while government`s banning books seemed clearly to be wrong. But as often happens in law and politics, the specific circumstances that created each impulse were outlived by the conflicting precedents they established.

The inheritors of the party, children of the 60`s and 70`s, have never been able to reconcile this contradiction, and neither have a lot of their constituents. Where their own communities are concerned, Democrats reflexively resist any notion of government as a moral umpire; they don`t want some politician dressing up their kids in school uniforms or deciding which video game they should be allowed to play. Joe Lieberman has carried on a long and lonely fight within the party to hold Hollywood accountable for the content of its movies, and for this he has been savaged by liberal activists. And yet when it comes to the more rural and religious communities where other voters live, Democrats tend to view government, conveniently, through the activist prism of civil rights. Legislation limiting gun ownership or legal decisions restricting school prayer seem eminently reasonable, because they reflect urban and secular values that, to most Democrats, constitute an obvious moral imperative.

This kind of hypocrisy isn`t limited to Democrats -- Republicans, those lovers of states` rights, made that clear enough when they tried to bully Florida`s courts and Legislature in the Schiavo case -- and it probably says as much about human nature as it does about any one political ideology. All of us are inclined to see our own values as sacrosanct, while the choices of others are subject to review: if I put a statue of Zeus in front of my house, that`s my decision as an owner; but if my neighbor sets a rusty car atop a pile of cinder blocks, it`s suddenly an issue of our collective property values. When it comes to morality, our first instincts always tend toward tyranny. Moral issues bring out the worst in our two political parties because the parties seek to capitalize on those instincts, motivating voters by turning them against one another and pushing them toward extremes. What Republicans have managed to do is to dress up their particular brand of moral tyranny as a defense of life and piety in all its forms. The Democratic alternative, relying as it does on the moral judgments of Ph.D.`s and Oscar winners, subscribes to no such pretension. It simply smacks of boundless elitism.

Democrats can try to change the conversation by playing with language and definitions, but in the end, any meaningful re-evaluation of their approach to moral values -- like just about everything else on the Democratic agenda -- will require more intellectual rigor as well. Like Bill Clinton in 1992, Democrats now may have to confront some of their most powerful interest groups, which have grown accustomed to demanding absolute fealty on issues like abortion and obscenity, if they want their notions of morality to feel more consistent and inclusive to many Americans. This may be a transitional moment for both parties. More voters now are refusing to join either party, rejecting the notion that either holds a monopoly on values. And as technology advances, so, too, does the shading of moral choices that used to seem black or white. Can Roe v. Wade still be the sole arbiter of life`s starting point, for instance, now that a mother can watch her 12-week-old fetus spinning in the womb? Perhaps the party that builds a national consensus in the era after Terri Schiavo will be the one that has the courage not to exploit moral choices but to wrestle with them. Most Americans seem to understand that we are entering a time of complex, wrenching decisions that defy facile and self-righteous answers. Maybe it`s time for politicians to admit that, too.

Matt Bai, a contributing writer for the magazine, is writing a book about the future of the Democrats.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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April 24, 2005
In Iraq, a Tug of War Over the Truth
By ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/weekinreview/24wort.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq — It is famously hard to get accurate information in the chaos of war. But in Iraq, where nearly every militia, political party and insurgent group has its own propaganda arm, truth is becoming more elusive every day.

Last weekend, a political firestorm erupted here after reports that Sunni kidnappers had taken as many as 150 Shiite hostages in Madaen, a town just south of Baghdad. The kidnappers were said to be threatening to kill them, unless Shiites agreed to leave Madaen.

It should have been easy to determine what happened. Either people were kidnapped and threats were made, or they were not.

But it has not been that simple. Three Iraqi Army battalions searched the town and found no hostages. Days later, Shiite political leaders issued grisly photographs of several dozen bodies taken from the Tigris River, saying the bodies - some of which appeared to have been killed weeks earlier - were those of the hostages.

Shiite political figures continue to insist on their version of events. Many Sunnis, meanwhile, have angrily called the allegations nothing but a ruse drummed up to justify invasions of Sunni towns. Forensic teams are trying to identify the bodies - many of them badly decomposed - but it is not clear that any amount of proof would satisfy either side.
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Reporters, meanwhile, are left to navigate between what sometimes appear to be Sunni and Shiite versions of the truth. It does not help that Iraqis - having lived for decades with the propaganda of Saddam Hussein`s government - tend to rely on networks supplying rumors that reinforce grievances rooted deeply in history.

"In the Middle East, as in the Balkans and Ireland, suppressed religious and ethnic groups have a kind of film playing in their minds of their own oppression," said Michael Doran, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. "In moments of political disruption, they are ready to add another scene to the pre-existing narrative."

Iraq has become especially fertile ground for battles over real and perceived injustices, Professor Doran said, in part because of the variety and relative sophistication of some groups involved.

Iraq`s Shiites, who were brutally suppressed under Saddam Hussein, carry a narrative of massacre and oppression that dates back to the founding of their religion.

And since the American invasion two years ago, Shiites have been the target of countless assaults by insurgents, who are mostly Sunnis. It is little surprise that they tend to see any new killings within the context of their legacy of victimhood.

Iraq`s Sunnis, the elite who supplied the nation`s ruling class until Saddam Hussein fell from power, have their own narrative of displacement and injustice at the hands of the United States. After the American invasion, large numbers joined the resistance, including highly educated men who set up sophisticated propaganda machines. Following a model already in use in neighboring Saudi Arabia, they flooded the Internet with warnings about the desecration of an Arab land by American soldiers. Videotapes and leaflets appeared purporting to show the rape of Iraqi women by Americans, and the wanton destruction of Iraqi cities.

By early 2005, the insurgents had mounted full-scale press operations, putting their own spin on daily events in an endless series of Internet postings. Even when they were announcing that they had slaughtered a group of Iraqi police officers, the message was usually the same: atrocities are being carried out against Iraq`s Sunnis, and Islam required that they fight back.

Meanwhile, Iranian military men and intelligence agents have filtered into Iraq over the past two years, Iraqi and American officials have said. They too spread their own versions of events in Iraq.

All of these elements played a role in the Madaen kidnapping story.

Soon after the first kidnapping reports emerged, members of Iraq`s Shiite religious parties began repeating and embellishing them, both to reporters and members of Iraq`s new national assembly.

Jawad al-Maliki, a leading Shiite assembly member, told the legislators that the Sunni kidnappers` threats amounted to "a kind of ethnic purge." He claimed that the area around the town had been laced with mines, and that the Iraqi Army was busily defusing them. Other Shiite members repeated similar stories, and the number of Shiite hostages steadily grew, from 60 to 80 to as high as 200.

After the Iraqi Army battalions searched the town and surrounding area last Sunday and Monday, it became clear that some aspects of the story were false. The town was not being held by Sunni insurgents, as some legislators had claimed. There were no mines. Nor were any live hostages found.

Even so, days later, Iraq`s new president, Jalal Talabani, emerged from a meeting with other Iraqi politicians to say that the kidnapping tales were true. He spoke of photographs showing murdered hostages found in the Tigris, south of Baghdad, and those photographs were made public the next day.

But police officials in the area said almost all the bodies were dumped there over several weeks, before the hostage drama was said to have taken place. In an area where many Shiites have in fact been killed by Sunnis in the past, it was not clear why or when the victims were killed, and of course it was impossible to tell if the decomposed bodies were Shiite or Sunni or anything else.

Still, the parties clung to their own version of the facts, while new rumors made the rounds.

Falah al-Naqib, Iraq`s Sunni interior minister, said the entire affair was an effort by Iranian intelligence agents to stir sectarian conflict.

Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, speculated on his Web log that the whole kidnapping story could have been fabricated by insurgents of Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party, which was skilled at spreading disinformation.

The insurgents, Mr. Cole pointed out, want to ignite a war between Sunnis and Shiites. For that purpose, he observed, spreading rumors of a mass kidnapping might be just as useful as actually carrying one out.

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Reuters schreibt:
More than 400 Iraqi police and soldiers have been killed over the past six weeks, according to figures from icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks deaths in Iraq.
[url2005: Iraqi Police and Guardsmen Deaths]http://www.icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx[/url]


washingtonpost.com
Insurgent Violence Escalates In Iraq
Over 100 Killed As Post-Election Calm Dissipates
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12417-2005Apr…

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 24, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, April 23 -- Violence is escalating sharply in Iraq after a period of relative calm that followed the January elections. Bombings, ambushes and kidnappings targeting Iraqis and foreigners, both troops and civilians, have surged this month while the new Iraqi government is caught up in power struggles over cabinet positions.

Many attacks have gone unchallenged by Iraqi forces in large areas of the country dominated by insurgents, according to the U.S. military, Iraqi officials and civilians and visits by Washington Post correspondents. Hundreds of Iraqis and foreigners have either been killed or wounded in the last week.

"Definitely, violence is getting worse," said a U.S. official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "My strong sense is that a lot of the political momentum that was generated out of the successful election, which was sort of like a punch in the gut to the insurgents, has worn off." The political stalemate "has given the insurgents new hope," the official added, repeating a message Americans say they are increasingly giving Iraqi leaders.

This week, at a checkpoint bunker in Tarmiya where insurgents downed a helicopter, a teenager in sunglasses clutching an AK-47 marked the limits of the Iraqi army`s authority. "I wouldn`t advise going there," the young Shiite Muslim recruit said, referring to Tarmiya, a Tigris River town a few hundred yards up the road that is dominated by Sunni Muslim landowners who were loyal to Saddam Hussein. "Those are some bad people there."

Up the road, insurgents run relatively free, and last week they appeared to have used a hilltop outside of town to fire what they later said was a shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missile. The missile hit a chartered Russian-made helicopter Thursday, killing six Americans and five other foreigners, including a survivor executed by the guerrillas afterward.

Another U.S. soldier was killed on Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near a military convoy west of Baghdad, the Reuters news agency reported.
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U.S. soldiers secure a road leading to the dangerous Baghdad airport highway
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The U.S. official said this week that overall attacks had increased since the end of March. Roadside bombings and attacks on military targets are up by as much as 40 percent in parts of the country over the same period, according to estimates from private security outfits.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi leadership remains in limbo.

The attacks, coming as officials continued to haggle over government posts, have eroded some of the hope that followed the elections. Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish and secular leaders, most of whom are building the first democratically elected Iraqi government of their adult lives, have let power struggles fill nearly one-third of their government`s planned 11-month run.

At best, deal-making on some key posts appears stuck where it was two weeks ago, when Ibrahim Jafari, a formerly exiled Shiite leader, accepted the prime minister`s job and the task of forming a promised national-unity government.

There was increasing talk that dissenters within the governing coalition, led by Shiites and Kurds, are trying to prolong negotiations until Jafari misses an early May deadline to form a government. This could put the prime minister job into the hands of another Shiite candidate.

Soldiers and police across much of Iraq have fallen into inaction. The Defense and Interior ministries are run by interim chiefs slated for replacement. Initiatives by the Iraqi forces against the insurgents have all but ceased.

The insurgency has found new hideouts, gathering points and recruiting areas in western and central Iraq, and in eastern Iraq along the Tigris River, as well as in other locations.

"The government is useless! I have stopped depending on it," Ali Hali, a 29-year-old Shiite, cried last week. He was among hundreds of wailing residents of the southern city of Najaf who gathered in anger after scores of bodies were found in the Tigris. How the people were killed is not known, but Shiites said they presumed them to be victims of Sunni extremists.

Tensions over the killings in the area focused on the town of Madain, where rumors that Sunnis are kidnapping and killing Shiite townspeople were rife. Some Shiite national leaders have warned of sectarian war. In Shiite strongholds, there were threats of retaliatory violence against innocent Sunnis.

Even with accusations about Madain circulating on the streets, in newspapers and on television, Iraq`s Interior Ministry waited a day to place a call to the town to ask about the situation.

The ministry`s police had withdrawn from the town long ago, and phone lines were bad, said Sabah Kadhim, a ministry spokesman. Journalists noted that police waited three more days, after plenty of notice, to send forces sweeping through the town, only to say they had found neither kidnappers nor hostages.

Meanwhile, officials describe setbacks in the security situation in the Sunni Muslim city of Husaybah on the Syrian border, near the area where fighters tied to al Qaeda had staged the second of two well-planned attacks on a U.S. military installation this month. An Iraqi army unit that had once grown to 400 members has dwindled to a few dozen guardsmen "holed up`` inside a phosphate plant outside of Husaybah for their protection, a Marine commander said.

Maj. John Reed, executive officer for the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, which has a company in Husaybah, said the Iraqi guardsmen retreated to the phosphate plant compound with their families after insurgents attacked and killed scores of people in recent months.

"They will claim that they`ve got hundreds ready to come back and fight," said Reed, whose company seldom patrols inside Husaybah. "Well, there are no more than 30 of them on duty on any given day, and they are completely ineffective."

At Tarmiya, along the heavily Sunni-populated banks of the Tigris, Shiite recruits sent by the government usually stay well out of town unless accompanying U.S. patrols, a correspondent for The Post observed. Police officers man a station inside Tarmiya, but they are Sunnis from the same tribes as the townspeople. Even they are seldom seen.

In city after city and town after town, security forces who had signed up to secure Iraq and replace U.S. forces appear to have abandoned posts or taken refuge inside them for fear of attacks.

``We joined the police, and after this, the job became a way of committing suicide,`` said Jasim Khadar Harki, a 28-year-old policeman in Mosul, where residents say patrols are dropping off noticeably, often appearing only in response to attacks.

Tips from Mosul`s residents have dropped off as well, with residents doubtful that police can protect informants from retaliation. When a school principal in Mosul saw insurgents place explosives outside the gates of a police station next door, the principal didn`t tell police -- only quietly dismissed pupils for the day, townspeople said.

The Interior Ministry is a distant force to which the police appeal for supplies, Harki said, "but they rarely respond."

Guerrilla campaigns also are fought psychologically, by intimidation, Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp., said in a telephone interview. Along that line, this month has shown a return of grim videos showing distraught hostages and executions, while daily bombings make every trip out of the house a calculated risk for Iraqis.

"Insurgencies can`t necessarily be measured in attacks but in overall security," Hoffman said. "It`s still enormously uneven even in country`s capital."

He pointed to the downing of the helicopter north of Baghdad`s airport and to bombings along the airport road that have claimed dozens of injured and dead this month.

Iraq`s political leaders acknowledge increasing pressure from the United States and Iraqis to wrap up a government to deal with the violence.

"It`s natural that our friends would be pointing" to the problem, "as well as our constituents," said Barham Salih, the former interim deputy prime minister and a lead figure for the Kurds in the government formation talks.

"There is a serious security challenge, and we will be held to account," he said.

For residents of Baghdad, where security forces that are comparatively well engaged have been unable to stop daily bombings, the return to violence has already brought some residents to despair.

"This is terrible," said Waleed Sharhan, outside a mosque where two children were among the nine dead from a bombing Friday. "There is no hope that this country will be better."

Correspondent Steve Fainaru at the Syrian border and special correspondents Naseer Nouri at Tarmiya, Marwan Ani in Mosul and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.

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Ein Thema Der Woche
[urlThe Government`s Pyramid Scheme]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/weekinreview/24seve.html[/url]

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Terrified US soldiers are still killing civilians with impunity, while the dead go uncounted
By Patrick Cockburn
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?st…

24 April 2005

An American patrol roared past us with the soldiers gesturing furiously with their guns for traffic to keep back on an overpass in central Baghdad. A black car with three young men in it did not stop in time and a soldier fired several shots from his machine gun into its engine.

The driver and his friends were not hit, but many Iraqis do not survive casual encounters with US soldiers. It is very easy to be accidentally killed in Iraq. US soldiers treat everybody as a potential suicide bomber. If they are right they have saved their lives and if they are wrong they face no penalty.

"We should end the immunity of US soldiers here," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician who argues that the failure to prosecute American soldiers who have killed civilians is one of the reasons why the occupation became so unpopular so fast. He admits, however, that this is extremely unlikely to happen given the US attitude to any sanctions against its own forces.

Every Iraqi has stories of friends or relatives killed by US troops for no adequate reason. Often they do not know if they were shot by regular soldiers or by members of western security companies whose burly employees, usually ex-soldiers, are everywhere in Iraq.

A member of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi`s party, was passing through an American checkpoint last year when a single shot rang out from a sniper. No US soldier was hit, but the troops at the checkpoint hosed down the area with fire, wounding the INC member and killing his driver.

The rector of Al-Nahrain University in south Baghdad was travelling to a degree ceremony on the other side of the city when white men in a four-wheel drive suddenly opened fire, hitting him in the stomach. Presumably they thought he was on a suicide mission.

It was obvious to many American officers from an early stage in the conflict that the Pentagon`s claim that it did not count civilian casualties was seen by many Iraqis as proof that the US did not care about how many of them were killed. The failure to take Iraqi civilian dead into account was particularly foolish in a culture where relatives of the slain are obligated by custom to seek revenge.

The secrecy surrounding the numbers of civilians killed reveals another important facet of the war. The White House was always more interested in the impact of events in Iraq on the American voter than it was in the effect on Iraqis. From the beginning of the conflict the US and British armies had difficulty in working out who in Iraq really was a civilian.

Marla Ruzicka, the American humanitarian worker who was buried yesterday in California, had established in her last weeks in Iraq that figures were kept based on after-action reports. Officially, she found, 29 civilians were killed in fire fights between US forces and insurgents between 28 February and 5 April. But these figures are likely to be gross underestimates.

US soldiers are notorious in Iraq for departing immediately after a skirmish, taking their own casualties but sometimes leaving damaged vehicles. They would not have time to find out how many Iraqis were killed or injured.

The Health Ministry in Baghdad did produce figures and then stopped doing so, saying they had not been properly collated. Iraqi Body Count, a group monitoring casualties by looking at media sources, puts the total at 17,384. But most Iraqis die obscurely; it is dangerous for reporters, Iraqi or foreign, to try to find out who is being killed. Much of Iraq is a bandit-ridden no-man`s land.

Even in Baghdad it is evident from the hundreds of bodies arriving at the mortuary that this has become one of the most violent societies on earth. The Iraqi Body Count figure is probably much too low, because US military tactics ensure high civilian losses ­ a bizarre aspect of the war is that US commanders often do not understand the damage done by their weapons in Iraq`s close-packed cities.

US firepower, designed to combat the Soviet army, cannot be used in built up areas without killing or injuring civilians. Nevertheless, a study published in the Lancet saying that 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq appears to be too high. But the lack of definitive figures continues to dehumanise the uncounted Iraqi dead. As Dr Richard Garfield, a professor of nursing at Columbia University and an author of the Lancet report, wrote: "We are still fighting to record the Armenian genocide. Until people have names and are counted they don`t exist in a policy sense."

The immunity of US troops means that there is nothing to inhibit them opening fire in what for them is a terrifying situation. For all their modern armament they are vulnerable to suicide bombers and roadside bombs. In the first case the attacker is already dead and in the second the man who detonates the bomb is probably several hundred yards away and in cover. With nobody else to shoot at it is the civilians who pay the price.


24 April 2005 16:49


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Sunday, April 24, 2005
War News for Sunday, April 24, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: One Iraqi killed, three US soldiers and seven civilians injured in car bomb attack in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: AP cameraman killed in crossfire between insurgents and US forces in Mosul.

Bring `em on: Twin car bombs near police academy kill seven in Tikrit.

Bring `em on: One US soldier killed in bomb attack in al Haswah.

Blair caught telling porkies, again!

The list of journalists killed in Iraq since the illegal invasion commenced.

Yet again there has been a postponement of the formation of the new Iraqi government. The NYT speculate that the Kurds are deliberately obstructing the formation of a government in hopes of getting rid Ibrahim Jaafari and bringing Iyad Allawi back in as PM. Juan Cole says that there may be Kurdish politicians stupid enough or perverse enough to try this trick (though I doubt President Jalal Talabani is among them). He also cannot understand why Ibrahim Jaafari is bothering with the Iraqiya list. It only got 14 percent of the vote, and it is not needed for the United Iraqi Alliance to pass rules and laws in parliament, where it has 53% of the vote or so.

Fantasy Land: American President George Bush on Saturday hailed what he saw as a new milestone in efforts to form a viable Iraqi security force, pointing out that for the first time since the beginning of the war, Iraqi troops and police now outnumber United States forces in the country.

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But the Government Accountability Office said in a report made public last month that Iraqi security forces remain crippled by poor discipline, questionable loyalties and a rate of absenteeism possibly reaching tens of thousands. The study expressed serious doubts about the quality of Iraqi recruits and charged that "US government data do not provide reliable information on the status of Iraqi military and police forces." Meanwhile, up the road, insurgents run relatively free, and last week they appeared to have used a hilltop outside of town to fire what they later said was a shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missile. The missile hit a chartered Russian-made helicopter Thursday, killing six Americans and five other foreigners, including a survivor executed by the guerrillas afterward. The U.S. official said this week that overall attacks had increased since the end of March. Roadside bombings and attacks on military targets are up by as much as 40 percent in parts of the country over the same period, according to estimates from private security outfits.

The Real Plan for Iraq

This is Rumour Control has an interesting interview with John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. I recommend that you read it in full but here are some of the telling things that he has to say.

On Bases: No one says that they are going to be permanent, because permanent would imply that they would be there until the end of time -- either until the sun burns out or Christ returns in glory. You have to play with the language. What does Mr. Rumsfeld say? Mr. Rumsfeld says that we don`t have an exit strategy and that our strategy is victory, that we are not planning on staying there permanently but we will stay there until we get the job done. Well, how long is it going to take? No one knows. I would say that the U.S. military is going to maintain current troop levels there for another two years when they might be able to start drawing them down to a hundred thousand.



On Exit Strategy:We`re never going to leave. Think about it. We`re still in Korea and the armistice was signed 53 years ago. There is no coherent explanation for why we are still there apart from the fact that we`ve been there for a long time. Everybody has become accustomed to our presence, and it`s easier for everybody just to roll along with us there than for people to contemplate what the world would look like without us there.



On Iraq`s Future:How many fighter planes did Iraq have before the war? Several hundred. How many fight airplanes do they have now? Zero. How many fighter planes do we plan on them having five years from now? Zero. What kind of country is it that has no air force? It is called a protectorate.



Only Report the Good News

A state department report which showed an increase in terrorism incidents around the world in 2004 was altered to strip it of its pessimistic statistics according to the Guardian.

The country-by-country report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, has come out every year since 1986, accompanied by statistical tables. This year`s edition showed a big increase, from 172 significant terrorist attacks in 2003 to 655 in 2004. Much of the increase took place in Iraq, contradicting recent Pentagon claims that the insurgency there is waning. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued minus the statistics.

A Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman, has written an angry letter about the change to Cameron Hume, the state department`s inspector general, arguing that Ms Rice`s decision "denies the public access to important information about the incidence of terrorism". Mr Waxman said: "There appears to be a pattern in the administration`s approach to terrorism data: favourable facts are revealed while unfavourable facts are suppressed."



A Case for the UN

Entire Article
siehe #27930 Fisk


# posted by Friendly Fire : 1:00 AM
Comments (8) | Trackback (0)

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Latest Fatality: Apr 24, 2005
Apr.05: 36

Siehe auch #27942 Insurgent Violence Escalates In Iraq

Regelmäßige Updates von Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Herrlich es ist schon eine Agenturmeldung wert, wenn ein US-Gefangener in Guantanamo nach seiner Entlassung erklärt, er sei nicht gefoltert worden!
Schöne neue Welt.
Bald wird es auch soweit sein, dass es eine Meldung wert ist, dass eine Firma Gehälter zahlt, von denen die Beschäftigten leben können.
Amerika du hast es besser.

Afghan Says He Wasn`t Tortured at Guantanamo
From Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-gitm…

April 24, 2005

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — An Afghan man freed from the U.S. detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Saturday that he was stripped naked and photographed the day he arrived, but was not tortured during three years at the camp. He said his interrogators asked over and over: "Do you know Osama?"

Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, 42, said he and his brother were arrested at their home in Pakistan on Nov. 17, 2001, by Pakistani intelligence agents and eventually taken to the U.S. military base at Bagram, north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. After about 11 weeks there, he was flown to Guantanamo.

"First I was questioned by Pakistani security men. Then American men and women also started to interrogate me. They had only one question: Do you know Osama?" Dost said, referring to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

"I told them that you have made Osama so popular that even children and mad people know him very well," he said.

The same line of questioning continued at Guantanamo, with American interrogators also asking him whether he had anything to do with Taliban leaders.

"I told them I had nothing to do with Osama or the Taliban," Dost said from the home he shares with his wife and eight children in this frontier city.

Dost was set free in Afghanistan on Tuesday. The next day he traveled to Peshawar.

He said he had once worked for three Afghan magazines said to be sympathetic to the Taliban, and had once belonged to an Afghan rebel group, but had severed those ties.

"I committed no crime against the Americans or anyone else," Dost said.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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America"s Place on the World Stage
Time for Bush to abandon superpower myth
- Nancy Soderberg
Sunday, April 24, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv…

San Franciscans pride themselves on it, conservatives deride them for it, but there is simply no avoiding it: The citizens of San Francisco are different from the rest of America. Their demonstrations are the most vigorous, their mayors are all unique and you can`t beat their choice of surroundings. San Franciscans also voted for John Kerry over George W. Bush by 67 percent, compared with 48 percent of Americans elsewhere.

It is thus no accident that California`s Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein grilled Condoleezza Rice over her failures as national security adviser and the über-unilateralist John Bolton during their nomination hearings. Referring to him as a "bully," Boxer rightly asserted, "Mr. Bolton needs anger management at a minimum and he does not deserve to be promoted."

Bay Area residents understand the dangers of extremism in Washington and the failures of Bush`s first term. They also understand the need for a second- term conversion to a more realistic policy that will make Americans safer. There are reasons for hope. As the Bush administration reaches the 100-day mark of its second term, signs of such a shift are appearing, leading to a more effective foreign policy.

U.S. policy in the past four years has been driven by the false belief that, as the lone superpower, the United States is powerful enough to bend the world to its will, largely on its own and through military means. That costly myth has made the superpower burden heavier, not just in having to handle Iraq on its own, but also in seeking to bolster world coalitions to counter threats from terrorism and proliferators. Anti-Americanism has spiked to unprecedented levels across Europe and especially in the Muslim world, where majorities in seven out of eight countries consider the United States a threat. This increased hostility comes at the very time we urgently need the support of Muslim nations to tackle extremism and stem terrorism.

Transatlantic relations soured over the war in Iraq, American refusal to engage in the Kyoto Protocol or International Criminal Court, and Washington`s repeated displays of contempt, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld`s remarks about "Old Europe." The Bush administration, with Bolton leading the charge, has undermined the international-arms controls that protect America from proliferators, obstructing the biological- and chemical-weapons conventions, and seeking to develop new types of nuclear weapons and resume nuclear testing.

The United States, however, cannot counter terrorism, stifle weapons proliferation, bring peace to the Middle East and instill Arab reform on its own. Quite simply, our security depends on international cooperation.

Positive signs are emerging, however, that the Bush administration may be abandoning this superpower myth. If the administration`s new, ally-friendly rhetoric is translated into more realistic policies, historic progress is possible on many fronts. It is no accident that Bush`s first trip in his second term was to Europe. Traveling the continent where relations progressively deteriorated under Bush`s first-term watch, the president now emphasizes the importance of partnership and shared values, calling European nations "close friends" of America. The french fry is even back in favor.

One sign the administration may turn its new realistic rhetoric into new policies is Iran. Bush is right to oppose a nuclear-armed Iran, but he was also right to abandon his long-standing opposition to adding "carrots" to the "sticks" to achieve progress in negotiations. Having done so, a unified U.S.- European front against Iran may now be possible.

Another key test will be North Korea. Over the past four years, North Korea has pursued freely not one but two nuclear programs and a missile system that could possibly hit Alaska and Hawaii. Yet, the ideologues in Washington have refused to negotiate a deal to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. It is time to address this threat in earnest.

The United States must shift to a new policy of tough engagement, putting to rest the dangerous superpower myth of the past four years. Tough engagement means building global coalitions -- often through the United Nations -- to combat terrorism and proliferation, to use sanctions, and, when necessary, force. It means not just the rhetoric of supporting freedom, but rather opposing anti-democratic moves in places like Russia and Pakistan. It means getting off the sidelines and leading in the search for peace in the Middle East and reform in the Arab world. America must fulfill its rightful role as a persuader, not just enforcer. It must address today`s difficult issues in consultation with allies -- not because it`s the nice thing to do, but because it`s the smart thing to do.

Second terms can be tough. But if President Bush turns his new, more realistic rhetoric into concrete policies, he has the chance for historic progress that will benefit America and beyond. That doesn`t vindicate the mistakes of the first term, but Americans should welcome the shift.

Nancy Soderberg, a former ambassador to the United Nations who served as a foreign-policy adviser in the Clinton administration, is the author of "The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might" (John Wiley and Sons, 2005).


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv…
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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[urlAnn Coulter]http://www.bartcop.com/coulter_death_cover.jpg[/url]

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PRESCRIPTION FOR CHANGE / With 43 medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco operating with no oversight, city officials debate how to rein in growth of the shops and those who abuse Prop. 215`s intent







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U.S. WINS WAR ON OBESITY
‘Mission Accomplished,’ Says Bush, Sparking Nationwide Pig-out
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1115&srch=
Just hours after the Centers for Disease Control issued a new study finding that the dangers of being overweight had been overstated in the past, President George W. Bush declared America’s war on obesity over.

Riding in a Navy helicopter, the president made a perfect landing on the roof of a McDonalds in Columbus, Ohio to make the dramatic announcement.

“Mission accomplished,” the president said, adding with a jaunty wink, “and Supersize me!”

The president’s remarks sparked a nationwide feeding frenzy as people who once thought of themselves as obese rushed to stuff their faces with an abandon bordering on hysteria.

From coast to coast, managers of Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken reported rampaging crowds unlike any witnessed since the run on the banks at the outset of the Great Depression.

While the nation celebrated its stunning triumph over obesity, some of the nation’s most prominent fast food restaurants adjusted their marketing to embrace the euphoria.

Boston Market said that the company would change its motto from “We’re Always Cooking” to “We’re Always Cooking, Because You’re Constantly Eating, You Gluttonous Pig.”

Meanwhile, standing on the roof of the McDonalds in Columbus, Mr. Bush savored the nation’s victory in the war on obesity, saying that although the nation had not yet won the war on terror, “One out of two ain’t bad.”

Speaking at the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan echoed the president’s words: “This is a great day for the United States, and a great day for Dick Cheney.”

Elsewhere, Pope Benedict XVI today was declared infallible, replacing former “Jeopardy!” champ Ken Jennings.

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[url"I`m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I`m here to stop the count."]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/22/221225/706[/url]
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GM industry puts human gene into rice
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?st…

24 April 2005

Scientists have begun putting genes from human beings into food crops in a dramatic extension of genetic modification. The move, which is causing disgust and revulsion among critics, is bound to strengthen accusations that GM technology is creating "Frankenstein foods" and drive the controversy surrounding it to new heights.

Even before this development, many people, including Prince Charles, have opposed the technology on the grounds that it is playing God by creating unnatural combinations of living things.

Environmentalists say that no one will want to eat the partially human-derived food because it will smack of cannibalism.

But supporters say that the controversial new departure presents no ethical problems and could bring environmental benefits.

In the first modification of its kind, Japanese researchers have inserted a gene from the human liver into rice to enable it to digest pesticides and industrial chemicals. The gene makes an enzyme, code-named CPY2B6, which is particularly good at breaking down harmful chemicals in the body.

Present GM crops are modified with genes from bacteria to make them tolerate herbicides, so that they are not harmed when fields are sprayed to kill weeds. But most of them are only able to deal with a single herbicide, which means that it has to be used over and over again, allowing weeds to build up resistance to it.

But the researchers at the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Tsukuba, north of Tokyo, have found that adding the human touch gave the rice immunity to 13 different herbicides. This would mean that weeds could be kept down by constantly changing the chemicals used.

Supporting scientists say that the gene could also help to beat pollution.

Professor Richard Meilan of Purdue University in Indiana, who has worked with a similar gene from rabbits, says that plants modified with it could "clean up toxins" from contaminated land. They might even destroy them so effectively that crops grown on the polluted soil could be fit to eat.

But he and other scientists caution that if the gene were to escape to wild relatives of the rice it could create particularly vicious superweeds that were resistant to a wide range of herbicides.

He adds: "I do not have any ethical issue with using human genes to engineer plants", dismissing talk of "Frankenstein foods" as "rubbish". He believes that that European opposition to GM crops and food is fuelled by agricultural protectionism.

But Sue Mayer, director of GeneWatch UK, said yesterday: "I don`t think that anyone will want to buy this rice. People have already expressed disgust about using human genes, and already feel that their concerns are being ignored by the biotech industry. This will just undermine their confidence even more."

Pete Riley, director of the anti-GM pressure group Five Year Freeze, said: "I am not surprised by this.

"The industry is capable of anything and this development certainly smacks of Frankenstein."


24 April 2005 22:59


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Holy warriors
Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic vote. Can American democracy survive their shared medieval vision?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/04/21/tk/index_…
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By Sidney Blumenthal



April 21, 2005 | President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.

About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" -- an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any Catholic who voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued, "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion." During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with "evil."

In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from the 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift, Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush`s column on the votes of the Catholic "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.

With the College of Cardinals` election of Ratzinger to the papacy, his political alliances with conservative politicians can be expected to deepen and broaden. Under Benedict XVI, the church will assume a consistent reactionary activism it has not had for two centuries. And the new pope`s crusade against modernity has already joined forces with the right-wing culture war in the United States, prefigured by his interference in the 2004 election.

Europe is far less susceptible than the United States to the religious wars that Ratzinger will incite. Attendance at church is negligible; church teachings are widely ignored; and the younger generation is least observant of all. But in the United States, the Bush administration and the right wing of the Republican Party are trying to batter down the wall of separation between church and state. Through court appointments, they wish to enshrine doctrinal views on the family, women, gays, medicine, scientific research and privacy. The Republican attempt to abolish the two-centuries-old filibuster -- the so-called nuclear option -- is only one coming wrangle in the larger Kulturkampf.

Joseph Ratzinger was born and bred in the cradle of the Kulturkampf, or culture war. Roman Catholic Bavaria was a stronghold against northern Protestantism during the Reformation. In the 19th century the church was a powerful force opposing the unification of Italy and Germany into nation-states, fearing that they would diminish the church`s influence in the shambles of duchies and provinces that had followed the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire. The doctrine of papal infallibility in 1870 was promulgated by the church to tighten its grip on Catholic populations against the emerging centralized nations and to sanctify the pope`s will against mere secular rulers.

In response, Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, launched what he called a Kulturkampf to break the church`s hold. He removed the church from the control of schools, expelled the Jesuits, and instituted civil ceremonies for marriage. Bismarck lent support to Catholic dissidents opposed to papal infallibility who were led by German theologian Johann Ignaz von Dollinger. Dollinger and his personal secretary were subsequently excommunicated. His secretary was Georg Ratzinger, great-uncle of the new pope, who became one of the most notable Bavarian intellectuals and politicians of the period. This Ratzinger was a champion against papal absolutism and church centralization, and on behalf of the poor and working class -- and was also an anti-Semite.

Joseph Ratzinger`s Kulturkampf is claimed by him to be a reaction to the student revolts of 1968. Should Joschka Fischer, a former student radical and now the German foreign minister, have to answer entirely for Ratzinger`s Weltanschauung? Pope Benedict`s Kulturkampf bears the burden of the church`s history and that of his considerable family. He represents the latest incarnation of the long-standing reaction against Bismarck`s reforms -- beginning with the assertion of the invented tradition of papal infallibility -- and, ironically, against the positions on the church held by his famous uncle. But the roots of his reaction are even more profound.

The new pope`s burning passion is to resurrect medieval authority. He equates the Western liberal tradition, that is, the Enlightenment, with Nazism, and denigrates it as "moral relativism." He suppresses all dissent, discussion and debate within the church and concentrates power within the Vatican bureaucracy. His abhorrence of change runs past 1968 (an abhorrence he shares with George W. Bush) to the revolutions of 1848, the "springtime of nations," and 1789, the French Revolution. But, even more momentously, the alignment of the pope`s Kulturkampf with the U.S. president`s culture war has also set up a conflict with the American Revolution.

For the first time, an American president is politically allied with the Vatican in its doctrinal mission (except, of course, on capital punishment). In the messages and papers of the presidents from George Washington until well into those of the 20th century, there was not a single mention of the pope, except in one minor footnote. Bush`s lobbying trip last year to the Vatican reflects an utterly novel turn, and Ratzinger`s direct political intervention in American electoral politics ratified it.

The right wing of the Catholic Church is as mobilized as any other part of the religious right. It is seizing control of Catholic universities, exerting influence at other universities, stigmatizing Catholic politicians who fail to adhere to its conservative credo, pressing legislation at the federal and state levels, seeking government funding and sponsorship of the church, and vetting political appointments inside the White House and the administration -- imposing in effect a religious test of office. The Bush White House encourages these developments under the cover of moral uplift as it forges a political machine uniting church and state -- as was done in premodern Europe.

The American Revolution, the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were fought for explicitly to uproot the traces in American soil of ecclesiastical power in government, which the Founders to a man regarded with horror, revulsion and foreboding.

The Founders were the ultimate representatives of the Enlightenment. They were not anti-religious, though few if any of them were orthodox or pious. Washington never took Communion and refused to enter the church, while his wife did so. Benjamin Franklin believed that all organized religion was suspect. James Madison thought that established religion did as much harm to religion as it did to free government, twisting the word of God to fit political expediency, thereby throwing religion into the political cauldron. And Thomas Jefferson, allied with his great collaborator Madison, conducted decades of sustained and intense political warfare against the existing and would-be clerisy. His words, engraved on the Jefferson Memorial, are a direct reference to established religion: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

But now Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay threatens the federal judiciary, saying, "The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that`s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn`t stop them." And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will participate through a telecast in a rally on April 24 in which he will say that Democrats who refuse to rubber-stamp Bush`s judicial nominees and uphold the filibuster are "against people of faith."

But what would Madison say?

This is what Madison wrote in 1785: "What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not."

What would John Adams say? This is what he wrote Jefferson in 1815: "The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"

Benjamin Franklin? "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."

And Jefferson, in "Notes on Virginia," written in 1782: "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desireable? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."

The Republican Party was founded in the mid-19th century partly as a party of religious liberty. It supported public common schools, not church schools, and public land-grant universities independent of any denominational affiliation. The Republicans, moreover, were adamant in their opposition to the use of any public funds for any religious purpose, especially involving schools.

A century later, in 1960, there was still such a considerable suspicion of Catholics in government that the Democratic candidate for president, John F. Kennedy, felt compelled to address the issue directly in his famous speech before the Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12.

What did Kennedy say? "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference ... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish -- where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."

Now Bush is attempting to create what Kennedy warned against. He claims to be conservative, but he seeks a rupture in our system of government. The culture war, which has had many episodes, from the founding of the Moral Majority to the unconstitutional impeachment of President Clinton, is entering a new and far more dangerous phase. In 2004 Bush and Ratzinger used church doctrine to intimidate voters and taint candidates. And through the courts the president is seeking to codify not only conservative ideology but religious doctrine.

When men of God mistake their articles of devotion with political platforms, they will inevitably stand exposed in the political arena. When politicians mistake themselves for men of God, their religion, however sincere, will inevitably be seen as contrivance.

As both president and pope invoke heavenly authority to impose their notions of tradition, they have set themselves on a collision course with the American political tradition. In the name of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, democracy without end. Amen.

This story has been corrected since it was first published.

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About the writer
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

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April 25, 2005
Rice and Cheney Are Said to Push Iraqi Politicians on Stalemate
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and JOEL BRINKLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/international/middleeast/2…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 24 - Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a spike in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressed Iraqi leaders in recent days to end their stalemate over forming a new government, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney personally exhorting top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to come together.

The White House pressure, reported by Iraqi officials in Baghdad and an American official in Washington on Sunday, was a change in the administration`s hands-off approach to Iraqi politics. The change was disclosed as insurgents unleashed a devastating technique, with twin double bombings at a police academy in Tikrit and an ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 21 and wounded scores more.

In both attacks, a second bomb detonated within minutes after the first, killing and wounding policemen and bystanders who had rushed to care for victims of the initial blasts.

The explosions hit two of the favored targets of Sunni Arab insurgents: police recruits, whose training is critical to improving security in Iraq and providing the United States an exit strategy; and Shiites, who make up a majority in Iraq but nearly three months after national elections have yet to form a new government - a failure that American officials fear is giving strength and confidence to the insurgents.

Washington`s approach to the political negotiations had emphasized that the Iraqis needed to form their own government without interference. But American and Iraqi officials have increasingly blamed the delay for a rise in violence in recent weeks that has killed more than a hundred Iraqis and threatens to destroy what remains of the political and security momentum that followed the successful Jan. 30 elections.

Ms. Rice on Friday telephoned Iraq`s new president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to urge him to complete the government "as soon as they could" and "to get a status of where things were," a senior State Department official in Washington said Sunday. The official stressed that Ms. Rice did not tell Mr. Talabani how to form a government, just that the process needed to be concluded.

Also, Adil Abdul Mahdi, a leading Shiite politician selected as one of the new Iraqi vice presidents, met with Ms. Rice and Vice President Cheney at the White House, the official said, where he was also told that the White House wanted to see a government formed right away.

"It has taken awhile, and this is also a reflection of the fact that the Iraqis themselves are pushing for a quicker government," the senior official said. Ms. Rice told both Mr. Talabani and Mr. Mahdi that more than enough time had passed, and a government needed to be formed now, the official said. "We know it is not an easy thing to do, and this is the first time for them."

The impact of the White House pressure was unclear. On Sunday, Shiite leaders once again predicted they were on the verge of announcing their new government, perhaps as soon as Monday. Similar predictions have been proved wrong several times in recent weeks.

But the Shiites added a new twist on Sunday, declaring they would no longer hold out for a deal with Ayad Allawi, the outgoing prime minister. Dr. Allawi, a secular Shiite who is not liked by the main Shiite political alliance, had demanded several key posts for his party, including either defense or interior minister, oil or finance minister, and deputy prime minister.

In an interview Sunday, Ali al-Adeeb - a Shiite member of the National Assembly and a leader in Dawa, the party of the newly appointed prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari - said, "Allawi is out of the cabinet. We don`t need any delay because of this issue." Many Shiites believe Dr. Allawi is too sympathetic to Sunnis, while many Kurdish officials fear Dr. Jaafari is too Islamist.

Late Sunday, another Shiite alliance adviser cautioned that while the "current discussions" do not include Dr. Allawi, it was unfair to say he has been ruled out of the cabinet "because there is no government yet." He predicted that the Shiites would not be able to announce a cabinet on Monday. A senior Allawi aide, Rasim al-Awadi, said Sunday afternoon that "we`ve heard nothing yet from" the Shiites about Dr. Allawi`s demands for cabinet posts.

The Shiite alliance controls a narrow majority of the 275 seats in the National Assembly, while the Kurds have 75 seats and Dr. Allawi`s party 40 seats. On top of the squabble between the Shiites and Dr. Allawi, some Kurdish political leaders and others have been trying to slow the political process to force Dr. Jaafari out of his new post. Under the interim constitution, the prime minister would relinquish the post if he fails to form a new government one month after his appointment. That clock runs out May 7.

Many American officials say the political slowdown in Baghdad is hurting the ability of Iraqi security forces to repel and pursue insurgents. Some regional government leaders are appointing police and security officials without consulting with the Interior Ministry, as required by law. Elsewhere, American officials say, the political vacuum has led to apathetic law enforcement and public administration.

"They need to get going on variety of fronts," an American official in Baghdad said Friday. "None of the Iraqis we talk to think that the security situation in the past month has improved. A number of them think the security situation has grown more difficult."

The violent streak that extended into Sunday began with the dual car-bomb strike at the police academy in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein`s hometown and a heartland for Sunni Baathists 100 miles north of Baghdad. A car bomb exploded inside the grounds of the academy, followed less than half an hour later by another bomb, an official at the Interior Ministry said. At least six Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded.

Sunday night a similar and deadlier strike hit the Al Riadhy ice cream parlor in the capital`s Shula district, a working-class neighborhood in northwest Baghdad where many poor Shiites from places south like Kut and Diwaniyah migrated in the 1980`s seeking work. The first bomber struck about 8:50 p.m., and the second blast rang out five minutes later, an Interior Ministry official said. At least 15 people were killed and 50 wounded.

The American military also reported two deaths at the hand of insurgents: On Saturday, a sailor assigned to the Second Marine Division was killed by a homemade bomb while conducting operations in Falluja. The Marines released no other details. In eastern Baghdad, a soldier from Task Force Baghdad was killed just after dawn on Sunday when his patrol was hit by a homemade bomb.

Military officials also said they captured four more Iraqis suspected of involvement in the downing of a civilian helicopter last week that killed six American security contractors and five others. The four Iraqis join six Iraqi suspects who were seized early Saturday morning after Iraqi tipsters led soldiers to the suspects` truck and homes, according to military officials.

Also, Pakistani officials said Malik Mohammed Javed, a Pakistani Embassy official kidnapped two weeks ago in Iraq, was freed on Sunday.

"He has reached the Pakistan Embassy in Baghdad," the Pakistani information minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, told The Associated Press. "He is safe," Mr. Ahmed said, but he refused to provided any other information and declined to say whether ransom was paid.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Baghdad for this article and Joel Brinkley from Washington. Adbul Razzaq al-Saeidy contributed reporting from Baghdad.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |

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April 25, 2005
Nation`s Inmate Population Increased 2.3 Percent Last Year
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/politics/25prison.html

WASHINGTON, April 24 (AP) - The nation`s prisons and jails held 2.1 million people in mid-2004, 2.3 percent more than the year before, the government reported on Sunday.

The inmate population increased by slightly more than 48,000 from mid-2003 to mid-2004, a growth of about 900 inmates each week, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The total inmate population has hovered around two million for the last few years: It was 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the last decade, the number of people going to prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, said an author of the report, Paige M. Harrison.

Ms. Harrison said the increase could be largely attributed to get-tough policies enacted in the 1980`s and 1990`s. Among them are mandatory sentences for drug crimes, "three strikes and you`re out" laws for repeat offenders and "truth in sentencing" laws that restrict early releases.

"As a whole, most of these policies remain in place," Ms. Harrison said. "These policies were a reaction to the rise in crime in the 80`s and early 90`s."

Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which promotes alternatives to prison, said, "We`re working under the burden of laws and practices that have developed over 30 years that have focused on punishment and prison as our primary response to crime."

Mr. Young said many of those incarcerated were not serious or violent offenders, but low-level drug offenders. He said ways to help lower that number included introducing drug treatment programs that offer effective ways of changing behavior and providing appropriate assistance for the mentally ill.

The Justice Policy Institute, which advocates a more lenient system of punishment than incarceration, said the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world, followed by Britain, China, France, Japan and Nigeria.

According to the government`s report, there were 726 inmates for every 100,000 United States residents on June 30, 2004, compared with 716 a year earlier. Put another way, in 2004, one in every 138 residents was in prison or jail; the previous year it was one in every 140.

In 2004, nearly 60 percent of prison and jail inmates were racial or ethnic minorities, the report said. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men age 25 to 29 were in jails or prisons, compared with 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group, the report said.

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April 25, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Agony of War
By BOB HERBERT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/opinion/25herbert.html

"Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy, as the good." — Simone Weil

"There`s no doubt in my mind that the good Lord has his hands full right now." — The Rev. Ted Oswald at the funeral Mass for Marla Ruzicka

In a horrifying incident that occurred in the spring of 2003, an Iraqi woman threw two of her children, an infant and a toddler, out the window of a car that had been hit accidentally in an American rocket attack. The woman and the rest of her family perished in the black smoke and flames of the wreckage. The toddler, whose name was Zahraa, was severely burned. She died two weeks later.

The infant, named Harah, was not badly hurt. She was photographed recently on the lap of Marla Ruzicka, a young humanitarian-aid worker from California who was herself killed a little over a week ago in the flaming wreckage of a car that was destroyed in a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad.

The vast amount of suffering and death endured by civilians as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has, for the most part, been carefully kept out of the consciousness of the average American. I can`t think of anything the Bush administration would like to talk about less. You can`t put a positive spin on dead children.

As for the press, it has better things to cover than the suffering of civilians in war. The aversion to this topic is at the opposite extreme from the ecstatic journalistic embrace of the death of one pope and the election of another, and the media`s manic obsession with the comings and goings of Martha, Jacko, et al.

There`s been hardly any media interest in the unrelieved agony of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq. It`s an ugly subject, and the idea has taken hold that Americans need to be protected from stories or images of the war that might be disturbing. As a nation we can wage war, but we don`t want the public to be too upset by it.

So the public doesn`t even hear about the American bombs that fall mistakenly on the homes of innocent civilians, wiping out entire families. We hear very little about the frequent instances of jittery soldiers opening fire indiscriminately, killing and wounding men, women and children who were never a threat in the first place. We don`t hear much about the many children who, for one reason or another, are shot, burned or blown to eternity by our forces in the name of peace and freedom.

Out of sight, out of mind.

This stunning lack of interest in the toll the war has taken on civilians is one of the reasons Ms. Ruzicka, who was just 28 when she died, felt compelled to try to personally document as much of the suffering as she could. At times she would go from door to door in the most dangerous areas, taking down information about civilians who had been killed or wounded. She believed fiercely that Americans needed to know about the terrible pain the war was inflicting, and that we had an obligation to do everything possible to mitigate it.

Her ultimate goal, which Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont is pursuing, was to establish a U.S. government office, perhaps in the State Department, to document the civilian casualties of American military operations. That information would then be publicly reported. Compensation would be provided for victims and their families, and the data would be studied in an effort to minimize civilian casualties in future operations.

War is always about sorrow and the deepest suffering. Nitwits try to dress it up in the finery of half-baked rationalizations, but the reality is always wanton bloodshed, rotting flesh and the lifelong trauma of those who are physically or psychically maimed.

More than 600 people attended Ms. Ruzicka`s funeral on Saturday in her hometown of Lakeport, Calif. Among them was Bobby Muller, chairman of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. A former Marine lieutenant, he knows something about the agony of war. His spinal cord was severed when he was shot in the back in Vietnam.

He told the mourners: "Marla demonstrated that an individual can make a profound difference in this world. Her life was dedicated to innocent victims of conflict, exactly what she ended up being."

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April 25, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Oblivious Right
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/opinion/25krugman.html

According to John Snow, the Treasury secretary, the global economy is in a "sweet spot." Conservative pundits close to the administration talk, without irony, about a "Bush boom."

Yet two-thirds of Americans polled by Gallup say that the economy is "only fair" or "poor." And only 33 percent of those polled believe the economy is improving, while 59 percent think it`s getting worse.

Is the administration`s obliviousness to the public`s economic anxiety just partisanship? I don`t think so: President Bush and other Republican leaders honestly think that we`re living in the best of times. After all, everyone they talk to says so.

Since November`s election, the victors have managed to be on the wrong side of public opinion on one issue after another: the economy, Social Security privatization, Terri Schiavo, Tom DeLay. By large margins, Americans say that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and Mr. Bush is the least popular second-term president on record.

What`s going on? Actually, it`s quite simple: Mr. Bush and his party talk only to their base - corporate interests and the religious right - and are oblivious to everyone else`s concerns.

The administration`s upbeat view of the economy is a case in point. Corporate interests are doing very well. As a recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, over the last three years profits grew at an annual rate of 14.5 percent after inflation, the fastest growth since World War II.

The story is very different for the great majority of Americans, who live off their wages, not dividends or capital gains, and aren`t doing well at all. Over the past three years, wage and salary income grew less than in any other postwar recovery - less than a tenth as fast as profits. But wage-earning Americans aren`t part of the base.

The same obliviousness explains Mr. Bush`s decision to make Social Security privatization his main policy priority. He doesn`t talk to anyone outside the base, so he didn`t realize what he was getting into.

In retrospect, it was a terrible political blunder: the privatization campaign has quickly degenerated from juggernaut to joke. According to CBS, only 25 percent of the public have confidence in Mr. Bush`s ability to make the right decisions about Social Security; 70 percent are "uneasy."

The point is that people sense, correctly, that Mr. Bush doesn`t understand their concerns. He was sold on privatization by people who have made their careers in the self-referential, corporate-sponsored world of conservative think tanks. And he himself has no personal experience with the risks that working families face. He`s probably never imagined what it would be like to be destitute in his old age, with no guaranteed income.

The same syndrome has been visible on cultural issues. Republican leaders in Congress, who talk only to the religious right, were shocked at the public backlash over their meddling in the Schiavo case. Did I mention that Rick Santorum is 14 points behind his likely challenger?

It all makes you wonder how these people ever ended up running the country in the first place. But remember that in 2000, Mr. Bush pretended to be a moderate, and that in the next two elections he used the Iraq war as a wedge to divide and perplex the Democrats.

In that context, it`s worth noting two more poll results: in one taken before the recent resurgence of violence in Iraq, and the administration`s announcement that it needs yet another $80 billion, 53 percent of Americans said that the Iraq war wasn`t worth it. And 50 percent say that "the administration deliberately misled the public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."

Democracy Corps, the Democratic pollsters, say that there is a "crisis of confidence in the Republican direction for the country." As they`re careful to point out, this won`t necessarily translate into a surge of support for Democrats.

But Americans are feeling a sense of dread: they`re worried about a weak job market, soaring health care costs, rising oil prices and a war that seems to have no end. And they`re starting to notice that nobody in power is even trying to deal with these problems, because the people in charge are too busy catering to a base that has other priorities.

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The Independent
How Arabic text of WMD dossier was massaged by Downing St
Sunday, 24th April 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=632…


When Tony Blair published his notorious 2002 "dossier" which falsely claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, Downing Street also produced an Arabic version - which contained significant deletions and changes in text that substantially altered its meaning.

A translation carried out for The Independent on Sunday reveals for the first time that several references to UN sanctions were cut from the Arabic text. On one page, the words "biological agents" were changed to read "nuclear agents". Arab journalists who reported on the dossier culled their information from the Arabic version - unaware that it was not the same as the English one.

While there is evidence of sloppiness in the translation - a 2001 Joint Intelligence Committee assessment of Iraqi nuclear ambitions is rendered as 2002 - many of the changes were clearly deliberate, apparently in an attempt to make the dossier more acceptable as well as more convincing to an Arab audience. At the time, the US and Britain were trying to convince Arab Gulf states that Saddam Hussein still represented a major threat to them - in the hope of seeking their support for the 2003 invasion - while the Arab world was enraged at the disastrous effects UN sanctions had on child mortality in Iraq.

In the "Executive Summary" at the start of the English edition, readers in Arabic were reminded that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against Iran and his own people before the 1991 Gulf War. But the fact that he had admitted this after the Gulf War was deleted, along with the fact that he agreed to give up his WMD. The apparent intention was to convince Arabs that Saddam remained an imminent threat.

In some cases, too, the Arabic text was hardened to remove any doubts that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The alteration of "biological agents" - biologia in Arabic - to nuclear (la-nawawiya in Arabic) is obviously deliberate, and may reflect the belief that an Arab audience would be more fearful of nuclear weapons than biological agents. References to "damaged" Iraqi factories have been changed to "destroyed" (tadmir in Arabic), giving the impression that US and British air strikes in 1991 were more accurate than in fact they were.

On Iraq’s nuclear programme, the English version of the dossier says that two research reactors were "bombed" in 1991. In the Arabic, the two reactors are described as "destroyed".


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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